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Data from: Multi-year drought has persistent forage quality and quantity effects that can be intensified by heavy grazing in semiarid rangelands

Metadata Updated: February 12, 2026

These data were collected as part of a larger research project, called Grazing Management for Drought Resilience (GMDR), which aims to understand how management strategies impact rangeland ecosystem health across varying drought magnitudes. Growing season droughts have major impacts on grassland vegetation and are predicted to become increasingly frequent in semi-arid prairies of North America, but little is known about how droughts and post-drought legacies interact with grazing management to affect forage quality and quantity. The study was conducted in eastern Montana at the Fort Keogh Livestock and Range Research Laboratory and a private cattle ranch in the Thunder Basin region of northeastern Wyoming. We experimentally manipulated grazing and rainfall reduction in a full factorial design (3 grazing × 5 precipitation levels). Experimental treatments were used to assess both short and long-term changes in forage quantity and quality. Grazing treatments were implemented in early July in Wyoming and early August in Montana. Forage, consisting of living and dead herbaceous material (e.g. grass, forb) was sampled in May, June, and July for 5 years (2019-2023). Samples were dried and weighed to obtain biomass measurements and subsequently ground for analysis of quality including digestible organic matter and percent fiber. In addition, these data include two composite indices of digestibility: relative feed value (unitless index based on digestibility and fiber content) and digestible forage biomass (g × m-2).

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: Creative Commons CCZero

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date February 12, 2026
Metadata Updated Date February 12, 2026
Data Update Frequency R/P1M

Metadata Source

Harvested from USDA JSON

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date February 12, 2026
Metadata Updated Date February 12, 2026
Publisher Agricultural Research Service
Maintainer
Identifier 10.15482/USDA.ADC/30988474.v1
Data Last Modified 2026-01-22
Public Access Level public
Data Update Frequency R/P1M
Bureau Code 005:18, 005:20
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id 6264f655-f95d-4d21-b70e-a55f01944f01
Harvest Source Id d3fafa34-0cb9-48f1-ab1d-5b5fdc783806
Harvest Source Title USDA JSON
License https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
Old Spatial {"type": "MultiPoint", "coordinates": -105.96666296233131, 46.33533192140868, -105.1212655511701, 43.24451562356131}
Program Code 005:040
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 02994d25c15aefea7a80437dd20287e38cea09cb6e352157a3e0bdacbe2cd2aa
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial {"type": "MultiPoint", "coordinates": -105.96666296233131, 46.33533192140868, -105.1212655511701, 43.24451562356131}
Temporal 2019-05-01/2023-06-30

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