Principles of Holistic Resource Management: Investing in Self-Education

Study Description: First developed as a concept for approaching grazing resources management by Alan Savory in the 1970’s as a means of combating poor grazing practices, the concept of Holistic Management has evolved in the modern era to Holistic Resource Management, or in some cases “Wholistic” Resource Management, suggesting a more inclusive approach to overall planning and assessment beyond developing a sustainable grazing plan. In simplified terms, a complete Holistic Resource Management plan for an agricultural businesses ultimately embraces a core concept that centers on the original ‘Triple Bottom Line’ accounting philosophy where the three “P’s” of profit, people, and planet are all viewed as valuable measures and the advancement of a balanced relationship between these measures leads to successful management of a business as a whole. There are several iterations of the three “P’s” in various business sectors, but all generally reflect the broad categories of measuring sustainability in relation to Social, Environmental, and Economic impact. In the farming and ranching industry, these measures are often re-labeled as finances, resources (land and other assets), and people (often family). There is, and will continue to be, a great deal of debate over Savory’s grazing model. And key to the success of triple bottom line accounting, as explained by the founder of the concept John Elkington, is that it be more than simply a method of accounting. Rather, both are designed to provoke deeper thinking about the entirety of the thing being assessed. Because of this more open interpretation, the combination of Holistic Resource Management coupled with Triple Bottom Line accounting creates a framework for agricultural producers to walk through a process of recognizing and challenging paradigms, creating vision, setting goals, identifying and engaging key persons, and learning to work with (instead of counter to) natural processes that can lead to greater profitability and resilience

Quantifying Undisturbed (Native) Lands in Eastern South Dakota: 2013

We employed simple GIS methods primarily utilizing the South Dakota Farm Service Agency’s Common Land Unit (CLU) data layers from 2013, along with 2012 US Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) county mosaic aerial imagery, to evaluate approximately 22.6 million acres of land in the 44 counties that comprise eastern South Dakota. Mapping of this total project area was done in three distinct project phases from 2014 through 2016. We utilized the CLU data layer, queried to show current and former cropland, to first identify and remove any areas with a cropping history, regardless of current land use. We then employed a step by step analysis to analyze the remaining land in approximately one mi2 sections in order to identify and remove additional historic or current land disturbances. The remaining land tracts were then categorized as potentially ‘undisturbed grassland’ or ‘undisturbed woodland’ by simple reason of deduction. Finally, we removed all known water bodies larger than 40 acres as defined by the South Dakota Department of Game, Fish, and Parks’ (SDGFP) Statewide Water Bodies layer in order to gain a more accurate interpretation of the remaining undisturbed grassland/wetland complex. Overall, 5,488,025 acres (24.2%) of the approximately 22.6 million acres in eastern South Dakota were designated as potentially undisturbed. However, a small portion of the undisturbed acres did have certain indications suggesting historical disturbance, and thus were flagged as ‘go-back’ acres. A total of 214,981 acres of undisturbed land were flagged as potential go-back acres. The analysis of go-back acres varied between the three project phases. Of the total approximately 22.6 million acre analysis area, approximately 14.9 million acres (65.9%) were deemed to have a cropping history according to the FSA CLU data, while approximately 1.6 million acres (6.9%) were found to have some type of land disturbance not indicated by a CLU crop code, for a total of 16.5 million acres (72.8%) of all lands with some type of proven disturbance history. Within the total approximately 22.6 million acre evaluation area, approximately 1.4 million acres (6.1%) were found to have some sort of permanent protection from conversion (some of these acres have a disturbance history). Nearly 1 million acres of the approximately 5.5 million acres of undisturbed land (17.5%) had some level of permanent conservation protection status. In total, we identified 962,734 acres of undisturbed habitat that is protected from future conversion, representing only 4.3% of eastern South Dakota’s total land base. Within eastern South Dakota we identified 531 wind turbines, of which 269 (50.7%) were located adjacent to potentially undisturbed areas. Only 41 (7.7%) were located adjacent to undisturbed lands permanently protected from land conversion.https://openprairie.sdstate.edu/data_land-easternSD/1000/thumbnail.jp

Quantifying Undisturbed Land in Minnesota\u27s Prairie Coteau and Lac Qui Parle Valley Regions

