Introduction

Rangelands in the United States provide both livestock production and ecosystem services. Rangelands cover approximately 770 million acres in the United States, and about 404 million of those acres are privately owned (USDA 2020a). Livestock grazing is the dominant land use for rangelands (National Research Council 1994), supporting livelihoods and providing nourishment for millions of people. In 2018 alone, the US beef industry produced over 26 billion lb of beef and supported 2.1 million jobs (NASS 2019). Intact, well-managed rangelands also maintain large soil carbon stocks (e.g., Spawn et al. 2019), support a wide range of biodiversity (e.g., Pogue et al. 2018), and reduce erosion and nutrient runoff (e.g., Flynn et al. 2017). Socioeconomic benefits include preserving open space (Kline 2006), cultivating a sense of place (Ellingston et al. 2011), and keeping money in small rural economies. Proper grazing and land management is critical to ensure these benefits continue and to avoid or reverse rangeland degradation resulting in sustainable operations. We use the term “sustainable” to include ecological, social, and economic (socioeconomic) components (Young 1997; Elkington 1998). Regenerative ranching, which seeks to enhance and restore functional and resilient ecosystem processes, has emerged as an alternative framing for understanding sustainability (Gosnell et al. 2019), but for consistency, we use the term sustainability throughout.

The United States has a rich history of rangeland management research and monitoring, technical support through agencies, extension offices, producer-led organizations, professional societies, and peer-to-peer learning among rangeland managers. Monitoring is needed to inform land managers on how best to implement and adaptively manage practices aimed at improving ecological function of rangelands and socioeconomic factors for ranch operations and communities. The Natural Resource Inventory led by the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) began in the 1930s with surveys on soil erosion and progressed to extensive assessment of nonfederal rangeland conditions by the mid-1980s (Schnepf and Flanagan 2016). In the mid-1990s, rangeland and soil health reports from the National Research Council (National Research Council 1993, 1994) and efforts to unify rangeland assessment concepts from the Society for Range Management (Task Group on Unity in Concepts and Terminology Committee Members 1995) stimulated efforts to coordinate research, data collection, and interpretation of rangeland condition principles. These coordinated efforts have led to standardized protocols for assessing ecological condition of rangelands (e.g., Herrick et al. 2017) used by a number of government agencies (e.g., Bureau of Land Management [BLM], National Park Service [NPS]) that roll up to evaluate rangeland condition at a large scale (e.g., Toledo et al. 2014). These data are also now being integrated with other datasets, such as land cover and remote sensing products, and being used with new technology and machine learning techniques to track trends in rangeland resources (e.g., the Rangelands Assessment Platform  https://rangelands.app/, the Rangeland Production Monitoring Service  https://www.fuelcast.net, RangeSat  https://www.rangesat.org/). These efforts have created general agreement on the ecological components important to rangeland health and some methods for assessing those. In addition, numerous approaches (e.g., certification standards, sustainability guidelines) have been developed to translate these rangeland health principles into an adaptive management framework to support sustainable ranching practices for individual operations and for informing outcomes for the supply chain. Today, efforts continue to further develop and communicate sustainable grazing land management, with heightened interest from constituents throughout the beef supply chain.

