Integrating use of seeded perennial cool-season grass pastures with native rangeland can increase available forage and provide a high plane of nutrition for grazing livestock. Our objective was to compare performance of yearling beef heifers grazing native rangeland with those grazing an integrated system that included seeded forages. Twice-replicated, 3-ha pastures seeded to either ‘Rosana’ we...

We tested the accuracy of an atmospheric correction method that depends on clear water bodies to infer solar and atmospheric parameters for radiative transfer equations by measuring the reflectance signature of four prominent south Texas rangeland plants with the Earth Resource Technology (LANDSAT) satellite multispectral scanner (MSS) and a ground-based Exotech Model 20 spectroradiometer. The ...

In many studies, topographic factors have been considered as an important factor in establishing the vegetation in different ecosystems. So, it affects vegetation composition and diversity by influencing soil moisture, fertility and soil depth. The aim of this research was to investigate the effects of slope, elevation and geographical aspects on species growth, forage production and vegetation...

— This paper contributes to the debate over land tenure in rural China by extending its spatial coverage to the country’s extensive rangeland regions. Key characteristics of pastoral tenure, identified from field appraisals in western China, include group tenure and fuzzy boundaries. Although these characteristics give rise to efficiency concerns, from a new institutional economics perspective ...

Rangeland ecosystems typify physical systems having an incomplete causal theory. This paper describes CARMA, a system for rangeland pest management advising that uses model-based matching and adaptation to integrate case-based reasoning with modelbased reasoning for prediction in rangeland ecosystems. An ablation study showed that removing any part of the CARMA’s model-based knowledge dramatica...

Calibrated predictive relationships obtained from simple and multiple regression of thematic mapper or broad-band (BB) and 1.4 nm interval or narrow-band (NB) spectral data were evaluated for quantifying 11 rangeland components (including total vegetation, forb, grass, shrub, litter, and bare soil) and distinguishing among 6 long-term grazing treatments of sagebrush steppe. In general, all 4 da...

One hundred twenty crossbred steers (450 lb, +/37 lb) were stratified by weight and randomly assigned to one of two feeding blocks. The cattle grazed dormant rangeland for 56 days from October 12 through December 7. Each block was supplemented three times a week with the equivalent of 7 days of dried corn distiller’s grains (DDG) at 0, 0.25, 0.50, or 0.75% body weight (BW)/d on a dry matter bas...