Land Treatment Digital Library
April 1, 2026
The Land Treatment Digital Library (LTDL) is an online catalog of legacy land treatment information carried out on Bureau of Land Management lands in the western United States. The LTDL compiles different types of land treatments, such as seedings, vegetation removals, and prescribed fire - and is used by land managers to help them make decisions about where, when, and how to implement future land treatments using the Land Treatment Exploration Tool. The LTDL houses information on over 70,000 treatments on BLM lands across the western United States.
Media
Sources/Usage: Public Domain. View Media Details
Related
Land Treatment Exploration Tool
The Land Treatment Exploration Tool provides a practical resource for managers who are planning restoration and rehabilitation actions on public lands. The tool generates a variety of spatial products while being user friendly for all levels of GIS expertise, even to those with little or no experience.
Economic Implications of Sagebrush Treatment and Restoration Practices Across the Great Basin and Wyoming
USGS and Colorado State University researchers are conducting analyses and predictions of sagebrush recovery in the Great Basin and Wyoming and assess the role of weather, soils, and reseeding treatments.
Assessing vegetation and avian community response to juniper reduction treatments in Southwest Montana
The Southwest Montana Sagebrush Partnership (SMSP) team, including land managers, landowners, and scientists, is implementing conifer removal projects encompassing over 55,000 acres of private, state, and federal lands throughout the region. To date, little place-based information exists regarding likely vegetation and bird responses to such treatments in Southwestern Montana. To address this...
Climate-Smart Vegetation Treatments - Using 15 Years of SageSTEP Data to Inform Management of Resilient Ecosystems
Land managers require clear, forward-looking information about where and how vegetation treatments may make the greatest difference for drought resilience in sagebrush and woodland ecosystems. We are using soil moisture and vegetation data from SageSTEP-- a long-term ecological study on fuel treatments in the Great Basin-- to analyze soil moisture dynamics and vegetation responses after common...
SageSTEP – Sagebrush Steppe Treatment Evaluation Project
The Sagebrush Steppe Treatment Evaluation Project--or SageSTEP-- is a regional experiment taking place across six states in the Great Basin. A multidisciplinary team of scientists are evaluating methods of sagebrush steppe restoration to inform land managers working to protect one of the most threatened land types in North America. SageSTEP is the longest running and largest replicated ecological...
Assessing invasive annual grass treatment efficacy across the sagebrush biome
We are using existing datasets that span broad spatial and temporal extents to model the efficacy of invasive annual grass treatments across the sagebrush biome and the influence of environmental factors on their success. The models we develop will be used to generate maps of predicted treatment efficacy across the biome, which will be integrated into the Land Treatment Exploration Tool for land...
Systematic Review and Analysis of Seeding and Herbicide Treatment in the Sagebrush Steppe
Seeding and herbicide treatments are a key aspect of the strategy used to break the annual grass-fire cycle in sagebrush steppe. However, past studies report considerable variability in the effectiveness of seeding and herbicide treatments. To generate a more consistent interpretation of post-fire herbicide and seeding effects, we are compiling, reviewing, and synthesizing findings from past...
Informing Forest Treatment Placement to Mitigate High-Severity Wildfire Risk
Large, hot, fast-moving wildfires are an increasing threat to communities and to the watersheds they rely upon. Forest managers work to reduce the risk from these fires using forest thinning and prescribed burning to reduce the amount of fuel in the forest. However, these activities are expensive, and it can be challenging to identify which acres of forest should be targeted with...
Developing a Decision Support Framework for Prioritizing Pinyon Juniper Forest Treatments on the Colorado Plateau
Across the western U.S., pinyon and juniper trees are expanding into sagebrush and grassland plant communities. This vegetation change has been perceived to have a significant impact on the economic value of these grasslands, which support activities such as livestock grazing and hunting, but expanding pinyon and juniper forests may also lead to increased risk of fire. Over the past...
Neonicotinoid Seed Treatment Study
Neonicotinoids are a new class of insecticides chemically related to nicotine. Like nicotine, they act on receptors in the nerves and are generally much more toxic to insects, than they are to mammals and other higher organisms. Their use has increased rapidly over the last decade, driven in large part by their use for seed coating. Seed coating is when a seed is treated with an insecticide prior...
