Grazing management for providing multiple ecosystem services at the ranch scale requires balancing desired outcomes.

Abundant challenges involve matching the spatial heterogeneity in soils and associated plant community characteristics with the temporal variability in precipitation.

Prescriptive grazing (season-long continuous and time-controlled rotational grazing) removes the human experiential knowledge to adapt to changing conditions, whereas adaptive multipaddock (AMP) grazing often invokes high stock densities, which reduce livestock weight gain.

A “mix-and-match” or blending of both approaches for grazing management in the shortgrass steppe can result in reduced drought risk, enhanced breeding habitat availability for grassland bird species of concern, and sustained livestock production.

During grazing permit renewals, the Bureau of Land Management assesses land health using indicators typically measured using field-based data collected from individual sites within grazing allotments. However, agency guidance suggests assessments be completed at larger spatial scales.

We explored how the current generation of remotely sensed data products could be used to quantify aspects of land health at watershed scales in Colorado to provide broad spatial and temporal context for the land health assessment process.

We found multiple indicators could be quantified using these data products and were relevant to land health standards.

Within focal watersheds, bare ground cover decreased over the past 30 years, while annual herbaceous cover has increased over the last 10 years. Vegetation productivity was variable over time, but interannual fluctuations were consistent across watersheds.

Remotely sensed data products can help resource managers understand how current conditions relate to broad spatial and temporal trends in the region and could provide another line of evidence for the land health assessment process. They may also identify target areas where management strategies, such as eradication of invasive annual grasses, should be focused, and could help resource managers communicate complex issues to the public.

The King Ranch in Wyoming, established in 1911, has for generations been “Ranching on the Edge” and adapting to new challenges as they operate on the perimeter of Wyoming's largest city, Cheyenne.

Lessons learned from King Ranch are highlighted regarding decision-making approaches, management strategies, and partnerships used to manage complex and highly variable systems for multiple goals.

Challenges presented to the King Ranch were turned into opportunities—“make lemonade when lemons are presented”—through creative collaborations resulting in new economic opportunities providing an avenue to involve the next family generation, leveraging existing skill sets of personnel on the ranch and ranch assets, and embracing community-centric relations.

Management-science partnerships involving multiple local, state, and federal entities on contemporary issues foster bidirectional knowledge transfer and learning for both ranchers and scientists.