The US beef supply chain is one of the most complex food systems in the world, currently with little traceability, making translating on-ranch sustainability outcomes into economic incentives for ranchers challenging. Yet there is motivation and, increasingly, commitments by companies to advance sustainability across their supply chains (Rotz et al. 2019). For example, in 2016 Walmart committed to source beef more sustainably by 2025 ( https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/2020/08/07/grazing-toward-a-sustainable-beef-supply-chain), and Cargill has committed to a 30% greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction in its North American beef supply chain by 2030 ( https://www.cargill.com/story/cargill-aims-to-beefup-sustainability). The dominant conventional production system (accounting for ≈95% of beef produced in the United States) supply chain starts on the ranch or farm where cows graze while calves nurse, followed by a backgrounding period when weaned calves may continue to graze or start to be fed silage and grain. When they reach specified weight, cattle are transported to a feedlot and fed rations consisting primarily of grain and agricultural byproducts until they reach a final weight. Processing then occurs at meatpacking facilities, after which beef is distributed to retailers to be sold to consumers at the supermarket. The environmental impacts of beef production across the supply chain have been well documented (Lupo et al. 2013; Poore and Nemecek 2018; Rotz et al. 2019), and it is not our intention to revisit that here. Instead, we propose that a better understanding of sustainability at the ranch scale would be of value across the entire supply chain, as such understanding would better equip ranchers with the information necessary to communicate what “sustainability” means and how it is being achieved. Organizations such as the US Roundtable for Sustainable Beef ( www.usrsb.org) are working across the supply chain to improve sustainability but currently lack uniform on-the-ground ranch-level measurements that can inform decision makers (i.e., ranchers, retailers, consumers). Simultaneously, the multitude of approaches to monitoring and the variability in the indicators included within those approaches complicates the ability to monitor and communicate in a unified manner.

Multiple audiences along the supply chain are looking for easy-to-use indicators of the sustainability of a ranching operation: producers who want to continuously improve the impact of their management on the land and their business, companies who want to quantify the environmental impacts of their supply chain, consumers who want some confidence that the products they buy are sustainable, and public interest environmental organizations who seek to incentivize sustainable ranching and educate their members in how to distinguish well-managed operations. Rangelands are complex socioecological systems, with significant variation in climate, soils, dominant vegetation, land use and evolutionary histories, cultures, availability of technical and financial support, operation structure, and rancher values (Roche et al. 2015), and accurate, easy-to-use indicators of ranching sustainability are not immediately obvious. Furthermore, ownership of US rangelands is diverse (federal, tribal, state, nongovernmental organization [NGO], and private landowners), and with the diversity in ownership comes a combination of management approaches. This is further complicated when different rules or permit terms exist on leased public grazing lands that may also be grazed by multiple parties, compared with private lands, and ranchers must employ different grazing management strategies to meet sustainability targets or are limited in doing so. As governments, organizations, corporations, and individuals increasingly recognize the importance of tracking and communicating sustainability outcomes, the need for greater clarity on which indicators would be most important to use to assess sustainability and to monitor and track improvement over time is warranted. In connecting on-the-ground management to supply chains, we need indicators that are actionable at the ranch level, measure progress toward sustainability goals of interest to companies and consumers, and therefore, facilitate increased compensation for ranchers on the basis of these sustainable outcomes.

To understand which measurements are commonly used to indicate rangeland condition and sustainability, we synthesized existing guidance on indicators for ranch-level sustainability and explored how those indicators relate to common company, consumer, and public sustainability interests. Our focus was on summarizing commonly used ecological, social, and economic indicators, as recommended in various rangeland management resources that could inform adaptive management toward enhanced sustainability. We focused on the grazing lands aspect of the supply chain (with an emphasis on rangelands) and not the supplemental feed or feed lot components. We recognize this emphasis leaves out aspects of the beef production system that consumers also care about, but we focused on grazing lands because this is the base of the supply chain and offers significant conservation opportunity given the spatial extent of grazing lands in the United States. Our goal was to identify which indicators were not only commonly recommended but also useful to inform on-ranch adaptive management, as well as communicate sustainability outcomes for conservation practitioners and other interested audiences. As the stewards of such a vast area of land, cattle ranchers need to be equipped with the tools necessary to measure, manage, and communicate the sustainability of their ranch, especially given the intensifying environmental, economic, and social consequences of climate disruption and increasing societal attention to the provenance of food. In the synthesis, we examined both certification programs and rangeland health assessments with and without protocols. Great time and effort went into developing existing approaches, and our intention was not to create new certification schemes or replace existing protocols but simply to evaluate commonality. This also was not an exercise in identifying the best universal indicators of ranch sustainability, as that would depend on the values and specific contexts for individual producers and communities, companies, and customers. Instead, our goal was to understand which on-ranch sustainability indicators were identified most and potential gaps in indicators across the many technical assistance documents to inform sustainability efforts.