Land Treatment Digital Library
The LTDL was created by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to catalog information about land treatments on Federal lands in the western United States for all interested parties. The flexible framework of the library allows for the storage of a wide variety of data in different formats. The LTDL currently stores previously established land treatments or what often are called legacy data. The project...
USGS Land Treatment Digital Library Data Release: A centralized archive for land treatment tabular and spatial data (ver. 7.0, September 2024) USGS Land Treatment Digital Library Data Release: A centralized archive for land treatment tabular and spatial data (ver. 7.0, September 2024)
Across the country, public land managers make hundreds of decisions each year that influence landscapes and ecosystems within the lands they manage. Many of these decisions involve vegetation manipulations known as land treatments. Land treatments include activities such as removal or alteration of plant biomass, seeding burned areas, and herbicide applications. Data on these land...
Costs of land treatments on public lands in the western United States Costs of land treatments on public lands in the western United States
Public land managers often conduct rehabilitation and restoration actions to achieve desired conditions or specific natural resource objectives. These “land treatments” include a variety of techniques, such as biomass removal or manipulation, seeding, and herbicide application. Limited information exists on the costs of conducting many common types of land treatments, but such...
Authors
James R. Meldrum, Christopher Huber, Adrian P. Monroe, Bryan C. Tarbox, Michelle I. Jeffries, David S. Pilliod, Cameron L. Aldridge
Leveraging extensive soil, vegetation, fire, and land treatment data to inform restoration across the sagebrush biome Leveraging extensive soil, vegetation, fire, and land treatment data to inform restoration across the sagebrush biome
Context Widespread ecological degradation has prompted calls for massive global investments in ecological restoration, yet limited resources necessitate efficient application of restoration efforts. In western North America, altered fire regimes are increasing the scale of restoration needed to preserve the sagebrush (Artemisia species) biome but prioritizing and implementing effective...
Authors
Bryan C. Tarbox, Adrian P. Monroe, Michelle I. Jeffries, Justin L. Welty, Michael S. O’Donnell, Robert Arkle, David S. Pilliod, Peter S. Coates, Julie A. Heinrichs, Daniel Manier, Cameron L. Aldridge
Evaluating natural experiments in ecology: Using synthetic controls in assessments of remotely sensed land treatments Evaluating natural experiments in ecology: Using synthetic controls in assessments of remotely sensed land treatments
Many important ecological phenomena occur on large spatial scales and/or are unplanned and thus do not easily fit within analytical frameworks that rely on randomization, replication, and interspersed a priori controls for statistical comparison. Analyses of such large‐scale, natural experiments are common in the health and econometrics literature, where techniques have been developed to...
Authors
Stephen E. Fick, Travis W. Nauman, Colby C. Brungard, Michael C. Duniway
Land treatment exploration tool Land treatment exploration tool
Overview Land managers make decisions regarding restoration and rehabilitation actions that influence landscapes and ecosystems. Many of these decisions involve soil and vegetation manipulations, often known as land treatments. Historically, treatments were planned on a case by case basis with decisions derived from personal experience of past successes or failures. Current adaptive...
Authors
David S. Pilliod, Justin L. Welty, Michelle I. Jeffries, Linda S. Schueck, Thomas J. Zarriello
Long-term trends in restoration and associated land treatments in the southwestern United States Long-term trends in restoration and associated land treatments in the southwestern United States
Restoration treatments, such as revegetation with seeding or invasive species removal, have been applied on U.S. public lands for decades. Temporal trends in these management actions have not been extensively summarized previously, particularly in the southwestern United States where invasive plant species, drought, and fire have altered dryland ecosystems. We assessed long-term (1940...
Authors
Stella M. Copeland, Seth M. Munson, David S. Pilliod, Justin L. Welty, John B. Bradford, Bradley J. Butterfield
Land Treatment Digital Library Land Treatment Digital Library
The Land Treatment Digital Library (LTDL) was created by the U.S. Geological Survey to catalog legacy land treatment information on Bureau of Land Management lands in the western United States. The LTDL can be used by federal managers and scientists for compiling information for data-calls, producing maps, generating reports, and conducting analyses at varying spatial and temporal scales...
