Location: Range Management Research
Project Number: 3050-21600-001-122-I
Project Type: Interagency Reimbursable Agreement
Start Date: Aug 5, 2025
End Date: Sep 30, 2030
Objective:
Develop a tool that enables US ranchers and land managers to assess the resilience and threats to rangeland production systems.
Approach:
Approach:
1. Establish concepts and theory underpinning assessment of rangeland resilience and threats that influence the ecological vulnerability of rangelands and impact production using standardized monitoring datasets and wind and water erosion models;
2. Identify key indicators of rangeland resilience and threats that influence ecological vulnerability and production;
3. Develop spatial estimates of ecological state concepts and their change, indicating rangeland resilience, using standard monitoring data and remote sensing, including production estimates;
4. Develop spatial estimates of potential wind erosion using standard monitoring data, remote sensing, and the AERO model;
5. Develop spatial estimates of potential water erosion using standard monitoring data, remote sensing, and RHEM;
6. Develop underpinning science and spatial estimates of the impacts of soil erosion on soil health;
7. Develop spatial (weighted) estimates of indicators of and threats to biotic integrity (including biodiversity, native species, risk of invasion, pollinator habitat);
8. Establish a workflow for integrating the indicator datasets to assess the resilience, threats, and their potential impacts on the ecological vulnerability of rangelands;
9. Develop data layers for conservation planning and a web tool that enables visualization and overlay to assess possible interactions between indicators.