Project Overview
Information Products
Commodities
Practices
- Animal Production: grazing management, rangeland/pasture management
- Education and Training: demonstration, workshop
- Natural Resources/Environment: indicators
Proposal abstract:
Livestock grazing is an important land use throughout the western US, and ranchers need to
make management decisions quickly in response to current conditions. The University of Idaho’s
Rangeland Center has identified land use policies limiting ranchers’ flexibility to account for
annual variations in forage, water, disturbance, and market conditions as a challenge to
sustainably managing Idaho’s rangelands. This has led to an effort by the Center to develop an
“outcome-based management” paradigm that would give ranchers more flexibility to make
management decisions regarding grazing on private and leased public lands. However, the
success of such adaptive management will hinge on quickly and accurately assessing condition
of rangelands and coordinating monitoring activities between ranchers and public land managers.
Outcome-based management will require a new paradigm for monitoring rangelands that adds
easy-to-implement quantitative methods to existing monitoring, leverages the ability to combine
monitoring data from different sources, and emphasizes cooperative monitoring between
ranchers and public agencies. Achieving this in Idaho will require developing significant training
and support materials for ranchers and rangeland professionals. This project’s objectives are: 1)
refactor existing training materials for three monitoring techniques (photo monitoring, LandPKS,
BLM quantitative monitoring) into consistent, modular formats (online and print) emphasizing
understanding and interpreting monitoring indicators and method implementation; 2)
demonstrate the compatibility of the rapid LandPKS method with quantitative methods used by
BLM, and illustrate how all three methods can be used together for monitoring grazing effects in
outcome-based management; 3) develop training modules for using the three methods together
for management decision making; and 4) host workshops for ranchers and rangeland
professionals on the suite of monitoring tools and how they can be used together. The project
goal is to increase ranchers’ awareness and use of compatible rangeland monitoring programs in
Idaho and increase the success of outcome-based rangeland management.
Project objectives from proposal:
The goal of this project is to provide training on and demonstration of rangeland monitoring
methods that can be used in outcome-based management in Idaho. This project focuses on
developing consistent training materials in three monitoring techniques (photo monitoring,
LandPKS, BLM quantitative monitoring) and illustrating how those techniques can be used
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together by ranchers and public land managers to support sustainable grazing. Specific project
objectives and timelines are:
• Refactor existing training materials for photo points, LandPKS, and BLM quantitative
monitoring into consistent, modular formats (online and in print) with a tiered structure
that emphasizes: 1) understanding the indicators and how to interpret the data, 2)
understanding how the techniques work, and 3) learning how to implement the
techniques. Timeline: June 2018 – December 2018.
• Demonstrate the compatibility of the LandPKS methods with a set of quantitative
methods used by BLM, and illustrate how data from all three methods (photo monitoring,
LandPKS, and quantitative indicators) can be used together for monitoring grazing
effects for outcome-based management. Timeline: December 2018-May 2020.
• Develop training modules for how to use the three different sources of monitoring data
together for management decision making. Timeline: December 2018-May 2020.
• Develop and host workshops (two per year in 2019 and 2020) for NRCS Specialists and
Extension Educators, ranchers, and agency land managers on the suite of monitoring
tools and how they can be used together. Timeline: May 2019-May 2020.