Location: Range Management Research
Project Number: 3050-12610-001-047-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Jul 1, 2023
End Date: Jun 30, 2026
Objective:
a. Continued development and maintenance of the myRAINge Log (https://myraingelog.arizona.edu/) program.
b. Drought monitoring best practice for the Southwest U.S.
c. Agricultural Weather and Climate Extension Activities in Arizona.
d. Customized climate reporting for natural resource managers
knowledge and resilience in the Southwestern U.S. working lands.
Approach:
a. myRAINge Log (program: Over the past five years, the MRL program has continued to grow and evolve as an innovative tool to support land managers in collecting and utilizing precipitation data. Further development will continue to enhance features such as creating an application programming interface (API) to share data across other applications and an enhanced mapping interface that visualizes drought and climate information.
b. Drought monitoring best practice: This work will build off of a dissertation project by Dr. Trevor McKellar that identified optimal timescales and indices to track soil moisture drought. Research results will be translated into extension bulletins and other outreach materials to support drought monitoring for land managers.
c. Weather and Climate Extension Activities:
i. Development of online information products and tools for agricultural weather and climate, using data from the Arizona Meteorological Network (AZMet) and providing the products and tools through its soon-to-be-released new website.
ii. Organization and running of two 'Growing Season in Review' workshops for Arizona wine grape growers, one each in the north-central and southeastern growing regions, and taking place in late 2023 or early 2024
d. - Customized climate reporting for natural resource managers: Managers require timely and relevant weather and climate data to support ongoing decision making through rapidly changing conditions across the southwest U.S. An effort, initially supported by the USGS CASC and USDA USFS, to develop customized and automated climate reports that are directly emailed to managers started in 2022 on the Kaibab National Forest in Arizona. Managers have requested that reports be accompanied by a companion website that includes interactive maps and plots. Work will be done to produce a prototype, companion website to support the interpretation of Kaibab National Forest reports that can be replicated with other future reporting efforts at other management units.
