Moses Coulee

Moses Coulee Site

Location:	Near Wenatchee, WA
Land Management Agency:	The Nature Conservancy, Moses Coulee Preserve
SageSTEP Site Manager:	Scott Shaff
Plots:	Four 50-acre core plots (Control, Burn, Mechanical, Herbicide)
Elevation:	1700 ft
Topography:	0–10 % slope with a Southern aspect
Common Vegetation:	Bluebunch wheatgrass, Wyoming big sagebrush, Needle and Thread, Sandberg’s bluegrass
Soils:	Strat-Tubspring-Skaha 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.
Representative Land Base:	This site is representative of sage steppe ecosystem of eastern Washington.
Grazing:	Plots are located within active grazing allottment and will be fenced for duration of the study.
Treatment Schedule:	Treatments were implemented in fall 2008 except for the burn, which is planned for 2009. For more information about treatments, click here.

Updated 2009

Download Moses Coulee Site Fact Sheet

Moses Coulee subplot progress images

Low Desert Sagebrush-Cheatgrass Herbicide Subplots

Moses Coulee Site Yearly Photo Sequence

Tebuthiuron (Spike 20P) was applied aerial on the Moses Coulee herbicide plot to thin the sagebrush and encourage understory growth. This treatment took place in the fall of 2007 after baseline data were collected. Plateau pre-emergence herbicide was crossed with the Spike treatment on half of the subplots to control cheatgrass. The images below show two subplots from 2007–2010, one where Plateau was not used and one where Plateau was sprayed at a rate of 6oz per acre after treatment in fall 2007.