Authors
David S. Pilliod, Justin L. Welty
Data entry module and manuals for the Land Treatment Digital Library Data entry module and manuals for the Land Treatment Digital Library
Across the country, public land managers make decisions each year that influence landscapes and ecosystems within their jurisdictions. Many of these decisions involve vegetation manipulations, which often are referred to as land treatments. These treatments include removal or alteration of plant biomass, seeding of burned areas, application of herbicides, and other activities. Data...
Authors
Justin L. Welty, David S. Pilliod
Post-fire land treatments and wind erosion -- lessons from the Milford Flat Fire, UT, USA Post-fire land treatments and wind erosion -- lessons from the Milford Flat Fire, UT, USA
We monitored sediment flux at 25 plots located at the northern end of the 2007 Milford Flat Fire (Lake Bonneville Basin, west-central Utah) to examine the effectiveness of post-fire rehabilitation treatments in mitigating risks of wind erosion during the first 3 years post fire. Maximum values were recorded during Mar–Jul 2009 when horizontal sediment fluxes measured with BSNE samplers...
Authors
Mark E. Miller, Matthew A. Bowker, Richard L. Reynolds, Harland L. Goldstein
Land Treatment Digital Library Land Treatment Digital Library
A dynamic system to enter, store, retrieve, and analyze Federal land-treatment data. More information and access to data available at: http://greatbasin.wr.usgs.gov/ltdl Across the country, public land managers make hundreds of decisions each year that influence landscapes and ecosystems within the lands they manage. Many of these decisions involve vegetation manipulations known as land...
Authors
David S. Pilliod
Effects of vegetation management in constructed wetland treatment cells on water quality and mosquito production Effects of vegetation management in constructed wetland treatment cells on water quality and mosquito production
The impact of three vegetation management strategies on wetland treatment function and mosquito production was assessed in eight free water surface wetland test cells in southern California during 1998–1999. The effectiveness of the strategies to limit bulrush Schoenoplectus californicus culm density within the cells was also investigated. Removing accumulated emergent biomass and...
Authors
Joan S. Thullen, James J. Sartoris, W. E. Walton
Land Treatment Exploration Tool Land Treatment Exploration Tool
The Land Treatment Exploration Tool is designed for resource managers to use when planning land treatments. The tool provides useful summaries of environmental characteristics of planned treatment areas and facilitates adaptive management practices by comparing those characteristics to other similar treatments within a specified distance or area of interest. Provisional Software.
Related
Land Treatment Exploration Tool
The Land Treatment Exploration Tool provides a practical resource for managers who are planning restoration and rehabilitation actions on public lands. The tool generates a variety of spatial products while being user friendly for all levels of GIS expertise, even to those with little or no experience.
Economic Implications of Sagebrush Treatment and Restoration Practices Across the Great Basin and Wyoming
USGS and Colorado State University researchers are conducting analyses and predictions of sagebrush recovery in the Great Basin and Wyoming and assess the role of weather, soils, and reseeding treatments.
Assessing vegetation and avian community response to juniper reduction treatments in Southwest Montana
The Southwest Montana Sagebrush Partnership (SMSP) team, including land managers, landowners, and scientists, is implementing conifer removal projects encompassing over 55,000 acres of private, state, and federal lands throughout the region. To date, little place-based information exists regarding likely vegetation and bird responses to such treatments in Southwestern Montana. To address this...
Climate-Smart Vegetation Treatments - Using 15 Years of SageSTEP Data to Inform Management of Resilient Ecosystems
Land managers require clear, forward-looking information about where and how vegetation treatments may make the greatest difference for drought resilience in sagebrush and woodland ecosystems. We are using soil moisture and vegetation data from SageSTEP-- a long-term ecological study on fuel treatments in the Great Basin-- to analyze soil moisture dynamics and vegetation responses after common...
SageSTEP – Sagebrush Steppe Treatment Evaluation Project
The Sagebrush Steppe Treatment Evaluation Project--or SageSTEP-- is a regional experiment taking place across six states in the Great Basin. A multidisciplinary team of scientists are evaluating methods of sagebrush steppe restoration to inform land managers working to protect one of the most threatened land types in North America. SageSTEP is the longest running and largest replicated ecological...
