Time series of expected livestock forage biomass in the semi-arid grasslands of the western U.S. (2000-2018)

Management and disturbances have significant effects on grassland forage production. When using satellite remote sensing to monitor climate impacts such as drought stress on annual forage production, minimizing these effects provides a clearer climate signal in the productivity data. The use of an ecosystem performance approach for assessment of seasonal and interannual climate impacts on forage production in semi-arid grasslands proved to be a successful method in a case study covering the Nebraska Sandhills. In this study we developed a time series (2000-2018) of the Expected Ecosystem Performance (EEP), which serves as a proxy for annual forage production after accounting for non-climatic influences, while minimizing effects of [...]