Synthesis Approach

Many different approaches exist for monitoring and evaluating sustainability of grazing lands, and we consulted as many of these documents as were publicly available. We sought to understand which indicators had broad support and where there might be gaps. Because many rangeland assessment documents are outside of the peer-reviewed literature, we did not use a traditional literature review approach. Instead, we started with a few of the widely used or known assessments and reached out to experts working in this arena to augment the list. We limited our synthesis to assessments that were free and publicly available, which meant exclusion of guidance from companies focused on ranch profitability (e.g., ranching for profit), which could have affected the indicators captured. We focused primarily on livestock production systems on unimproved grasslands, rangelands, and pasture in the United States and assessments that were broad in geographic scope and not limited to local- or state-focused assessments. Ultimately, we evaluated 21 different sets of indicators used for assessment and monitoring by a wide range of organizations, including federal agencies, ranching organizations, and conservation organizations (Table 1).

These documents ranged from on-the-ground monitoring protocols to detailed certification programs, and, therefore, the indicators emphasized or the way in which they were measured varied widely. Furthermore, the process used to identify indicators, including who was included and how, was likely different in each case. In a couple of instances, the indicators were preliminary. The Long-Term Agroecosystem Research (LTAR) network is still refining their indicators for evaluating sustainable intensification via a nationwide “Common Experiment” in rangelands, croplands, and integrated crop-livestock systems across the United States (Spiegal et al., in review). The inclusion of Field to Market's indicators (Field to Market 2018, 2019) within this assessment are limited to evaluating synergies between indicators for grazing lands and improving feed production sustainability related to the backgrounding and finishing phases of beef production.

In other instances, we combined indicator sets to facilitate comparison. For example, because the BLM Assessment Inventory and Monitoring (AIM; Herrick et al. 2017) and Natural Resource Inventory protocols (USDA 2020b) overlap almost completely, we combined the two approaches in the output (see Table 1). Finally, for two of the terrestrial approaches we evaluated, we were aware of complementary freshwater approaches (i.e., BLM AIM terrestrial [Herrick et al. 2017] and lotic [BLM 2017] protocols; Interpreting Indicators of Rangeland Health [Pellant et al. 2020] and Proper Functioning Condition [Dickard et al. 2015]). Although these terrestrial and aquatic protocols are not always used together, we combined them in the output for this synthesis (see Table 1).

For clarity, we follow the Conservation Measures Partnership definition of “indicator” (Conservation Measures Partnership 2020). Indicators should be a measurable quality related to a specific information need. Indicators can be quantitative or qualitative and, importantly, could be measured using different methods or metrics. Metrics are specific measurable attributes. For example, water quality could be an important indicator for ranchers and companies, and metrics such as abundance of macroinvertebrates or nitrate values in the water could both be used to report on the water quality indicator.

We reviewed each document and identified 180 indicators and metrics tracked by at least one approach ( Table S1 (mmc1.docx) available online at [insert URL here]). Although we define metrics as a subset of indicators, we treated them equally in our list because these terms were sometimes used differently and some approaches may have focused on one or the other. Some approaches used mainly indicators, some focused more on specific metrics, and some included both. The certification standards added the most indicators and metrics to the list as they more often included indicators for animal and worker well-being (Western Sustainability Exchange 2016; Audubon 2018; Savory Institute 2018; Field to Market 2018, 2019; Grasslands Alliance 2019).

