Range Continued from Page 13
providing rangeland images on a differ- ent scale. “These rangeland landscapes span a lot of climates, topographies, soils and vegetation,” said Libby Porzig, working lands director at Point Blue, a groupof 160 scientists who lend their expertise to pri- vate and public land managers engaged in conservation efforts. “That makes it a challenge to developmanagement plans using the spectrum of information from boots on the ground to satellite imagery. Dronesmay fill a gap in the toolbox.” Point Blue worked recently with re- searchers from Stanford University to develop software that wouldmake it pos- sible touse drones to take photographs of penguins in a large colony in Antarctica. One of the challenges addressed by the software, Porzig said, is the need to stitch together numerous photographs when drone photography is used to capture im- ages of an exceptionally large area. Porzig said she wondered i f that software could be adapted for range- land surveys, and said Point Blue has already done preliminary studies of the possibilities. “The software guides the flight paths of multiple drones and stitches together the photos they take,” she said. “We took 17,942 photos of a 2,000-acre ranch. The software had some problems with
On-the-ground ob- servations remain crucial for managing rangeland, according to range specialists, but use of data gath- ered by satellites and drones can provide ranchers with addi- tional tools.
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low-contrast areas, but we think at min- imum this will be useful for ranch plan- ning and seeing changes in vegetation.” Point Blue is already thinking in terms of practical ranching situations where it might help to be able to stitch together dronephotographs of thousands of acres, Porzig said. “In the future, we hope to scale it as a tool for grazing planning and post-fire recovery,” she said. The Rangeland Analysis Platform already provides information about vegetation on a scale ranging from a
particular ranch or pasture to an en- tire region from the Great Plains to the Pacific Ocean, and any time frame from the mid-1980s to the present. “RAP helps people develop strategies that improve rangeland productivity and sustainability,” according to a USDA description of the app. “Designed to be combined with local knowledge, RAP helps users analyze the outcomes of land management actions.” For instance, the platform’s developers said, “it can help visualize the impacts of drought on perennial forage, identify
where to reduce woody encroachment, or evaluate the effectiveness of weed con- trol treatments.” Specialists at the workshop said soft- ware, drones and satellites will never re- place on-the-ground observations, but are intended to give a rancher another set of tools. “This is one more spoke on a hub of knowledge that begins with a producer on the land on horseback,”Maestas said. ( Bo b J o hn s o n i s a r e p o r t e r i n Sacramento. He may be contacted at bjohn11135@gmail.com.)
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14 Ag Alert May 26, 2021
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