Location: Sustainable Agricultural Systems Laboratory
Project Number: 8042-30400-001-081-I
Project Type: Interagency Reimbursable Agreement
Start Date: Sep 1, 2026
End Date: Sep 30, 2031
Objective:
- This project delivers practical, field-ready technologies that enable farmers and ranchers to make more informed management decisions while reducing the time, cost, and subjectivity associated with traditional vegetation assessments. The resulting handheld and satellite-calibrated tools will provide rapid estimates of forage availability, species composition, and vegetation performance, supporting improved grazing management, conservation planning, and resource stewardship. For farmers and ranchers, this will provide a fast and accurate estimate of forage biomass to determine stocking rates and grazing intensities, thus better managing grazing resources while protecting soil, water, and other natural resources.
- By developing objective methods to quantify forage quantity, forage quality, species diversity, and vegetation condition, the project will improve the delivery of grazing lands conservation, pasture and rangeland management, forage production, soil health, wildlife habitat, drought resilience, and ecosystem stewardship programs.
- Deliverables include standardized image repositories, annotated training datasets, species identification models, biomass estimation models, forage quality and quantity assessment tools, and decision-support capabilities for NRCS conservation planning and inventory activities.
- Expected outcomes include rapid, scalable, and objective measurement of forage species composition, biomass production, and vegetation diversity. The primary beneficiaries are NRCS field staff, Plant Materials Centers (PMC), conservation planners, technical service providers, farmers, ranchers, and other conservation partners who require improved tools for vegetation assessment and management. PMCs will serve as regional data generation and validation sites, while USDA-ARS will provide data processing, model development, calibration, and technology transfer support.
- This project will establish advanced phenotyping and forage monitoring capabilities across NRCS PMCs through deployment of BenchBot imaging systems, ModCam field sensing platforms, and associated cyberinfrastructure. PMCs will collect standardized imagery and field measurements of about 90 species of forage, range, pasture, and conservation species representative of those plant species used in NRCS conservation practices, while USDA-ARS/DASH will provide technical support, data management, image processing, artificial intelligence model development, and calibration services.
- Project activities include installation of BenchBot infrastructure at 6 PMC locations development of species-specific training datasets, collection of plant imagery and field observations, model development and validation, and calibration of handheld, ground-based, and satellite-based sensing technologies. Possible locations include PMCs at Big Flats, NY, Americus, GA, Brooksville, FL, Elsberry, MO, Aberdeen, ID, Knox City, TX, Bridger, MT and Bismarck, ND. A total of 6 PMCs will be chosen based on availability of a suitable site with required infrastructure and local capacity to support this project.
Approach:
Install BenchBot imaging systems at six NRCS Plant Materials Centers (PMCs)—three in the East for pasture species and three in the West for rangeland species.
Deploy ModCam field sensors and supporting cyberinfrastructure to collect standardized plant images and measurements.
Build species-specific training datasets and annotated image libraries.
Develop, calibrate, and validate AI models for species identification, biomass estimation, and forage quality assessment.
Calibrate handheld, ground-based, and satellite-based sensing tools.