Hi! My name is Retta Bruegger.
And I am the regional specialist for Range Management for Colorado State University Extension.
In this episode of Let's Talk! Extension, we're going to talk about range, and rangelands, and what they are.
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Why do I find rangelands exciting?
Well, lots of reasons.
They are one of the few agricultural systems that we have
that is a native plant ecosystem, that's very diverse.
It's very different from a cornfield,
 
or a wheat field, if you come out here
you're going to see a lot of diversity.
Just from where I'm sitting, I'm seeing
about 15 different species.
These plants can function with very little water.
They're very adapted to this type of land,
and they're very adapted to the fluctuations in climate that you're going to see year to year.
This one, happens to be one of my favorites,
its called Needle-and-thread grass,
this is a really great forage species for livestock
as well as wildlife species that inhabit the rangeland.
And it's pretty distinguishable right now,
you can see it has these very long, things that we call awns,
that's this part of the plant here that's sticking up looking a little bit like a needle,
on some othr grass species, it's much shorter.
So it's really a bounty crop this year for the needle-and-thread grass
and actually for a lot of the desert species here.
We've had above average precipitation for May and also for the spring.
So this grass is considerably higher than it might be in more of a drought year.
If you look look at the base of one of these grasses, they're really protecting a lot of soil
So even in years where there's not a lot of growth,
upwards from the plant because there's not a lot of rain,
They're still persisting on the landscape and they're holding that soil in place.
This species here is called Spiny  phlox,
now it might look a little rough, maybe not as intersting as some of the other,
brightly colored plants that are around here, and brightly colored flowers.
However, I think this plant is really interesting.
Earlier in the spring it did have some pretty lovely purple flowers on it.
But as you can see, when it doesn't have those flowers on it,
it's still preforming an important ecosystem function.
You can see that it's rooted to the ground, in many different places.
And one thing that does is it holds a lot of soil underneath the plant,
even though the plant is really small.
So in rangeland systems, even very small plants, plants that we may not notice,
that may not be that interesting to us,
they still are an important component of the overall health of that system.
this is just one example of the many plants that grow out here.
For more information, please check out the CSU Extension website.
Thanks for watching, and I'll see you next time on Let's Talk! Extension. [Music.]
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