The University of Arizona

Rangelands West

Rangeland health affects us all. Rangelands comprise about 40% of the landmass of the United States and provide valuable grazing lands for livestock and wildlife. They serve as a source of high quality water, clean air, and open spaces and benefit people through recreation, agriculture, and mining. The Rangelands West website was created to share information and tools to care for these extensive and diverse lands.

Rangelands West is developed and maintained by the Rangelands West Partnership, a collaboration of rangeland specialists and librarians from 19 land-grant universities (see below). Participants are responsible for developing state-specific sites that provide information key to the issues relevant to the sustainability of rangelands and rural economies in those states. In addition, partners submit metadata about state resources to the Rangelands West database so that all information on the site is available to search from the home page. The Arizona Rangelands team, the originators of this effort, maintains the Rangelands West portal, including the technical architecture, and manages home page content. This includes in-depth information on a variety of hot topics/policy issues, including fire, grazing, recreation, invasive species, and legal issues such as the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Also available are quick links to self-paced learning modules on rangeland monitoring, riparian areas and grazing management, and livestock behavior. George Ruyle from SNRE has led the development of Rangelands West along with other College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) and UA Libraries personnel. In addition, SNRE faculty members Mitch McClaran and Larry Howery have helped develop content for the site.

Progress to date: The Rangelands West Partnership holds annual meetings in March of every year. 2008 marks the seventh year of the Partnership. During that time, the Partnership has gained the financial support of Western Agricultural Experiment Station Directors, operating since 2004 as an official Western Coordinating Committee (WCC) project, and submitted a successful grant application for a two-year project to WSARE and to North Central SARE. Currently, the website contains more than 1,400 links to rangeland resources and provides access to 19 interlinked state sites that provide access to additional resources. It is considered a model collaboration including both internal and external campus units.

Key Collaborators:

  • Partnering Universities: Colorado State University, Idaho State University, Kansas State University, Montana State University, New Mexico State University, North Dakota State University, Oklahoma State University, Oregon State University, South Dakota State University, Texas A&M; University of Alaska; University of Arizona; University of California, Davis and Berkeley; University of Hawaii, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, University of Nevada-Reno, University of Wyoming, Utah State University, Washington State University
  • AgNIC (The Agriculture Network Information Center)
  • Society for Range Management

References:

Hutchinson, B.S. and G.B. Ruyle. 2000. Wired Without the Barbs: Using the Internet for rangeland information. Rangelands 22(6):19-22.

Hutchinson, B., J. Pfander and M. Haseltine. 2001. Rangeland Management Information on the Web. Arizona's Ranchers Guide. Tucson, AZ: Cooperative Extension. 

Hutchinson, B. and G. Ruyle. 2003. Partnering for Better Management of Western Rangelands: Using Web Technologies to Get the Word Out. Journal of Agricultural and Food Information 4(3):75-89.

Hutchinson, B.S., J.L. Pfander, and G. Ruyle. 2008. Collaborative Initiatives to Deliver Agricultural Information. Invited book chapter, Convergence and Collaboration of Campus Information Services. (in press)

Jones, D.E., G. Ruyle, and B. Hutchinson. 2003. Building a Collaborative AgNIC site as an Outreach Model: Rangelands of the Western U.S. The Reference Librarian 82: 125-140.