Overview: What will this module do for me?

As a rancher or land manager you are regularly involved in monitoring rangeland. You know it is critical to assess the effects of your management decisions on the rangeland resource and to somehow track changes that can occur. You know that management objectives, which direct management decisions, must reconcile the economic and environmental goals of landowners, interest groups and other citizens, and the requirements of state and federal laws. In other words, you need to bring the concerns of many parties together when making decisions regarding your ranch, and this is not always easy to do.

Your objectives also must balance short-term demands with long-term options for future management. Your decisions on how to meet these objectives need to be based on sound scientific principles and experience. To make these management decisions, you require relevant and reliable information about the condition of your rangeland resource. This module will guide you in how to collect and analyze this necessary information.

How to use this module

Foundation Information:  Submodules 1-3 will provide you with additional information to build on what you already know about your business, your land, and your rangeland resources. 

1. Laying the Groundwork for Rangeland Monitoring: Describes monitoring and what it can do for you.  Provides you with suggestions on useful information to gather and links for accessing maps of your area.
2. Basic Rangeland Ecology: Builds on your understanding of how rangelands function, their complex role in nature, and how they are used by humans
3. Plant Classification: Gives you tools for learning more about this most vital rangeland resource.  You will be provided with photographs of important rangeland plants and identifying characteristics. 

Specific Information for your rangeland:  Submodules 4-7 draw on information learned in the first three submodules and applies this knowledge to possible improvements for your land and its productivity. 

4. Why Monitor? Helps you determine how monitoring can facilitate reaching your goals.  Provides a list of questions commonly asked before undertaking a monitoring program.  
5. Setting Realistic Objectives and Goals: Helps focus your vision for your ranch and business to maximize your efforts.  Provides examples about setting goals and objectives for your ranch.
6. Where to Monitor: Gives you suggestions and guidelines on where to concentrate your efforts to make the most of your monitoring program.  Includes an explanation of key, critical, and comparison areas and the relevance of each based on your goals. 
7. When and How Often to Monitor: Gives you tools to learn more about how to get the greatest quantity and quality of information in the least amount of time.

How to monitor:  Submodules 8 and 9 show you how to actually collect data once you have determined “what, when and where” to monitor for your ranch. 

8. Getting Started: Photography and Precipitation: Provides practical information on how to perform the most basic yet important monitoring techniques including marking your locations, setting up precipitation monitoring, and taking photographs - the fundamental component of range monitoring. 
9. Collecting Monitoring Data: Gives you tools to learn how to apply your knowledge to collect detailed data on the following attributes: Frequency, Cover, Density, Production, and Composition. Included are downloadable forms for recording and organizing data, slides shows and video clips demonstrating techniques, and instructions for making simple equipment.

Additional information for all of the material presented in this learning module can be obtained by contacting local Cooperative Extension agents and other local land management officials. 

Levels of Monitoring to Fit Your Needs

Since ranchers and land managers have different needs and availability of resources (such as time, personnel, and money), this module divides the intensity of range monitoring into three levels: minimal, recommended, and comprehensive. Each of these levels builds on the information collected from the previous level.

Minimal

Minimal monitoring contains the essentials of monitoring. By collecting photographs and information on a few selected attributes yearly (or even every other year), you will have adequate information to make an assessment of the direction of your ranch resource.

Recommended

The recommended level of monitoring includes data collection for more rangeland attributes and is conducted on a yearly basis, or even more than once during the growing season.

Comprehensive

Comprehensive monitoring includes in-depth study of the condition of your rangeland resources. Most attributes that are reliable indicators of land condition are measured several times each year depending on growing season and grazing season.