Data and code from: Predictions of Aboveground Herbaceous Production from Satellite-Derived APAR Are More Sensitive to Ecosite than Grazing Management Strategy in Shortgrass Steppe

This study set out to accurately estimate the amount of herbaceous biomass grown in rangelands, which is difficult to observe directly. Herbaceous biomass is the total weight of all living plant material, such as grasses, forbs, and small shrubs, some of which are edible forage for livestock. We used a combination of satellite data and ground-based measurements to estimate herbaceous biomass.

The data provided here allows others to reproduce our statistical analysis. We also provide cleaned datasets for herbaceous biomass, grazing periods, satellite, and photosynthetic active radiation collected at the Central Plains Experimental Range, which is a Long-Term Agroecosystem Research network site. The time frame for this data spans 2014 – 2022.

The .zip archive

Peirce_etal_2024_APAR_grazing.zip

contains data and code files.

This dataset contains all code and data necessary to reproduce the statistical analyses in the manuscript:

Peirce, E.S.; Kearney, S.P.; Santamaria, N.; Augustine, D.J.; Porensky, L.M. Predictions of Aboveground Herbaceous Production from Satellite-Derived APAR Are More Sensitive to Ecosite than Grazing Management Strategy in Shortgrass Steppe. Remote Sens. 2024, 16, 2780.

https://doi.org/10.3390/rs16152780

This research used resources provided by the SCINet project and/or the AI Center of Excellence of the USDA Agricultural Research Service, ARS project numbers 0201-88888-003-000D and 0201-88888-002-000D.