Assessing invasive annual grass treatment efficacy across the sagebrush biome
We are using existing datasets that span broad spatial and temporal extents to model the efficacy of invasive annual grass treatments across the sagebrush biome and the influence of environmental factors on their success. The models we develop will be used to generate maps of predicted treatment efficacy across the biome, which will be integrated into the Land Treatment Exploration Tool for land...
Systematic Review and Analysis of Seeding and Herbicide Treatment in the Sagebrush Steppe
Seeding and herbicide treatments are a key aspect of the strategy used to break the annual grass-fire cycle in sagebrush steppe. However, past studies report considerable variability in the effectiveness of seeding and herbicide treatments. To generate a more consistent interpretation of post-fire herbicide and seeding effects, we are compiling, reviewing, and synthesizing findings from past...
Informing Forest Treatment Placement to Mitigate High-Severity Wildfire Risk
Large, hot, fast-moving wildfires are an increasing threat to communities and to the watersheds they rely upon. Forest managers work to reduce the risk from these fires using forest thinning and prescribed burning to reduce the amount of fuel in the forest. However, these activities are expensive, and it can be challenging to identify which acres of forest should be targeted with...
Developing a Decision Support Framework for Prioritizing Pinyon Juniper Forest Treatments on the Colorado Plateau
Across the western U.S., pinyon and juniper trees are expanding into sagebrush and grassland plant communities. This vegetation change has been perceived to have a significant impact on the economic value of these grasslands, which support activities such as livestock grazing and hunting, but expanding pinyon and juniper forests may also lead to increased risk of fire. Over the past...
Neonicotinoid Seed Treatment Study
Neonicotinoids are a new class of insecticides chemically related to nicotine. Like nicotine, they act on receptors in the nerves and are generally much more toxic to insects, than they are to mammals and other higher organisms. Their use has increased rapidly over the last decade, driven in large part by their use for seed coating. Seed coating is when a seed is treated with an insecticide prior...
Land Treatment Digital Library
The LTDL was created by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to catalog information about land treatments on Federal lands in the western United States for all interested parties. The flexible framework of the library allows for the storage of a wide variety of data in different formats. The LTDL currently stores previously established land treatments or what often are called legacy data. The project...
USGS Land Treatment Digital Library Data Release: A centralized archive for land treatment tabular and spatial data (ver. 7.0, September 2024) USGS Land Treatment Digital Library Data Release: A centralized archive for land treatment tabular and spatial data (ver. 7.0, September 2024)
Across the country, public land managers make hundreds of decisions each year that influence landscapes and ecosystems within the lands they manage. Many of these decisions involve vegetation manipulations known as land treatments. Land treatments include activities such as removal or alteration of plant biomass, seeding burned areas, and herbicide applications. Data on these land...
Costs of land treatments on public lands in the western United States Costs of land treatments on public lands in the western United States
Public land managers often conduct rehabilitation and restoration actions to achieve desired conditions or specific natural resource objectives. These “land treatments” include a variety of techniques, such as biomass removal or manipulation, seeding, and herbicide application. Limited information exists on the costs of conducting many common types of land treatments, but such...
Authors
James R. Meldrum, Christopher Huber, Adrian P. Monroe, Bryan C. Tarbox, Michelle I. Jeffries, David S. Pilliod, Cameron L. Aldridge
Leveraging extensive soil, vegetation, fire, and land treatment data to inform restoration across the sagebrush biome Leveraging extensive soil, vegetation, fire, and land treatment data to inform restoration across the sagebrush biome
Context Widespread ecological degradation has prompted calls for massive global investments in ecological restoration, yet limited resources necessitate efficient application of restoration efforts. In western North America, altered fire regimes are increasing the scale of restoration needed to preserve the sagebrush (Artemisia species) biome but prioritizing and implementing effective...
Authors
Bryan C. Tarbox, Adrian P. Monroe, Michelle I. Jeffries, Justin L. Welty, Michael S. O’Donnell, Robert Arkle, David S. Pilliod, Peter S. Coates, Julie A. Heinrichs, Daniel Manier, Cameron L. Aldridge
Evaluating natural experiments in ecology: Using synthetic controls in assessments of remotely sensed land treatments Evaluating natural experiments in ecology: Using synthetic controls in assessments of remotely sensed land treatments
Many important ecological phenomena occur on large spatial scales and/or are unplanned and thus do not easily fit within analytical frameworks that rely on randomization, replication, and interspersed a priori controls for statistical comparison. Analyses of such large‐scale, natural experiments are common in the health and econometrics literature, where techniques have been developed to...
