The U.S. Geological Survey launched an updated version of the Land Treatment Exploration Tool (LTET) to improve user experience and provide new features for exploring monitoring and vegetation cover data. 

“Since version 1 of the LTET launched in 2020, it has become an essential tool for facilitating adaptive management of land treatments, putting a wealth of information at the fingertips of land managers,” says Michelle Jeffries, USGS ecologist and LTET project coordinator. “Version 2 is another step towards incorporating all data that has been collected on land treatments, vegetation cover, weather, and fire history into the land treatment planning process.” 

Four key updates in version 2 include: 

1. ADA-compliant improvements throughout the tool make it more inclusive and accessible for all users. 

2. A new Monitoring tab that displays data collected by the Bureau of Land Management Assessment, Inventory, and Monitoring program. Users can search for monitoring data within a specified distance from the proposed treatment area. Relevant monitoring data can be added to the printable PDF report generated by the tool.  

3. An interactive time-series vegetation cover figure; users can select vegetation cover categories from the USGS Rangeland Condition Monitoring Assessment and Projection (RCMAP) dataset to visualize changes over time. This figure also includes time-series plots of precipitation, wildfire, and land treatments. 

4. Updated report generation function opens the print to PDF window nearly instantly, improving efficiency. 

The video below walks viewers through these new features: 

The U.S. Geological Survey partnered with the Bureau of Land Management to create version 1 of the LTET to facilitate adaptive management of land treatments. The Exploration Tool taps into a wealth of information about past treatments in the Land Treatment Digital Library, a catalog of information about all known treatments on public lands administered by the BLM in the Western United States. 

 The LTET is primarily used by the BLM for post-fire recovery and emergency rehabilitation and stabilization (ESR) planning. Neil Frakes, Natural Resource Specialist/Monitoring Coordinator for the Bureau of Land Management, Ely District Fuels Program, commented on the value of these USGS developed tools: “The LTDL and LTET are powerful tools that help us archive and easily access information about legacy treatments, and help us better design new treatments based on the results of past treatments. This is a huge benefit to achieving our agency’s mission.”