Understanding and appreciating the dynamics of land science requires us to view terrestrial ecosystems as complex adaptive systems. Rangelands provide a good example of such systems both in terms of their structure and behavior. They comprise large swaths of natural landscapes that structurally comprise grasslands, woodlands, shrublands, wetlands, and deserts. Compositionally, rangeland types may include tallgrass and shortgrass prairies, desert grasslands and shrublands, woodlands, savanna, chaparral, steppe, and tundra. Rangelands demonstrate wide spatial and temporal heterogeneities in terms of their land-use and land-cover characteristics. As human and climatic drivers influence the present and future of our physico-ecological systems, rangelands are increasingly becoming linked across all spatial scales through the exchange and flows of people, information, materials and services. Managing rangelands, therefore, should account for the dynamics of both the social and ecological components that provide the framework for future development towards resilience-based management. The most fundamental requirement to meet such new management standards is developing accurate domain knowledge of all components that characterize the structure and functioning of rangelands. This includes, for instance, capturing the vegetation dynamics through time, or determining the carrying capacity of rangelands.This presentation demonstrates a consistent and cost-free satellite-derived data source with enormous potential to contribute towards resilience-based rangeland management. The NASA Earth Observing System's (EOS) Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) mission acquires continuous multispectral global data at moderate resolutions from twin instruments in different orbits. The Terra and Aqua incarnations of the MODIS instrument help generate a variety of moderate resolution data products at sufficient spectral and temporal granularity to monitor global environmental processes. This presentation provides a synoptic view of how MODIS biophysical products spanning over a decade are deemed potentially useful to study and model rangeland ecosystems and services.
Oral presentation and poster titles, abstracts, and authors from the Society for Range Management (SRM) Annual Meetings and Tradeshows, from 2013 forward.