CART’s Grassland Community of Practice

Introduction

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Semi-arid grasslands cover millions of acres of federal, state, and private land in the southwestern USA and northern Mexico. They provide critical habitat for wildlife, support livelihoods and ecosystem services for people, and comprise an iconic part of Southwestern landscapes. 

Semi-arid grasslands in the southwestern United States face many landscape-scale challenges including degradation from unsustainable land use, fragmentation and loss to development and agricultural conversion, spread of woody plants and non-native species, and an increasingly arid and unpredictable climate. The management of southwestern grasslands is often done in a piecemeal fashion by a host of different stakeholders who focus primarily on lands under their jurisdiction. This impedes the management of grasslands as ecosystems that extend beyond the jurisdictions of any one agency, organization, or individual. This fragmentation makes it difficult for grassland managers who may be facing similar challenges, to learn from each other, and collaborate to address the threats affecting grassland ecosystems at large scales.

In November 2019, the Conservation and Adaptation Resources Toolbox (CART) hosted a day-long workshop focused on Grassland Restoration and Management in the Southwest. This workshop concentrated on increasing understanding of the primary threats to grassland ecosystems and identifying the support that grassland managers need to address them effectively. 

One of the results of this day-long workshop was the launch of CART’s Grassland Community of Practice in March 2021 to support continued peer-to-peer knowledge sharing around priority grassland topics. Focused on semi-arid grasslands, the Grassland Community of Practice used case studies and webinars about grassland restoration and conservation to bring together managers from across the Southwest to learn from each other and improve management outcomes. Building on these knowledge sharing opportunities, the Community of Practice co-developed decision-support tools and identified opportunities for collaborative action to address pressing grassland issues. 

Key Issues Addressed

The fragmented nature of grasslands and grassland management was reflected in the limited number of forums that existed for knowledge sharing among the community of restoration and conservation practitioners, land managers, and researchers working in semi-arid grasslands. There was a need to document “who was doing what, where”, and to help land managers across the Southwest facing similar challenges share lessons learned with their peers about what was working and what wasn’t. Managers often do not have the time required to document and share the results of their management projects, and scientists doing applied research do not always have the support needed for science communication to share the results of their research to the wider public and land managers.

Although there is a wealth of information about grassland management, it is often focused on more mesic grasslands than those of the southwestern United States. Additionally, the time and capacity required to sort through relevant grassland information and determine its applicability to any given project can be burdensome. There is a need to help managers access relevant information and resources to overcome barriers to the effective conservation and management of southwestern grasslands. 

Grassland restoration practitioners, land managers, and researchers identified the need to increase opportunities for collaboration on large-scale and cross-boundary projects. It can be challenging for individual managers or agencies to identify opportunities for collaboration, and sustain the coordination needed to follow through on these opportunities.

Project Goals

• Increase knowledge sharing by:
  • Developing case studies focused on priority topics identified by Grassland Community of Practice participants that document critical information and lessons learned from grasslands projects and research.
  • Facilitating webinars, panel discussions, and recurring meetings to create a forum for participants to learn from one another.
  • Hosting field visits to compare similar grasslands restoration treatments in different areas, and evaluate long-term effectiveness of treatments and combinations of treatments.
  • Facilitating a workshop on woody plant encroachment.
• Develop decision-support tools that synthesize relevant research around key information gaps, uncertainties, and barriers and make this information easily accessible.
• Support Grassland Community of Practice participants in taking collaborative action by co-developing project proposals.

Project Highlights

• Case Studies Share Knowledge & Resources to Improve Implementation: CART worked with undergraduate and graduate students from universities across the United States to produce 55 case studies focused on priority issues for grassland managers. Teaching, mentoring, and providing professional development opportunities for students working on case studies is an integral part of the CART program. The topics of grassland focused case studies include: erosion control and hydrology; management for pollinators, birds, and grassland-dependent species; management of woody species and non-native grasses; using fire as a management tool; grazing management, range improvements, and more.
• Engagement Through Webinars and Panel Discussions: CART hosted 15 webinars in support of the Grassland Community of Practice. Depending on the topical focus, these webinars drew between 40 and 120 participants during live sessions and recordings received approximately three thousand views between September 2021 and January 2025.
• In-Person Workshops and Field Days Promote Cross-Watershed Learning and Collaboration: Over 90 participants from dozens of organizations across southeastern Arizona participated in a three-part workshop series focused on soil health and mesquite management. These day-long field visits featured presentations from leading researchers and experienced land managers on topics ranging from wildlife habitat improvements, to the implications of soil nutrient and texture distributions, and specific techniques and combinations of techniques to manage mesquite in grasslands.
• Decision-Support Tools Increase Access to Tools and Synthesize Relevant Resources: CART produced a searchable database of grassland related decision-support tools and a storymap toolkit about management of semi-arid grasslands. The database was created in partnership with Rangelands Gateway and contains over 70 decision-support tools. The storymap toolkit synthesizes information from the 55 grassland related case studies and 15 webinars CART has produced, as well as relevant research and resources from other sources.
• Collaborative Development of Project Proposals: CART staff engaged partners from across the Colorado Plateau to develop a project proposal to address the gap between planning and implementation of projects in the Pinyon-juniper/grassland ecotone. This collaborative proposal received nine letters of support and included over 17 partners from 14 different entities across four southwestern states.

