Annual and 16-Day Rangeland Production Estimates for the Western United States

Abstract

Rangeland production is a foundational ecosystem service and resource on which livestock, wildlife, and people depend. Capitalizing on recent advancements in the use of remote sensing data across rangelands, we provide estimates of herbaceous rangeland production from 1986 to 2019 at 16-d and annual time steps and 30-m resolution across the western United States. A factorial comparison of this dataset and three national scale datasets is presented, and we highlight a multiple-lines-of-evidence approach when using production estimates in decision making. Herbaceous aboveground biomass at this scale and resolution provides critical information applicable for management and decision making, particularly in the face of annual grass invasion and woody encroachment of rangeland systems. These readily available data remove analytical and technological barriers allowing immediate utilization for monitoring and management.