Recipient Organization
WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY
240 FRENCH ADMINISTRATION BLDG
PULLMAN,WA 99164-0001
Performing Department
CAHNRS
Non Technical Summary
The project team will create a spatially-explicit, web-based decision support tool to inform landowners' and managers' sustainable grazing management decisions; the tool will combine remotely-sensed rangeland production data with user-defined, place-based knowledge, and the team will engage land managers in tool development so that the tool meets their management-relevant needs and can be used to help conserve healthy rangelands and the ecosystem services they provide. Rangelands across the western United States support the provision of ecosystem services and are a key renewable resource supporting livelihoods of ranchers and the associated livestock industry. Rangeland-based livestock production maintains naturally-occurring plant communities, providing ecosystem services alongside food and fiber production. Grazing management decisions that determine when, where, and how much of the rangeland vegetation's annual aboveground net primary productivity (ANPP) is consumed by livestock are key determinants of rangeland health and the future sustainability of livestock production. However, particularly in western U.S. rangelands, ANPP is highly variable across the landscape, from year to year, and within a growing season. Landowners must therefore understand the extent of this variability and make grazing management decisions that account for these dynamics. In addition, climate change is increasing variability in ANPP, making it imperative to fully understand the patterns and trends in forage availability when making grazing management decisions.Many in the range management profession consider the relationship between land area and number of grazing animals--the stocking rate--to be a primary factor that can be controlled to achieve both rangeland health and ranch economic goals. Many factors also determine the effects of grazing on a plant community, and other metrics are also important in deciding when, where, and how to graze. Nevertheless, stocking rate remains a significant decision, and estimates of forage availability and its spatial and temporal variability underlie stocking rate decisions. Yet managers' access to data on available forage and its spatial and temporal variability is limited. Field estimates based on clipping vegetation are prone to error and bias, and large enough samples to capture variations in space and time are almost impossible to obtain. And though remote sensing data on ANPP exist, obtaining, interpreting, and using data specific to the lands one manages is not straightforward. Such limitations lead to challenges in landowners' and managers' efforts to accurately estimate grazing capacity on rangelands under their control, to track and monitor changes in the vegetation under a particular set of management decisions, and to prepare for and adjust their management as forage availability changes with climate change. We propose to achieve this goal through three objectives: 1) Develop a spatially-explicit, web-based decision support tool (DST) that imports multiple sources of rangeland forage production data for an area of interest, allows the user to define key factors that determine rangeland accessibility, and produces maps of stocking rate and other synthetic metrics showing variation through the growing season and from year-to-year. 2) Convene an advisory group of rangeland owners and managers to provide actionable input and real-life pilot cases to test the tool on, ensuring that the DST provides relevant and actionable information needed for improved grazing management decisions. 3) Engage with Extension agents and specialists, public land managers, and other rangeland advisors through existing communication networks to build awareness, collect valuable feedback, and encourage early adopters to use the DST. The access to data characterizing variations in forage availability and other key factors will improve private landowners' and public land managers' ability to (a) enhance the sustainability of the nation's forests and rangelands, (b) provide ecosystem services and market goods, (c) improve ecological and operational resilience to climate change, and (d) support rural livelihoods.
