Rangeland Analysis Platform

[Linda Poole]

If you live in the Western US, there is a cool, powerful and FREE app to look at the productivity of rangelands over the last 25 years.

The Rangeland Analysis Platform:

The RAP provides the ability to monitor rangelands across time and space. By combining the latest remote-sensing technology with massive satellite imagery archives, the RAP is the first-ever all-encompassing view of millions of acres of rangelands.

Its datasets allow users to monitor trends and changes at the pasture, landscape, or regional scales from 1984 to present. That’s nearly 40 years of detailed data available as fast as you can click your mouse!

I love how this app makes it easy to take a site-specific look at how rainfall and range production have changed over time. It's simple to draw a polygon around a place of interest and then check to see how the relative amounts of bare ground, perennial leafy plants, annual plants, shrubs and trees have varied with differing levels of rainfall. There's even a handy new stocking rate calculator that might be useful when roughing out grazing plans for a particularly dry or wet year.

If you have used this app, please share your experiences. How have you used it, and how did it perform for your purpose?