Metrics, Management, & Monitoring (3M)

For decades, farmers and ranchers who have implemented soil health principles have improved the overall health of their land, experienced more profitable operations and lived happy, healthy lives. These observations have — to this point — been largely anecdotal.

This project will seek to quantify these observations. The project will uncover how management decisions on pasture and rangeland are interconnected to the overall health of the ecosystem. This will allow producers to make informed decisions to benefit their operations, while improving the overall health of their land for the betterment of society.

The five-year study specifically will seek to: Quantify soil health metrics for grazing land environments and link remote sensing capabilities. Determine how farmers and ranchers' management practices impact soil health and carbon sequestration in pasture and rangeland. Understand the relationship between grazing management and socio-economic well-being and resilience in rural U.S.

While most soil health initiatives are focused on cropland, they fail to address the hundreds of millions of acres of degrading pasture and rangeland. There are 655 million acres of pasture and rangeland in the United States. This is 41 percent of the land usage in the continental United States, making it the single largest use of land in the nation – more than row crops, cities and timberlands.

Pasture and rangelands are among the largest ecosystems on the planet, covering 70% of the world agricultural area. Pasture and rangeland soils contain about 20% of the world's soil organic carbon stock, but have largely deteriorated in many regions due to poor management, fragmentation or conversion to cropland.