Animal Health Component
(N/A)
Research Effort Categories
Basic
(N/A)
Applied
(N/A)
Developmental
(N/A)
Goals / Objectives
The project team will create a spatially-explicit, web-based decision support tool (DST) to inform landowners' and managers' sustainable grazing management decisions; the tool will combine remotely-sensed rangeland production data with user-defined, place-based knowledge, and the team will engage land managers in tool development so that the tool meets their management-relevant needs and can be used to help conserve healthy rangelands and the ecosystem services they provide.This DST will (a) automatically importexisting ANPP and forage production data (e.g. RPMS, www.fuelcast.net) and data on vegetation cover (e.g. Rangeland Analysis Platform (b) allowthe user to overlay other datasets (e.g. slope, distance to streams) and input parameters specific to their operations (e.g. harvest coefficient, terrain use thresholds); and (c) calculate stocking rate and other key grazing management metrics across the area of interest defined by the user, at resolutions of a few 30-m, and producemaps of those metrics for further interpretation. The tool will allow the user to define parameters such as livestock use of slope, distance from water, and other factors that may limit rangeland accessibility by specific classes of livestock. The specific inputs, user-defined parameters, and products (metrics, time window, synthesis of results; Fig. 1) will be developed with input from the advisory group (see Objective 2). The tool will be hosted by the University of Arizona, which already provides such services to the Rangelands Partnership (https://rangelandsgateway.org). Previous experience with decision support tools has indicated that tools are deemed most usable and adopted by decision-makers when available at a single outlet that incorporates a significant number of tools and other resources, as the Rangelands Gateway does, so that users come to a single location a number of times across the year.We will convene an advisory group of rangeland owners and managers that will provide actionable input and real-life pilot cases to test the tool on. Our team has explored landowners' and managers' needs over decades of interactions with stakeholders and explicitly addressed these during a set of three Pacific Northwest focus groups held to gather feedback that informed this proposal. We will identify and convene an advisory group of diverse rangeland owners and managers who will provide early, actionable input for the design of the DST, will be a sounding board for design decisions throughout the process, will test the tool in real management contexts and lands, and will provide feedback on its usefulness. The advisory group will include members from at least three different states and will convene as a group annually via virtual meetings to provide guidance to the project team. The team will also meet individually with advisory group members at least 4 additional times. Team: Hall (lead), Yorgey, Hudson, Rahr, Reeves.Wewill engage with Extension agents and specialists, public land managers, and other rangeland advisors through existing communication networks to rapidly build awareness of the DST, collect valuable feedback, and encourage early adopters to use the DST. Outreach efforts build on team members' existing work and networks, including the Rangeland Partnership, the Western Extension Risk Management Center (one of five USDA NIFA Extension Risk Management Education Centers, that provide tools and training to support producers in establishing long-term risk management strategies that will strengthen the economic viability of their farm and ranch enterprises), and the U of I Rangeland Center (a network of researchers, Extension professionals, and rangelands partners from across Idaho). We will communicate progress on the DST through these networks and other existing communications venues (e.g. the Art of Range podcast, the AgClimate.net blog) to build awareness of the DST from the early stages of its design and development. We will target venues where rangeland professionals convene, such as Society for Rangeland Management and Association of Natural Resource Extension Professionals conferences, to share early versions of the DST.
Project Methods
This grant is focused on building a durable product that will be of great use to land mangers. Asmentioned previously, project stakeholders are the target initial users of the DST: public lands and tribal managers, private livestock producers, as well as the Extension professionals and other advisors who work with them. The conversations the team had with these stakeholders during 2020 focus groups revealed a widespread inability to incorporate variability in forage production over time into formal or informal grazing plans and demonstrated a strong interest in the currently proposed DST and its potential applications (Hall et al., 2020). We will engage deeply with a small but diverse advisory group who will provide direct input into the DST design, and help test the usability of the DST in real pilot case locations and management situations. We will also engage with a broader group of stakeholders via periodic updates and presentations, to gain additional, more general feedback.See Figure 2 of grant application for a logic model for the proposed work.As described above, the data, platform, and software to develop the proposed DST (Inputs; Fig. 2) exist. The challenge is to develop a DST that is useful, accessible, and meets the needs of ranchers and public lands managers so that it gets used and is impactful. We will bring together our team's technical expertise in tool development and knowledge of existing remotely-sensed data (Inputs; Fig. 2), our advisory group's knowledge of the needs and on-the-ground decision-making context, and the University of Arizona's user-centered design-thinking process (adapted from Nielsen Norman Group and the Hasson Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University) to develop a DST that is useable and useful for informing grazing management decisions (Output #1; Fig. 2). We will then leverage our team's participation in existing networks of Extension professionals and advisors and our connections with rangeland owners and public land managers to communicate progress, building awareness of the DST, collecting valuable feedback, and promoting early adoption (Output #2; Fig. 2).