We employed simple GIS methods utilizing the Minnesota Farm Service Agency’s Common Land Unit (CLU) cropland data layer from 2013, along with 2013 USDA National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) county mosaic aerial imagery, to evaluate over 5 million acres of land in 14 southwest Minnesota counties, including all or portions of 10 counties within the Minnesota portion of the Prairie Coteau region and the entirety of four counties in the Lac qui Parle region. We utilized the CLU cropland layer to first identify and remove any areas with a cropping history, regardless of current land use. We then analyzed the remaining land in approximately one mi2 sections in order to identify and remove additional historic or current land disturbances. The remaining land tracts were then categorized as potentially ‘undisturbed grassland’ or ‘undisturbed woodland’ by simple reason of deduction. Finally, we removed all known water bodies \u3e 40 acres as defined by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources Public Waters Basin Delineation. Overall, 402,253 acres (8.0%) were designated as potentially undisturbed in the 5,055,319 evaluation area. Within the Lac qui Parle region of Minnesota, we estimate there are 147,409 acres of potentially undisturbed land remaining of the 1,694,414 acres we evaluated (8.7%). Within the Prairie Coteau landscape we estimate there are approximately 230,608 acres of potentially undisturbed land remaining of the 2,822,332 acres we evaluated (8.2%). Within the narrow 545,703 acre MN River Prairies landscape area we estimate there are approximately 25,469 acres (4.7%) of potentially undisturbed land remaining. Of the total 5,055,319 acre analysis area, approximately 4,051,457 acres (80.1%) were deemed to have a cropping history in the FSA CLU data while 491,634 acres (9.7%) indicated some type of land disturbance other than a CLU crop code. Within the total 5,055,319 acre evaluation area, only 290,412 acres (5.7%) were found to have some sort of permanent protection from conversion (some of these acres have a disturbance history). Only 104,169 acres (2.1%) of the evaluation area are both potentially undisturbed AND had some level of permanent conservation protection status. Of the 1,517 wind turbines identified in the total analysis area, 96 (6.3%) were located adjacent to potentially undisturbed areas. Finally, we evaluated disturbance histories on MN Department of Natural Resources Sites of Biodiversity Significance (SBS) and Native Plant Communities (NPC). Of the total 321,106 acres within MCBS SBS layer, 51,833 acres (16.1%) had a CLU crop designation while 35,373 acres (11.0%) were excluded due to some type of disturbance other than CLU crop codes. Of the 91,813 acres within the MCBS NPC layer, 3,737 acres (4.1%) had a CLU crop designation while 3,997 acres (4.4%) were excluded due to some type of disturbance other than CLU crop codes.https://openprairie.sdstate.edu/data_land-southwestMN/1000/thumbnail.jp

Quantifying Undisturbed (Native) Lands in Northwestern South Dakota: 2013

We employed simple GIS methods primarily utilizing the South Dakota Farm Service Agency’s Common Land Unit (CLU) data layers from 2013 and the 2012 United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) county mosaic aerial imagery to evaluate 7,347,812 acres of land in northwestern South Dakota. The analysis area includes: Harding, Perkins, and Butte counties along with portions of Lawrence and Meade counties outside of the Black Hills Core Highlands and Plateau Ecoregions. We utilized the FSA CLU data layer queried to show current and former cropland to identify and remove any areas with cropping history regardless of current land use. We analyzed the remaining land in approximately one mi2 sections to identify and remove additional historic or current land disturbances. The remaining land tracts were categorized as potentially ‘undisturbed grassland’ or ‘undisturbed woodland’ by simple reason of deduction. Finally, we removed all known water bodies larger than 40 acres as defined by the South Dakota Department of Game, Fish, and Parks’ (SDGFP) Statewide Water Bodies layer to gain a more accurate interpretation of the remaining undisturbed grassland/wetland complex. Overall, 5,743,137 acres (78.2%) of the approximately 7.3 million-acre analysis area was designated as potentially undisturbed by our initial analysis (Figure 1). However, a portion of these undisturbed acres have certain indicators suggesting historical disturbance, thus 17,263 locations were flagged as potential ‘go-back’ areas (see updated Methods section). In addition to go-back areas, we also identified over 300 locations with indicators of some type of native rangeland manipulation other than historic cropping. Because of limitations evaluating historic land patterns with NAIP imagery, it was not possible to accurately calculate actual area estimates for these flagged locations. However, we were able to perform an initial area analysis of go-back sites using polygons in portions of Harding and northern Perkins Counties which suggests the combined impact of go-back fields and rangeland manipulations may impact about 10% of the undisturbed land layer. Therefore, we speculate the actual undisturbed (potentially native) land area for this region may be reduced from the current 78.3% down to roughly 68% if we can refine our methodologies to more accurately reflect these disturbances in the future. We anticipate future LiDAR analysis will aid in improving such accuracy. To provide the reader with a better understanding of the distribution of these flagged disturbances, we analyzed the number of legal sections of land (as defined by the 2000 Public Land Survey) that had at least one indicator of disturbance against the total number of legal sections in the analysis area. We found that 7,558 out of 11,580 (65.3%) legal sections had at least one indication of disturbance within the section (either a go-back site or rangeland manipulation site within the undisturbed land layer). Of the approximate 7.2-million-acre total analysis area, 1.4 million acres (19%) were deemed to have a cropping history according to the FSA CLU data. 193,570 acres (2.6%) were found to have some type of land disturbance not indicated by a CLU crop code. Totaling 1.59 million acres (21.7%) of all land with some type of proven disturbance history. Leaving roughly 5.7 million acres deemed undisturbed. Within the approximate 7.2-million-acre total evaluation area, 12,315 acres (0.2%) were found to have some sort of permanent protection from conversion (some of these acres have a disturbance history). Only 10,835 acres of the approximately 5.7 million acres of undisturbed land (0.2%) had some level of permanent conservation protection status. The 10,835 acres of potentially undisturbed land that is officially protected from future conversion represents only 0.1% of the analysis area for the five northwestern South Dakota counties. Within northwestern South Dakota we identified 298 oil wells, drill sites, and associated facilities/developments. These sites are primarily located in the Sagebursh Steppe Ecoregion of Harding County. Of the sites identified, 262 (87.9%) were located adjacent to undisturbed areas (within 250 feet, see Methods section).https://openprairie.sdstate.edu/data_land-northwestsd/1000/thumbnail.jp