Many approaches tracked the same or similar indicators or metrics, and after compiling the complete list, we reviewed each indicator and metric on the list, combined similar metrics into indicators (e.g., litter depth and % bare ground were grouped into the indicator ground cover). For ecological indicators we included indicators that were included in at least five of the approaches reviewed. For the socioeconomic indicators, there was less overlap among the approaches in indicators used, yet operational energy use, forage utilization, and capacity to experiment had some agreement among approaches. A core team created five categories of indicators that reflected the common groupings or themes of indicators included across the approaches: livestock-related income, non–livestock-related income, rancher satisfaction with livelihood, rancher connection to community, and community health. These categories and all indicators were reviewed by the full team.

Overall, we focused on indicators that evaluated outcomes of grazing management that would change over time in response to management. We did not attempt to address sustainability benchmarks for each indicator, as desired values for each indicator would be regionally and context specific. We excluded ranch attributes critical for planning, such as stocking rates, grazing rotations, acreage of ranch or native range, and status of infrastructure or water sources, but we acknowledge tracking these types of ranch attributes is essential for understanding the context of the outcomes measured by the identified indicators. Furthermore, some of these attributes might also be indirect socioeconomic indicators as well. We then illustrated the relationships among these indicators to visualize which indicators were directly linked to each other (Fig. 1).

Table 1

Twenty-one¹ range and pastureland assessments reviewed for ecological and socioeconomic indicators to assess grazing land condition (gray boxes indicate related but separate approaches). Indicators are ticked (“X”) to identify inclusion in the applicable assessment(s).

Figure 1.

This conceptual diagram shows the direct relationships between core indicators identified through the synthesis (individual boxes) and how they relate to ranch and company sustainability goals (colored bubbles). Because these indicators are intricately connected, we only visualized direct connections between indicators. The native and invasive plant indicators were combined for this diagram. Each arrow between indicators represents a recognized, direct effect. Some effects are one-directional, whereas others are two-directional (i.e., each indicator influences the other). Some indicators are not directly linked by arrows but aso connected through other indicators (e.g., soil compaction affects soil carbon through its effects on plant productivity and soil stability). The large gray arrows surrounding the figure indicate the overall linkage between ecological indicators and socioeconomic indicators. Indicators are organized by the sustainability goals they most closely relate to (red for climate; green for biodiversity; blue for water; and purple for social & economic well-being). Indicators in boxes with a bolded border and text are also in and of themselves sustainability outcomes (e.g., bird diversity).

Each individual approach used their own criteria for determining which indicators to include in their assessment or monitoring protocol, and many, though not all, of the approaches we reviewed made those criteria explicit in their documents. The most widely used criterion for selection was that the indicators have documented relationships with the ecosystem functions or social system the assessment or monitoring protocol was designed to address. Beyond the clear link to environmental or social factors of interest, five other commonly used criteria were sensitivity to change, repeatability among observers, standardized protocols already exist and are widely used, cost, and ease of interpretation. We discuss the resulting indicator list in the context of these common indicator selection criteria where relevant. Instead of developing our own list of criteria, our approach here was to synthesize; we attempted to draw out the commonalities.

Table 2

Corporate sustainability goals and the ecological indicators (see Table 1) in each category. Some individual ecological indicators could be used to inform multiple sustainability goals (e.g., soil stability relates to potential for long-term carbon storage, as well as water quality impacts from erosion). In addition, while some indicators are in and of themselves outcomes (plain text below), others track key processes that inform outcomes (italics below).

Notably, all of the approaches included ecological indicators, but not all approaches included economic and social indicators. Our synthesis therefore reflects this emphasis, although we do still include the economic and social indicators that were common to several of the approaches and explore why they were less represented.

