By Dr. Allan McGinty Professor Emeritus, Ecosystem Science and Management, Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service
S
ETTING UP A PHOTO POINT ON YOUR RANCH IS THE EASIEST way to monitor range health over the long-term. In the photos from 1993, 1999, 2009 and 2013,
we knew where to take pictures of a particular area of the ranch because we set steel fence posts 300 feet apart. We took a horizontal, or landscape picture, at each post each year. In these images, you see just one direction. You can also shoot images from the post in all directions to give yourself a panoramic record. Stretch a tape between each of the posts and mark in-
dividual plots along the tape with rebar. Take a close-up photo of the plot — in this case, the vertical photos. This site has 4 plots marked. I included only pictures for one of the plots over time. What you are seeing is the exact same square meter of land over a 20-plus span of years. To put the pictures in context, we started monitoring
this photo point in 1993 on a ranch in the Davis Moun- tains of West Texas. The 1990s were terrible years in the Davis Mountains. We never once received average rainfall at this site during that decade. The result is obvious from the pictures. Because of this photo record, stocking rates were dras-
tically cut to reduce the long-term damage to our forage base from the drought. As rainfall returned during the early 2000s, you can see the recovery, and the pictures were used each year to adjust stocking rates to maximize recovery. The early pictures were taken with a 35mm camera and
the prints were scanned for digital storage. You can see the quality difference when we moved to digital cameras. While the early pictures may be a bit blurry, they were still effective for giving us the information to manage our stocking rates.
Photos of plot over 20-plus year span on next page.
tscra.org
February 2015 The Cattleman 99
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