Integration of Crop-Livestock Systems: An Opportunity toProtect Grasslands from Conversion to Cropland in the US Great Plains

The Great Plains is a mixture of cropland and grassland mainly used for agricultural purposes, with grasslands under continual threat of conversion to cropland. Agriculturists are advocating for the integration of crop-livestock systems (ICLS) to recouple nutrient cycles, improve biodiversity, and increase resilience of agricultural operations. We address the benefits of ICLS in the Great Plains, contending that focus on improving soil health and financial stability of agricultural operations should reduce the conversion of grasslands to cropland. Using US Department of Agriculture National Agricultural Statistics Service Census of Agriculture survey data from the 1925 to 2017 category “cropland used only for pasture or grazing,” which represents land that had been cropped but converted to annual/perennial pasture and grazed, we showcase that the number of farms and the land area in this category is a reasonable proxy of ICLS. As expected, ICLS dramatically decreased in the entire United States from 1925 to 1945, but from 1945 to 2002 in the Great Plains ICLS remained relatively constant, providing evidence of sustained crop-livestock integration. Consistent high numbers of beef cows during this period and the wide availability of forages and crop residues for ruminants facilitated opportunities for producers to use ICLS on their individual operations (within farm) or among operations where row crop farmers and forage-based producers integrated beef cattle use across the landscape (among farms). This integration, however, was decoupled from 2006 to 2013, a period of high grain prices. As a result, economic value of grasslands was decreased and conversion to cropland was increased. Thus, conservation efforts in the Great Plains for grasslands should focus on keeping grasslands intact for provision of multiple ecosystem goods and services by emphasizing incorporation of ICLS within and among farms to reduce the risk of converting grassland to cropland

Wildfire: Preparing the ranch and farm

The Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service periodically issues revisions to its publications. The most current edition is made available. For access to an earlier edition, if available for this title, please contact the Oklahoma State University Library Archives by email at [email protected] or by phone at 405-744-6311

Prescribed burning: Spotfires and escapes

The Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service periodically issues revisions to its publications. The most current edition is made available. For access to an earlier edition, if available for this title, please contact the Oklahoma State University Library Archives by email at [email protected] or by phone at 405-744-6311

Prescribed fire: Understanding liability, laws and risk

The Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service periodically issues revisions to its publications. The most current edition is made available. For access to an earlier edition, if available for this title, please contact the Oklahoma State University Library Archives by email at [email protected] or by phone at 405-744-6311

The Lunar Polar Hydrogen Mapper (LunaH-Map) Mission

The Lunar Polar Hydrogen Mapper (LunaH-Map) mission will map hydrogen enrichments within permanently shadowed regions at the lunar south pole using a miniature neutron spectrometer. While hydrogen enrichments have been identified regionally from previous orbital missions, the spatial extent of these regions are often below the resolution of the neutron instruments that have flown on lunar missions. LunaH-Map will enter into an elliptical, low altitude perseline orbit which will enable the mission to spatially isolate and constrain the hydrogen enrichments within permanently shadowed regions. LunaH-Map will use a solid iodine ion propulsion system, X-Band radio communications through the NASA Deep Space Network, star tracker, C&DH and EPS systems from Blue Canyon Technologies, solar arrays from MMA Designs, LLC, mission design and navigation by KinetX. Spacecraft systems design, integration, qualification, test and mission operations are performed by Arizona State University