Authors
Stephen E. Fick, Travis W. Nauman, Colby C. Brungard, Michael C. Duniway
Land treatment exploration tool Land treatment exploration tool
Overview Land managers make decisions regarding restoration and rehabilitation actions that influence landscapes and ecosystems. Many of these decisions involve soil and vegetation manipulations, often known as land treatments. Historically, treatments were planned on a case by case basis with decisions derived from personal experience of past successes or failures. Current adaptive...
Authors
David S. Pilliod, Justin L. Welty, Michelle I. Jeffries, Linda S. Schueck, Thomas J. Zarriello
Long-term trends in restoration and associated land treatments in the southwestern United States Long-term trends in restoration and associated land treatments in the southwestern United States
Restoration treatments, such as revegetation with seeding or invasive species removal, have been applied on U.S. public lands for decades. Temporal trends in these management actions have not been extensively summarized previously, particularly in the southwestern United States where invasive plant species, drought, and fire have altered dryland ecosystems. We assessed long-term (1940...
Authors
Stella M. Copeland, Seth M. Munson, David S. Pilliod, Justin L. Welty, John B. Bradford, Bradley J. Butterfield
Land Treatment Digital Library Land Treatment Digital Library
The Land Treatment Digital Library (LTDL) was created by the U.S. Geological Survey to catalog legacy land treatment information on Bureau of Land Management lands in the western United States. The LTDL can be used by federal managers and scientists for compiling information for data-calls, producing maps, generating reports, and conducting analyses at varying spatial and temporal scales...
Authors
David S. Pilliod, Justin L. Welty
Data entry module and manuals for the Land Treatment Digital Library Data entry module and manuals for the Land Treatment Digital Library
Across the country, public land managers make decisions each year that influence landscapes and ecosystems within their jurisdictions. Many of these decisions involve vegetation manipulations, which often are referred to as land treatments. These treatments include removal or alteration of plant biomass, seeding of burned areas, application of herbicides, and other activities. Data...
Authors
Justin L. Welty, David S. Pilliod
Post-fire land treatments and wind erosion -- lessons from the Milford Flat Fire, UT, USA Post-fire land treatments and wind erosion -- lessons from the Milford Flat Fire, UT, USA
We monitored sediment flux at 25 plots located at the northern end of the 2007 Milford Flat Fire (Lake Bonneville Basin, west-central Utah) to examine the effectiveness of post-fire rehabilitation treatments in mitigating risks of wind erosion during the first 3 years post fire. Maximum values were recorded during Mar–Jul 2009 when horizontal sediment fluxes measured with BSNE samplers...
Authors
Mark E. Miller, Matthew A. Bowker, Richard L. Reynolds, Harland L. Goldstein
Land Treatment Digital Library Land Treatment Digital Library
A dynamic system to enter, store, retrieve, and analyze Federal land-treatment data. More information and access to data available at: http://greatbasin.wr.usgs.gov/ltdl Across the country, public land managers make hundreds of decisions each year that influence landscapes and ecosystems within the lands they manage. Many of these decisions involve vegetation manipulations known as land...
Authors
David S. Pilliod
Effects of vegetation management in constructed wetland treatment cells on water quality and mosquito production Effects of vegetation management in constructed wetland treatment cells on water quality and mosquito production
The impact of three vegetation management strategies on wetland treatment function and mosquito production was assessed in eight free water surface wetland test cells in southern California during 1998–1999. The effectiveness of the strategies to limit bulrush Schoenoplectus californicus culm density within the cells was also investigated. Removing accumulated emergent biomass and...
Authors
Joan S. Thullen, James J. Sartoris, W. E. Walton
Land Treatment Exploration Tool Land Treatment Exploration Tool
The Land Treatment Exploration Tool is designed for resource managers to use when planning land treatments. The tool provides useful summaries of environmental characteristics of planned treatment areas and facilitates adaptive management practices by comparing those characteristics to other similar treatments within a specified distance or area of interest. Provisional Software.