Location: Rangeland Resources & Systems Research
Project Number: 3012-21500-001-052-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Jul 1, 2026
End Date: Dec 31, 2027
Objective:
1. Improve the animal grazing behavior component in the Agricultural Policy/Environmental eXtender (APEX) model for semiarid rangelands in the western Great Plains.
2. Incorporate developed algorithms from field-based observations of grazing behavior of individual animals into the animal grazing behavior component of APEX.
Approach:
This project is part of a larger effort involving the common experiment in the USDA Long-Term Agroecosystem Research (LTAR) network at the Central Plains Experimental Range (CPER) in shortgrass steppe, a semi-arid rangeland in the Western Great Plains where a rancher-led stakeholder group are collaborating with an interdisciplinary team of scientists involving rangeland scientists, rangeland ecologists, animal scientists, and technical support. We will build on work recently completed at the CPER site in the LTAR network. Specifically, this work will address incorporating an improved animal grazing behavior component in APEX that is validated against independently obtained field-data. The intended beneficiaries of this collaboration are ranchers in semiarid rangelands of the western Great Plains that can use the APEX model to run scenarios of management decisions to improve livestock production.