Guides

Guide to Co-Developing Drought Preparation Plans for Livestock Grazing on Southwest National Forests

This Guide helps the Forest Service and ranchers with grazing permits collaborate to assess drought risk and impacts, identify issues with current level of preparedness using scenario planning, select and prioritize practices to include in their Drought Preparation Plan, and then begin the process to gain approval through the NEPA review process.

The Guide is published as an Extension Bulletin by the University of Arizona Cooperative Extension.

In addition we provide WORD versions of the planning Worksheets so that users can enter their information using a computer, and they can modify the Worksheets content/structure to better fit their needs.

Attachments:

Hawkes et al 2018 Guide to Co-developing Drought Preparation az1764.pdf,

Worksheets from Guide to CoDeveloping Drought Prep Plans for Livestock Grazing on SW National Forests.docx

An Easy to Use System for Developing a Drought Management Contingency Plan. 2017. University of Arizona Cooperative Extension AZ1725.

Guidance on developing a simplified and structured contingency plan for managing during a drought using large-scale and local-scale drought intensity indicators to inform an array of pre-planned responsive management decisions. This is especially useful for identifying the need infrastructure and management flexible that needs to be in place before the next drought. Otherwise, it will be very difficult to implement the contingency plan.

Attachments:

Tolleson 2017 An Easy to Use System for Developing a Drought Management Contingency Plan.pdf

Managing Drought Risk on the Ranch: A Planning Guide for Great Plains Ranchers. 2012. University of Nebraska – Lincoln, National Drought Mitigation Center.

A comprehensive guide to prepare for and manage during drought. Includes assessment of vulnerabilities, solutions to reduce those vulnerabilities, approaches for detecting the onset of drought conditions, and contingencies for managing during and after drought.

Attachments:

Managing Drought Risk on the Ranch A Planning Guide for Great Plains Ranchers.pdf

Rangeland Management Before, After and During Drought. 2016. University of Arizona Cooperative Extension AZ1136.

Review of the drought impacts that affect the physiological and biochemical process in individual plants. Emphasizes the role of planning to identify livestock management practices that aim to sustain or improve rangeland condition and conservatively use forage.

This publication is the primary reference for the Forest Service Region 3 policy for managing livestock grazing use in the face of recurring drought.

Attachments:

Howery 2016 Rangeland Management Before After and During Drought.pdf

DroughtView Extension Guide

Remotely sensed data are valuable for monitoring, assessing, and managing impacts to arid and semi-arid lands caused by drought or other changes in the natural environment. With this in mind, we collaborated with scientists and technologists to redevelop DroughtView, a web-based decision-support tool that combines satellite-derived measures of surface greenness with additional geospatial data so that users can visualize and evaluate vegetation dynamics across space and over time. Here, we present the functionality of DroughtView, including new capabilities to report drought impacts and share map information, as well as the data behind it.

LINK:

https://extension.arizona.edu/sites/extension.arizona.edu/files/pubs/az1737-2017.pdf

DIY Rain Gauge

This guide shows you how to construct a rugged rain gauge out of clear PVC pipe, ideal for long-term unattended precipitation monitoring at remote sites. This type of accumulation gauge where precipitation depth increases over time until the gauge is emptied works seamlessly with the data entry and visualization tools within myRAINge Log. The guide also discusses strategies to locate and install gauges, protect them from vandalism and maintain for them many years of uninterrupted use.

LINK:

https://extension.arizona.edu/sites/extension.arizona.edu/files/pubs/az1747-2017_0.pdf

Rain Gauge Best Practices

This guide describes some of the basic considerations for developing a a precipitation monitoring plan to support rangeland management. For example, the Guide addresses the following: How many gauges do I need and where should they be located? How often do I need to make observations? How should I manage and interpret my precipitation data?

LINK:

https://extension.arizona.edu/sites/extension.arizona.edu/files/pubs/az1751-2017.pdf