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.
Treatment Schedule: Fall 2008. For more information about treatment implementation, click here.

Click here to download the Saddle Mountain Site Fact Sheet (PDF, 1.04MB).