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Riparian areas provide environmental values. Not only are they essential habitats for big game, song-birds, reptiles and fish, but they also play a crucial role in cleaning and storing water. Although riparian areas occupy only 1% of a watershed, they reflect the functioning of the entire watershed. Monitoring their condition and trend is foundational to managing their values for natural and societal benefits. Unfortunately, the methods used to assess riparian areas are not statistically valid or economically feasible. The consequences are an obliviousness of the results of management actions.  We present an alternative approach to assessing riparian areas using remote sensing technology that quickly, cheaply, and effectively assesses the basic landcover components of riparian functionality. This method captures, in space and time, the actual ground condition of the vegetation being measured. Because of this, it maintains a visual history of vegetation condition allowing other investigators the ability to repeat the observation or use other sampling techniques to extract improved or additional information.  This repeatability of measurements makes field observations more transparent.  Traditional vegetation sampling without imagery cannot be repeated since other observers cannot return to the same geographic point and time. Because the method is imagery-based, it can be used to assess these basic conditions back in time 30 years. Additionally, the method has been extensively validated via traditional on the ground monitoring methods as well as by professional management personnel. Our technique, applied across time, has great potential to place land cover change and rangeland health in a contextual perspective that has not been available before.  In this way, past management practices can be evaluated for their effectiveness in altering rangeland condition and with this hindsight, improved management prescriptions can be developed.