Socioeconomic indicators

Though economic and social outcomes are as important for sustainable ranching as ecological outcomes (Pretty 2008; Maczko et al. 2012), the inclusion of metrics used to measure them varied substantially across approaches and generally were less common (see Table 1). Of the 21 approaches reviewed, all had ecological indicators but only 11 had economic indicators and 5 had social indicators. When socioeconomic indicators were included, they often were highly specific (e.g., number of visitor days by activity or public beliefs and attitudes about natural resources;  Table S1 (mmc1.docx), available online at …). We therefore combined and categorized some of the more common types of socioeconomic indicators included among the approaches evaluated, as we did with the ecological indicators, focusing mainly on indicators relevant at the individual ranch scale.

Economic indicators at the ranch level were the most common of the socioeconomic indicators included across approaches evaluated. We summarized economic indicators into two direct economic indicators, livestock-related income and non–livestock-related income, and three indirect economic indicators: capacity to experiment, operational energy use, and forage utilization. The non–livestock-related income indicator was chosen to represent the various indicators across approaches used to quantify the diversification of income streams for a ranching operation (e.g., annual removal of native hay, nonforage plant, woody product and other saleable material; see  Table S1 (mmc1.docx)). All the economic indicators identified through this synthesis are ranch level and likely the most useful for supporting adaptive ranch management and continuous improvement. This ranch-level data could inform economic modeling for a typical ranch, which could in turn be aggregated into regional economic modeling to understand community-level economic sustainability. Other economic indicators, such as poverty rate, income inequality, and employment diversity (among others), have been suggested as useful at a community scale (McCollum et al. 2010) but were not included here because of the ranch-level focus. Although economic security is clearly critical to the success and sustainability of a ranch, these types of indicators are extremely sensitive and include private information, which suggests there would be limited interest in communicating these indicators to other parts of the supply chain.

All ranchers will have different personal objectives for their ranches and their lifestyles, and these differences are particularly relevant when it comes to social indicators. While there is growing agreement around social indicators of rangeland sustainability (McCollum et al. 2010), it may be challenging to standardize common indicators across the production system when personal objectives differ. Furthermore, many of these personal objectives and well-being indicators are also sensitive and include private information when reported at the ranch scale (e.g., years of education). Among the approaches reviewed, social indicators at both the ranch level and aggregated across larger spatial scales were prevalent (see  Table S1 (mmc1.docx)). Given our focus on ranch-level sustainability, we included two categories of social indicators at the ranch level: rancher satisfaction with livelihood and rancher connection to community. Because social indicators measured at the ranch scale were less common than indicators measured at larger spatial scale, we did include one social indicator measured at a larger scale than the individual ranch, community health, which can also influence the ranch-level indicators identified. Community health can be measured using many different attributes (e.g., poverty rate, income inequality) but generally tries to understand the local economic and social structure, well-being, and capacity (McCollum et al. 2010). Although only one of the certification approaches included indicators related to rancher and community well-being as we grouped them here, the authors think it is critical for understanding overall sustainability. Larger-scale social indicators (e.g., community health) are important for consumers and corporations who are interested in supporting rancher well-being and rural communities but would be difficult to certify in connection to any specific ranch. This mismatch in scale between social well-being indicators that consumers care about and ranch-level indicators that can be tied to a specific producer is a challenge that requires additional attention. In particular, identifying which ranch-level social indicators could be aggregated to inform community-scale social well-being would be valuable to communicating across parties with different objectives and interests. Another option around this mismatch would be to certify ranches within a certain community or region so that certification schemes better match with the scale of socioeconomic systems.

Ranchers track socioeconomic indicators such as income and satisfaction regularly as part of their business management. However, socioeconomic outcomes are notably absent from corporate sustainability goals for beef sustainability. For example, across the 21 approaches evaluated, only three included indicator(s) related to equity, fair treatment, and employee rights for ranch workers (see  Table S1 (mmc1.docx)): Grassland Alliance (Grasslands Alliance 2019), Sustainable Intensification (Musumba et al. 2017), and the US Roundtable for Sustainable Beef framework (USRSB 2019). The act of choosing indicators is embedded in relationships of power (Constance et al. 2018) and in turn is performative in the sense that it influences how people see reality and structure systems (Hale et al. 2019). It has been suggested that one way to get around these inherent power dynamics is to focus on deliberative rather than technocratic forms of governance, which better develop relationships and mutual understanding (Hatanaka 2020). It is important to ask why these indicators are not prioritized. It is possible that it is because socioeconomic indicators are less developed, more costly, and more challenging to standardize, or it could be perceptions of lack of customer demand or assumptions that socioeconomic well-being flows from other measures of sustainability. This review has highlighted a gap in the way that rangeland sustainability is conceptualized and measured.

