By Susan McGinley
Ranchers and other managers work closely with the land every day, observing changes and deciding how to handle our natural resource. They drive, ride or hike to remote areas to check forage availability, monitor wildlife populations, assess fire danger, or note soil conditions and water availability.

Along with this site-specific approach on the ground, land managers also can get a bird's-eye view of broader scale changes in the landscape by using RangeView. This University of Arizona decision support database features satellite images of local vegetation that can be viewed over time to show trends.

"RangeView provides frequent satellite images online to enhance the ability of natural resource managers, including ranchers, to manage the landscape," says Chuck Hutchinson, director of the Office of Arid Lands Studies (OALS) in The University of Arizona College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

Stuart Marsh, director of the OALS Arizona Remote Sensing Center, Barron Orr, assistant professor and geospatial extension specialist, and assistant professor Wim van Leeuwen researched and developed the Web site to display satellite digital images in a way that allows users to analyze the characteristics of the land.

Also providing input were professors George Ruyle, Larry Howery and Paul Krausman, faculty from the School of Natural Resources; Dave Schafer, resident director of the CALS V Bar V Ranch; and a core group of lead users from natural resource management agencies, environmental organizations and the ranching community.

"This tool offers the ability to zoom in on your ranch, forest, or habitat, and monitor changes in vegetation through time," Orr says. The images have been adapted to highlight variation in vegetation greenness, allowing users to compare greenness between years and also to view greenness compared to 15-year average, to the previous year, and as it changes every two weeks.

"The satellite data are displayed as a vegetation index," van Leeuwen says. Though the U.S. Geological Survey has been producing the index from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellite data since 1989, this is the first time they have been made easily accessible for the general public. RangeView users also can access more advanced data from NASA's Terra satellite, which has been providing bi-weekly data since 2000. "This enables Web site visitors to assess the greenness of any area of interest in the U.S., Northern Mexico, and Southern Canada," Marsh says. "For each location and for certain dates, you can see if it's greener or less green than usual, which may help a natural resource manager make a more informed management decision." By hitting the "animate" button, users can see two-week variations in vegetation over the past years that can assess fire potential or other time-dependent applications. To orient themselves, RangeView users can view the location of towns, roads, allotments, and other features.