Hart Mountain - Gray Butte and Rock Creek Sites

Location: Lake County, near Lakeview (~70 miles), Frenchglen (~45 miles), and Plush, OR (~20 miles)
Elevation: 4910 ft. (Gray Butte) 4950 ft. (Rock Creek)
Land Management Agency: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge
SageSTEP Site Manager: Scott Shaff
Plots: Four 200-acre plots at each site (Control, Burn, Mechanical, and Herbicide)
Topography: 0–3 % slope with a general aspect of 200 degrees for entire study area
Common Vegetation: Wyoming big sagebrush, bluebunch wheatgrass, squirreltail, Sandberg bluegrass, Indian rice grass, Therber’s needlegrass, and a varying extent of cheatgrass invasion
Representative Land Base: Vast acreages in the High Desert of Eastern Oregon
Soils: Brace-Raz complex
Fire Regime: The Wyoming big sagebrush type is the driest of the sagebrush steppe communities and historically had a fire return interval of approximately 50-100 years. The introduction of cheatgrass into the sagebrush grassland communities has increased fine fuels and reduced the fire return interval to less than 10 years.
Grazing: Grazing does not occur on these sites.
Treatment Schedule: Implemented at Rock Creek in Fall 2007, planned for Gray Butte in Fall 2008. For more information about treatment implementation, click here.

Click here to download the Hart Mountain Sites Fact Sheet (PDF, 888KB).