Table 3

Number of direct connections leading to and from each indicator as depicted in Figure 1 and the originating and destination category of those arrows.

Using Core Indicators to Link Across the Supply Chain

We conducted this synthesis to understand the leading guidance for assessing and monitoring sustainability outcomes on US ranches. In doing so, our goal was to not only understand existing recommendations but also identify whether common indicators create the opportunity to support ranch-scale adaptive management and communicate sustainability gains through supply chains to companies and consumers. One finding is that there are fewer common socioeconomic than ecological indicators across assessments, highlighting a gap in current sustainability assessments and associated need for more attention to the reasons why, how to better include them, and how assessment goals influence indicators. Here, we discuss how these common indicators could be useful to producers, corporations, and consumers with an emphasis on ecological indicators because the synthesis revealed that they are more widely used and agreed on.

Producers

Livestock production is the dominant land use for grassland pasture and rangelands across the United States (NASS 2019); therefore, it is imperative that conservation and sustainability begins at the ranch level. Producers are faced with the difficult task of maintaining the ecological condition of the ranch while supporting enough grass production that they can economically sustain their livelihood, all while meeting consumer demand. The focus needs to be on data and science that is directly applicable to land management decisions and can be incorporated into an adaptive management framework. The set of indicators identified here would enable producers to close the adaptive management loop between cattle grazing and ecological condition, while tying this to the socioeconomic impact of ranch management decisions.

Achieving a desired ecological condition outcome for a specific ranch context requires a careful evaluation of the ecological processes that are occurring at the ranch scale. With this information, producers can adjust their management to make improvement toward sustainability goals. For example, if the ultimate goal of the rancher is to produce more grass forage, there is an intricate link between ecological indicators on this list such as vegetation composition, plant productivity, water retention, and soil carbon content (Teague et al. 2011; Wang et al. 2016; Porzig et al. 2018). While soil carbon may be slow to register change in response to changes in grazing management, water retention is sometimes one of the most immediate changes and is relatively easy to observe through changes in water flow patterns (Pellant et al. 2020). Soil carbon can also be measured, though the level of replication and cost per measurement typically make it cost prohibitive (see replication requirements in Herrick et al. 2009 Volume II appendices). Furthermore, information about the ecological condition of the ranch can be used to increase resiliency of an operation when incorporated into a long-term ranch management plan and adaptive management framework (Derner and Augustine 2016). For example, precipitation is becoming less predictable than in the past, with some regions experiencing increased drought while others are experiencing more moisture, and extreme weather events are becoming common. By regularly and proactively monitoring the ecological condition of the ranch and making management adjustments as needed, one can better prepare for and cope with drought or other weather events (Roche 2016).

Understanding the connections between indicators (see Fig. 1) could help identify a subset of indicators to measure based on goals and other common selection criteria used by individual approaches, such as cost. Some of these indicators are easy and low cost to measure (e.g., plant productivity, water retention) while some are more time and resource intensive (e.g., soil carbon, bird diversity, and abundance). Routinely measuring indicators with a lot of “out” arrows may be especially helpful to inform management decisions, given that those indicators will affect multiple processes. In contrast, indicators with more “in” arrows could be especially important for demonstrating outcomes. Information from the ecological indicators can ultimately be correlated with livestock productivity metrics (calving success, daily cattle weight gain, etc.), thereby improving the socioeconomic indicators, such as livestock related income and forage utilization, as well. For producers interested in certification schemes, most of the indicators identified here were also used by organizations that certify sustainably produced beef, though it should be noted the intent of this synthesis is not to identify certification criteria. Following a certification standard would allow producers access to a small but growing array of premium markets among other numerous benefits of increased ranch sustainability.

