Connecting Ag to Climate: Rangeland monitoring provides ground-truthing for productivity forecast tool

As students make their return to classrooms and fall work dates are marked on calendars, September invites cooler nighttime temperatures and a fall breeze on the air. 

The last day of summer is officially marked by the Autumn Equinox on Sept. 22, though according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Three-Month Outlook, above-normal temperatures may persist through November. 

The final Grass-Cast map for the 2024 grazing season, made on Sept. 3, summarizes rangeland productivity estimates for the season. 

Final estimates for much of Wyoming ended up in orange – 15 to 30 percent below a location’s long-term average – or red – 30 percent below average or worse. This does not account for recent losses from wildfires.  

Also remember, Grass-Cast provides estimates of total production, rather than grazeable forage. So, for those who follow the “take-half, leave-half” guideline, if the map estimates an area having 30 percent less pounds per acre of forage production than normal, this means grazeable forage is reduced by roughly 60 percent. 

To help ground-truth and improve Grass-Cast and other drought management resources, the National Drought Mitigation Center invites ranchers and rangeland managers to let them know how well the final Grass-Cast estimate did – or didn’t – match their own end-of-season forage production estimates. 

Simply complete a brief end-of-season forage production survey at grasscast.unl.edu. 

Averi Reynolds is an ORISE science communications fellow for the U.S. Department of Agriculture Northern Plains Climate Hub, serving Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota. The USDA Northern Plains Climate Hub strives to provide unbiased information about adaptation and mitigation strategies for ranchers, farmers, and foresters to help increase their operations’ resilience to weather variability and a changing climate. For more information on the Northern Plains Climate Hub, visit www.climatehubs.usda.gov/hubs/northern-plains.