Location: Range Management Research
Project Number: 3050-21600-001-013-A
Project Type: Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Jun 1, 2025
End Date: Apr 30, 2028
Objective:
The objective of this agreement is to investigate, develop, and test improvements in measuring rangeland production across North American rangelands with satellite remote sensing.
Approach:
Rangeland production estimates provided by the Rangeland Analysis Platform rely on the MOD17 algorithm, calculating production based on the efficiency with which plants use absorbed solar radiation, relative to local temperature and moisture conditions. The cooperator will explore improvements to the MOD17 algorithm in order to increase the accuracy and efficiency of satellite-derived estimates. In addition to the traditional, mechanistic approaches common to the MOD17 algorithm, new empirical methods will also be explored. Foundational models of satellite remote sensing data are increasing, simplifying data analysis and making it possible to obtain high quality estimates with small numbers of samples (e.g., few-shot learning). The cooperator will also explore the use of these models, as well as finer resolution imagery (e.g., Sentinel-2) to estimate rangeland production, documenting the implications and tradeoffs associated with such approaches. The cooperator will communicate frequently and consistently with the ARS PI to ensure that objectives are met and that the ARS mission is achieved.