Further Incorporation and Agreement on Socioeconomic Indicators Needed

To achieve ranch sustainability, progress is needed on at least two legs of the sustainability stool (Young 1997; Elkington 1998): economic and social. Although balance among multiple uses, agriculture, and/or local communities alongside natural resources is needed, the focus is primarily on ecological indicators (Popovic et al. 2018). This highlights the gap between what is known about the importance of socioeconomic well-being for sustainability (Brunson 2002; McCollum et al. 2010) and management guidance on what to measure over time to support decision making (explored further later).

While rare, there are prior assessments of social sustainability measures within supply chains (Hutchins and Sutherland 2008), agricultural commodity production (Rasmussen et al. 2017), and for rangeland systems specifically (McCollum et al. 2010). Furthermore, there is a robust and growing field of socioeconomic and well-being–related research in rangelands systems (Brunson 2002; McCullum et al. 2010). Why, then, do we see a disconnect between academic scientific understanding and management guidance on how to best demonstrate and track ranch-level sustainability (Wilmer et al. 2018), as further evidenced by this synthesis? Potential contributors include different organizations' limitations due to data privacy and context-dependencies of socioeconomic indicators.

Different organizations and institutions are bound by different policies and laws dictating the types of data and information they are permitted to collect. For example, for sustainability certification of ranch operations, ranch-level economic and social indicators are important to the certification process. However, US government agencies may have laws preventing them from collecting socioeconomic information unless it is guided by a structured framework, such as a National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) analysis for environmental impacts. When socioeconomic indicators are used at the ranch level, these data privacy issues are heightened, compared with more community-scale measures of well-being. This could partially explain the smaller number of socioeconomic indicators identified here applicable to ranch-scale sustainability, given that the focus of this synthesis was on ranch-scale sustainability.

The literature on social sustainability indicators calls for indicators that are tailored to local contexts (Fraser et al. 2006; Magee et al. 2012). Prior work on social-economic indicators has suggested that focusing on the local scale may be most appropriate, as there is large variation between contexts (McCollum et al. 2010). Even within a state, the cultural, historic, and economic contexts can vary dramatically, resulting in a need for localized, context-dependent socioeconomic indicators. In some cases, county-level data and indices that might be able to bridge local context with national comparison (e.g., the Centers for Disease Control's social vulnerability index; Flanagan et al. 2011) exist. Furthermore, producers' values and ranch objectives differ widely (Roche et al. 2015), highlighting the importance of flexibility in indicators. Although the context-dependent nature of social-economic indicators lends itself well to ranch-level management guidance, it highlights how difficult it may be to identify universally important socioecological indicators (akin to plant productivity). This also leads to scalar differences between social and ecological systems (Fraser et al. 2006), with socioeconomic systems often more expansive than local ecosystems, leading to suggestions for a multiscale perspective (e.g., McCollum et al. 2010). Indeed, the scale at which the socioeconomic indicators were measured varied from ranch level to larger spatial scales such as communities or counties.

Although the selection of specific socioeconomic indicators may need to vary given context (McCollum et al. 2010), without some agreed-on categories (even if broad, like “community health”), it is unlikely that socioeconomic indicators will be incorporated in ranch management guidance developed for regional or national scales. The Sustainable Rangelands Roundtable and the LTAR network have made great strides in thinking about how to quantify socioeconomic indicators (Mitchell 2010; Hamilton et al. 2011; Spiegal et al. In review), and wider adoption and agreement on methods and approaches is warranted.

