Understand Exposure

This map-based resource leverages Google Earth Engine and Tensorflow to process near real-time weather and remote sensing data, providing weekly forecast estimates of the magnitude and timing of annual production and fuel across coterminous U.S. rangelands.

Users can access several cutting-edge information products, with detailed reports in development.

The tool provides free, near real-time information to rangeland managers, fire specialists, and producers to act on in a timely manner.

Images are automatically updated when the original providers update them on their respective websites. The tool is focused on eight states: Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas.

Click on any image to view a full-sized version, and click again to reduce it. You can enlarge multiple images at the same time, and click-drag to move them around your desktop. Each image's name is linked to the corresponding page at the provider's website.

Images included:

This website provides access to drought indices that are used by the Montana Governor’s Drought and Water Supply Advisory Committee (Monitoring Sub-Committee). All datasets are calculated daily and can be aggregated by watershed and county boundaries. Much of the underlying data in this dashboard is from the gridMET dataset.

This dashboard provides map-based information on the current status of drought in South Dakota, including general drought information, temperature, precipitation, the Standardized Precipitation Index, hydrologic information, agricultural information, and soil moisture.

The North Central Climate Collaborative (NC3) is working to increase the flow and usability of climate information for Extension, farmers, natural resource managers, and communities by hosting bimonthly webinars on climate and water.

These webinars include presentations that, among other topics, summarize drought decision calendars for specialty crops, animal agriculture in a changing climate, weather-ready farms, conservation drainage, and the Missouri River Basin flood outlook.

This website offers a downloadable 39-page guide in PDF format, with step-by-step instructions and worksheets for managing drought on the ranch.

It also provides:

VegDRI maps are produced weekly and provide regional to sub-county scale information about drought's effects on vegetation.

In 2006, VegDRI covered seven states in the Northern Great Plains (CO, KS, MT, NE, ND, SD, and WY). It has undergone multiple expansions:

All drought information is derived from the U.S. Drought Monitor. The percentage of commodities affected by drought is presented in a number of formats, including data tables, data graphs, maps, and animations. 

The U.S. Agriculture in Drought file is updated each Thursday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Office of the Chief Economist, based on that morning’s U.S. Drought Monitor map. An archive of the weekly reports is available on the website.

This index is a shorter-term indicator of dryness, calculated through the analysis of satellite- and model-based observations of conditions that influence drought. It was designed to provide a snapshot of anomalously dry or wet conditions over the past four weeks, and serves as an indicator of emerging or rapidly changing drought conditions. The maps are updated weekly over the continental United States and have a 1-kilometer spatial resolution.

This toolkit from the National Drought Mitigation Center provides: