Location: Rangeland Resources & Systems Research
Project Number: 3012-21500-001-004-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Sep 1, 2020
End Date: Dec 31, 2024
Objective:
Objective 1 - Provide land managers with information and decision tools (e.g., Grass-Cast) needed to estimate productivity and maintain environmental sustainability in rangelands.
Approach:
The Cooperator and ARS will collaborate in the refinement and continuous improvement in Grass-Cast for estimating aboveground productivity and maintaining environmental sustainability in rangelands, with an emphasis in the Great Plains. This decision tool can be used by ranchers and land managers for flexible stocking strategies to enhance decision-making for provision of beef production and economic vitality with climatic variability in rangelands/grasslands of the Great Plains. These efforts will utilize integration of current weather to date, seasonal projections of weather/climate, modeling, remote sensing, and biophysical relationships to produce high resolution (6 x 6 mile grids) maps of the predicted aboveground biomass every two weeks during the grazing season. Faculty and staff with the Cooperator will conduct model runs, update maps every two weeks from April through August, and incorporate suggested feedback from end users to make the decision tool more user friendly.