Inadequate inclusion of socioeconomic indicators may have unintended repercussions. For example, failure to include them could mask potential tradeoffs or unintended consequences of management decisions, leading to ecologically beneficial outcomes, but outcomes that weaken rural economies and social structure (Rasmussen et al. 2017). If sustainability assessments lack socioeconomic indicators, they limit the sphere of their assessment and may fail to support producers in meeting their goals or capture consumer values such as livable working conditions, thriving rural communities, and family-owned operations.

Failure to identify socioecological indicators with local communities may also alienate producers and fail to capture important local dynamics (Chambers 1997; Fraser et al. 2006). Identification of social indicators of sustainability with producers across different regions and ecosystems may be an effective and worthwhile future research direction. For example, a recent study on the Northern Great Plains found that lifecycle stages of producers influenced the importance of different social sustainability indicators (Haggerty et al. 2018). Recent explorations that combine top-down efforts at standardization with bottom-up awareness of local sustainability issues may strike the balance between utility at a local level and standardization across locations (Fraser et al. 2006; Magee et al. 2012).

Implications—Moving from Indicators to Impact

To move from a set of common indicators to on-the-ground impact—both in supporting adaptive management and improved outcomes on the ranch and in demonstrating and rolling up sustainability outcomes—there are important implementation questions to consider. In particular, who collects the indicator data, how will they do so, and how will those data be used or shared? How will demonstrations of sustainable grazing management benefit ranchers who are part of the conventional supply chain, whose beef cattle are typically fed, slaughtered, and sold by geographically distant corporations? While answers to these questions were beyond the scope of this synthesis, we recommend further consideration of these important aspects of measuring and tracking sustainability indicators. Here we focus our discussion on the ecological indicators, where there was more agreement among approaches.

Conclusion

We identified 12 common ecological and 8 socioeconomic ranch-level indicators from 21 different assessments and demonstrated that many of the same ecological indicators are used across nearly all of the approaches reviewed for assessing ranch sustainability. These indicators are relevant for rangelands across the United States. However, they may be measured differently in different parts of the country, and there are various metrics that could be used to represent each indicator depending on ranch context. Which indicators, and which metrics for those indicators, are used for assessment and/or monitoring should be related to outcome goals, as producers have unique goals for their operations and companies have unique goals for driving sustainability in their supply chains. Future work related to indicators should use participatory frameworks to ensure producers' interests and concerns are front and center and that they have decision-making power. These indicators have the potential to link on-ranch outcomes with corporate sustainability goals for climate, water, and biodiversity. The synthesis also demonstrated that while there is a growing body of knowledge on socioeconomic indicators in the literature, integration of these indicators into sustainability evaluation guidance documents is still somewhat limited. Only 5 of the 21 assessments reviewed included socioeconomic indicators.

While common ecological indicators and even some protocols clearly exist, there is still a need to achieve more widespread use and agreement on metrics of socioeconomic indicators to inform adaptive management for producers and to link continuous ranch and rangeland improvement outcomes to supply chain sustainability outcomes for companies and consumers. Currently, incentives for a “value-added” product that includes rangeland monitoring are limited for ranchers outside of certification programs, in part due to the disconnect between ranchers and retailers along the conventional beef supply chain (Spiegal et al. 2020). To achieve more widespread adoption of rangeland monitoring by these ranchers, we identify four issues that need to be addressed by the ranching industry as a whole: 1) who bears the costs (e.g., time and money) for assessing or monitoring these indicators in the field and who benefits; 2) agreement on simple, robust, and standardized protocols; 3) region-specific thresholds for those indicators; and 4) issues of data privacy and sharing agreements and principles. Ultimately, if these issues were adequately addressed, a select suite of clear, simple, and easy-to-measure indicators of ranch sustainability could help producers advance biodiversity, water, climate, and social well-being outcomes in their operations and not only communicate the benefits clearly to beef retailers and consumers but also provide valuable ecosystem services that benefit nature and people at large.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.