Grassification of Shrublands in the American West

Please join Interior’s Office of Policy Analysis on August 14 for their monthly speaker series.  Invasions by European and African grasses are driving ‘grassification’ of desert shrublands in the American West, generating ecological and socioeconomic risks that are barely understood and increasingly hard to manage. What decisions can be made, who makes them, and how can they be implemented across myriad jurisdictions and landscapes? As a federal scientist intimately familiar with western landscapes and stakeholders, Julio Betancourt will describe how we got here, what it means, and some possible paths ahead.

Julio L. Betancourt, Senior Scientist, U.S. Geological Survey, Reston