Supplemental vegetation monitoring plots at Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument to accelerate learning of the Annual Brome Adaptive Management (ABAM) model

The Annual Brome Adaptive Management (ABAM) project is a consortium of seven parks in the Northern Great Plains (NGP) working together to better understand how to control invasive annual grasses (including Bromus species) through an adaptive management approach. This approach is supported by a quantitative model that uses current data from standardized vegetation monitoring plots in all seven parks to annually update the model’s parameters and predictions regarding the effects of different management actions on invasive annual grasses and other components of the mixed-grass prairie plant community. This updating of the model is called “learning.”

The original ABAM model has little information about the effects of the herbicide indaziflam on target invasive annual grasses and other components of the vegetation in conditions like those that frequently occur in ABAM parks (i.e., ungrazed). The purpose of this study is to provide some of that information and therefore accelerate the rate of learning accomplished in the adaptive management cycle.