The Art of Range Podcast

The scientists at the Jornada Experimental Range have been at the forefront of research monitoring rangeland health for decades. Jeff Herrick, a lead soil scientist at the Jornada, discusses with Tip recent advancements in rangeland monitoring methods and tools, including a monitoring app that brings together big data and on-the-ground sampling. Land PKS is now available at landpotential.org, and...

How many times have you thought: “You should have seen what this looked like 10 years ago?!” We usually mean that a range site or riparian zone looks better than it did 10 years ago, but most people can’t back up that claim. Join Tip and Sherm Swanson as they discuss ways to document landscape change and translate that data into management action. WE NEED YOUR FEEDBACK! Please take 2 minutes to co...

Dr. Nathan Sayre has written the definitive work on the origins and history of rangelands science, public ownership, agency management, and grazing philosophy in the United States. Join Tip and Nathan as they discuss his background building fence on ranches on the Southwest, his pathway to the sociology of rangelands, and then surprising findings in Sayre’s book research. Finally, they visit about...

A half-century of war on cheatgrass hasn’t reduced its dominance on the high sagebrush seas. Barry Perryman of Univ. of Nevada-Reno says old-fashioned observations and rancher communication have led researchers to a promising paradigm shift: targeting the unique biology of this biennial grass through fall and winter grazing. Barry and Tip discuss classical approaches to field research, an admoniti...

Range forage production can vary widely from year to year. What if you could get a production prediction 3 months ahead of the growing season and make management decisions from it? Tip's guest today, Matt Reeves (USFS) is part of a group of researchers who have developed the Rangeland Production Monitoring Service, a backward-looking prediction tool that is not meteorological forecasting, but a ma...

Dr. Lynn Huntsinger has written persuasively about the importance of private land ranching and public lands grazing as a means of conserving, even protecting, open space, wildlife habitat, and clean water. This runs counter to the preservationist paradigm that dominated for several decades, but it is gaining traction as it also gains scientific validity. Dr. Huntsinger is a Rustici endowed profess...

Ralph Waldo Emerson said that a weed is "a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered". Tip's guest, Karen Launchbaugh, says that some "plants out of place" present serious ecological and ecological challenges to land managers but that some unwanted plants have redeeming qualities, particularly for domestic grazing animals. They discuss exotic species, various control strategies for weeds, s...

Dr. Ken Tate is the Russell L. Rustici Endowed Rangeland Watershed Science Specialist in Cooperative Extension at University of California-Davis. Tate’s research and outreach focuses on the diverse managed ecosystems that make up California’s grazinglands, promoting management that supports the many benefits society receives from these working landscapes, including clean water, biodiversity and ag...

Jack Southworth, a rancher in Eastern Oregon, discusses with Tip how he manages for ecological and economic resiliency through flexible stocking rates, changing class of cattle based on the season's feed resources, and maximizing photosynthesis rate through the high desert's short growing period. SURVEY Please take 60 seconds to complete this quick 5-question survey and to access continuing educat...

Dr. Kirk Davies, lead range scientist at the Eastern Oregon Agricultural Research Center (EOARC) in Burns discusses with Tip invasive annual grass (IAG) on western rangelands and current research into promising new approaches to biological control of cheatgrass and ventenata. The conversation weaves in the role of fire in semi-arid shrub-steppe ecosystems, challenges in rehabilitating annual grass...

Guest Fred Provenza and Tip talk about how animals and environment affect each other in what Dr. Provenza calls a dance—a dance he’s written about in his brand-new book “Nourishment”. Tip and Fred discuss the 40 years of research that led to the writing of this capstone book. Along the way, they discuss how domestic animals can be selected or trained to match their environment and how this interse...

Floyd Reed, retired US Forest Service range conservationist, discusses with Tip a book he co-authored several years ago with Dave Bradford and Robbie LeValley examining landscape photographs taken in Western Colorado between 1885 and 1915. They found those sites and repeated the photographs. The book is titled, “When the Grass Stood Stirrup-High: Facts, Photographs, and Myths of West-Central Color...

Guest Dr. Karen Launchbaugh and host Tip Hudson discuss grazing management philosophies, changes in scientific understanding of plant community dynamics over the last 50 years, and grazing terminology. SURVEY Please take 60 seconds to complete this quick 5-question survey: https://wsu.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_4GHpHVHlsouSorr TRANSCRIPT The full transcript of this episode is available at: http...

Guest Karen Launchbaugh and host Tip Hudson discuss grazing management principles that apply everywhere, coordinating grazing management across multiple ownerships, stocking rate planning for long-term rangeland health, and the pros and cons of common grazing rules of thumb. SURVEY Please take 60 seconds to complete this quick 5-question survey: https://wsu.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_4GHpHVHlso...