Drought is a normal experience for rangelands of the United States and poses one of the primary risks faced by managers and producers. Drought planning is therefore an important tool for minimizing drought-related losses, for both managers, planners and policy makers. Approaches to responding to drought are highly variable given the complexity of landscapes and operations and due to the different types and intensities of droughts. Drought indices are often used as indicators for extent and intensity of drought but relationships between the various monitors and rangeland production at regional scales is relatively undescribed.� In this paper we quantify relations between 6 drought monitors including the U.S. Drought Monitor (USDM), Evaporative Demand Drought Index (EDDI), Standardized Precipitation-Evapotranspiration Index 12, (SPEI12), Standardized Precipitation-Evapotranspiration Index 6, (SPEI6), Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) and the Self-Calibrated Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSIsc) with annual rangeland productivity from 2000 to 2016. In this assessment we answer 5 basic questions including: (1) What vegetation types exhibit the highest correlation between drought monitors and annual production? (2) What monitor exhibits the highest correlation with rangeland production? (3) What combination of monitors produces the best correlation between rangeland production and drought monitors? (4) What lag times exhibit the highest correlation between rangeland production and drought monitors? (5) What vegetative and regional characteristics enable high correlations between rangeland production and drought monitors?
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