Lessons Learned

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Case studies were a foundational aspect of CART’s Grassland Community of Practice. They helped increase participation in the Community of Practice as many individuals who worked with CART to develop a case study, read case studies, or participated in webinars and panel discussions about case studies subsequently joined the Community of Practice. Participants guided the topical focus of case studies, suggested specific projects and contacts for case study development, and helped review and edit content. 

Case studies also helped catalyze conversations about important grassland topics. During webinars and panel discussions, case study contributors shared their stories and discussed results and implications with other Community of Practice participants. These conversations often resulted in new partnerships, greater awareness of participant’s work, pressing research gaps, sharing of valuable tools and resources, and more. For example, the collaborative proposal for a workshop on management of pinyon-juniper/grassland ecotones was the direct result of a panel discussion on pinyon-juniper encroachment in grasslands. 

Furthermore, CART case studies served as the foundation for tools and toolkits. CART’s Grassland Toolkit synthesizes trends and challenges facing grassland ecosystems and presents case study examples of management actions taken to address them. Additionally, CART staff used content from published case studies to compile decision support tools that are actively used by grassland managers into a searchable database of grassland decision-support tools. Explicitly connecting case studies and decision support tools in the database provides users with the opportunity to see examples of how decision support tools are used to inform decision making. There is an opportunity to continue developing this database by showcasing additional example use cases for specific datasets, models, and other information.

CART staff used webinars and panel discussions as an opportunity to continue discussion on topics that were identified as high priority to participants of the Grassland Community of Practice. Hosting regular webinars on a wide variety of topics helped maintain momentum and interest of participants from a wide geography with diverse interests. Hosting panels with several speakers helped reach large and diverse audiences by leveraging guest speaker networks. Tracking registration and participation allowed CART staff to assess which topics were of greatest interest to participants, promote future webinars to previous attendees, and expand participation in the Community of Practice. Recording webinars allowed increased viewership and producing post-webinar summaries facilitated sharing of resources and information from post-webinar discussion. The webinar summaries also captured key research needs, policy barriers, and opportunities for collaboration. 

Funding a dedicated coordinator to lead the Grassland Community of Practice was critically important. This enabled the coordinator to have many smaller meetings with individual participants from a wide variety of agencies and organizations to align their priorities, needs, and capacity. These meetings ensured that the products developed by the Community of Practice were in direct response to partners’ expressed needs, thereby encouraging greater participation in collaborative work. In other words, partners saw their needs being addressed through the Community of Practice, which in turn increased their support and active participation. A funded coordinator also ensured there was continuity and follow-through on the many projects and products the Community of Practice developed. 

Next Steps

• Maintain case studies, tools, and toolkits as active online resources for grassland conservation and restoration practitioners.

Funding Partners

• U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Science Applications, Region 2

Resources

• CART’s Grasslands Toolkit Storymap
• Rangelands Gateway Searchable Database of Grassland Decision Support Tools
• CART Grassland Case Studies
• CART’s Grassland Webinars

Contacts

• Karlee Jewell, Conservation and Adaptation Resources Toolbox, U.S.Fish and Wildlife Service: karlee_jewell@fws.gov
• Ariel Léger, Conservation and Adaptation Resources Toolbox, University of Arizona: arielleger@arizona.edu

CART Lead Author

• Ariel Léger, CART University Co-Director: arielleger@arizona.edu

Suggested Citation

Léger, A., M. (2025). “CART’s Grassland Community of Practice: Supporting Conservation and Restoration of Semi-Arid Grasslands.” CART. Retrieved from https://www.fws.gov/project/carts-grassland-community-practice.