Saddle Mountain Site
| Location: | Near Richland, WA |
| Land Management Agency: | US Fish and Wildlife Service Hanford Reach National Monument |
| SageSTEP Site Manager: | Scott Shaff |
| Plots: | Four 80-acre core plots (Control, Burn, Mechanical, Herbicide) |
| Elevation: | 860-940 ft |
| Topography: | 1–5 % slope with a Southern aspect |
| Common Vegetation: | Bluebunch wheatgrass, Wyoming big sagebrush, Indian ricegrass, and bottlebrush squirreltail |
| Soils: | Warden, very fine sandy loam |
| 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. |
| Representative Land Base: | This site is representative of sage steppe ecosystem of the Columbia Plateau of eastern Washington. |
| Grazing: | This site is actively grazed and will be fenced for the duration of the study to exclude livestock. |
| Treatments Implemented: | Fall 2008. For more information about treatments, click here. |
Click here to download the Saddle Mountain Site Fact Sheet (PDF, 268KB).
Click on the links below to view images from select subplots
