Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

Brief Summary of Minutes of the Annual Meeting (May 19-23, 2019, Fargo, ND):

A reception was held on Sunday, May 19, at the Candlewood Suites Hotel, a hotel on the North Dakota State University campus, organized by Nicole Juve, meeting organizer.

Monday, May 20

One of the first items on the agenda was a special welcome to Barbara Petty, Director of Extension at the University of Idaho, and the new WERA 1008 Project Director (replacing John Tanaka). 

Lightning round reports of rangelands outreach projects, faculty and staff changes and top 3 items to share with the Partnership provided a new format for state reports.  The following are highlights:

• Arizona spotlighted RP booth activities at the SRM annual conference as well as extensive work on the RP websites redesign, social media activities, completion of the RREA Strategic Plan & WSARE brush management projects, and involvement in new collaborative projects with other RP members (see more about these projects below). 
• California’s multiple rangelands-related websites were featured as was a new video about careers in rangeland management from Humboldt State - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3OsJK8tJAY. 
• In Hawaii, a variety of materials for producers were created to help in addressing problems resulting from volcanic eruptions as well as the spittle bug outbreak that started in 2016. 
• Idaho showcased 4H skillathon curriculum, a Google Earth pro course, and ‘Sagebrush Saturdays’ (https://idrange.org/range-stories/central-idaho/collaboration-thrives-at-rock-creek-ranch/). 
• Outreach activities in Kansas focused on prescribed burning workshops, a youth range camp, and adult range management schools. 
• Nebraska has a new Extension website on range pastures and forages that will become the featured Nebraska Rangelands Other new resources include the Beefwatch blog and podcast: https://beef.unl.edu/beefwatch. 
• North Dakota shared examples of new peer-reviewed Extension publications on a variety of topics available on their Livestock Management website which is currently being redesigned: https://www.ag.ndsu.edu/publications/livestock/range-grazing, as well as the NDSU grazing calculator.  They have received funding to produce a series of two-minute how-to videos.
• Oklahoma outlined plans for creating plant web pages including 3D images.  Field days are being held on invasive plants as well as prescribed fire demonstrations in four different environments.  An OK State PBS show about agriculture was featured: http://sunup.okstate.edu/.
• Oregon is involved in a Native American rangeland training partnership that includes four programs, online course, field workshops, and tribal collaborations; OSU online major has grown to 50+ majors.
• South Dakota is beginning to experiment with drones and is working with Extension web developers on revising the new site and addressing pdf accessibility.  Farm stress workshops are being held for farmers, ranchers, and those who work with them. 
• Utah State University rangelands programs have focused on aspen regeneration, control of Medusahead, the wild horse and burro issue, and sage grouse issues. 
• Washington State featured numerous multimedia projects: The Art of Range; Ranching for Climate Uncertainty including interviews and short films highlighting ecological & social resilience.
• Wyoming is part of a multi-state wild horse group and is also working on the application of new technology to sheep and cattle management questions (i.e., GPS tracking cattle, DNA metabarcoding for diet quantification, and NIRS for diet quality related questions).
• Sustainable Rangelands Roundtable update included the publication of the Sustainable Ranch Management Assessment Guidebook, https://www.sare.org/Learning-Center/SARE-Project-Products/Western-SARE-Project-Products/Sustainable-Ranch-Management-Assessment-Guidebook, and projects such as outcome-based grazing pilots with BLM, a series of soil health tours, and ecosystems services evaluation that are now online, and a sage grouse project.

Action Group updates focused on (1) Marketing and Social Media: Facebook now has more than 1000 followers (up 10% from last year); plans for a new campaign “Where I Range” for next year. (2) Collections and Content Management: Drafted a Collections Management policy for review. (3) Partnership Sustainability: Funding challenges for general operations; most successful in gaining competitive grants; working on a scope of work and template for members to use in grant proposals; and membership approval for an extra meeting fee.

New Projects were Featured and Discussed:

RREA Strategic Plan Webinars: two-year project will organize a series of webinars based on the nine critical issues described in the new 2018-2022 RREA Strategic plan (prepared by the Rangelands Partnership); available at https://ucanr.edu/sites/rrea/files/291575.pdf .  The long-term goal is to strengthen RREA/Extension programming. 

Partnership Websites Redesign project: summarized the more than six-month effort to upgrade and reconfigure the multiple RP websites into a more cohesive and user-friendly design.  Results of a Partnership survey that gained input on overall goals and objectives were reviewed. The University of Arizona’s web designer/developer then took the participants through a series of specific design questions as well as a tour of the first mock-ups to gain additional feedback.  User task exercises gave RP members the opportunity to test navigation to locate specific information.  Comments and suggestions were noted and will guide next steps in the redesign process.  (See expanded report below)

NRCS Conservation Innovation Grant (CIG) Grazingland Information System: three-year project is led by the University of Idaho with involvement of many RP members.  Project objectives include: (1) development of a grazingland thesaurus to classify and tag key phrases in selected technical resources; (2) identifying key grazingland technical guides and handbooks to be tagged and made available through RP-developed web and mobile applications; (3) using the ontology to tag and classify information within the identified technical resources; (4) developing a mobile-friendly interface; and (5) testing the ontology and the mobile app with RP stakeholders.  Project evaluation and reporting are also key activities.

Lunch Speaker, Dr. Sandy Smart, spoke about the South Dakota Grassland Coalition, an organization that started 20 years ago.  It is producer driven but partners with the State Conservationist and SDSU.  It is rancher-to-rancher but the science behind them comes from the partners. Web site: https://www.sdgrass.org/ and newsletter: https://www.sdgrass.org/newsletters-and-news/.

A dinner and tour was held at the Cass County Historical Society “Bonanzaville” site that included a dramatic and entertaining presentation by historian and artist, Steve Stark, of an illustrated historic timeline of the Land Grant university system and the Cooperative Extension service.

Tuesday, April 21^st

Business Meeting: Chair Tip Hudson provided his year-end report which featured drafts of updated mission and vision statements.  Feedback from the members was requested.

Barbara Petty the new WERA 1008 administrator provided an administrative update. She mentioned that all Western Governors Association initiatives are concerned with aspects of rangelands. She encouraged the Partnership to write a strong impact section of the yearly report because there are many accomplishments to highlight. The Partnership should also consider applying for NIFA awards. A NIFA Partnership Award application has been started. It will need to be submitted by one partner institution’s dean or director.

A motion to amend the bylaws passed to divide the secretary/treasurer position into two positions. The secretary will continue to be a part of the three-year secretary/chair elect/chair cycle. The treasurer will be a person (currently Jeremy Kenyon) at the institution that holds the Partnership’s funds (currently the University of Idaho). This will be an appointed rather than elected position with the arrangement to be reviewed every three years to insure it works well. The current balance is $5,270.03 but that does not include registrations and spending from this meeting.

Membership was discussed. With few exceptions, the 19 member states are currently engaged with the Partnership. Personal contact is important to gaining new individual members. A roster will be kept to track state representatives and insure that people also join the WERA.

Communication outlets were discussed. The newsletter is the main outlet; members signed up to write articles. The format has been changed to have a more professional look. Some newsletter articles will become publications for SRM’s Rangelands journal; new section called “research partnership highlights”.

Krista Ehlert volunteered to serve as next year’s secretary. The 2020 meeting will be held in Tucson in March and will focus on communicating science.

International Rangeland Partnership Activities Report

The RP continues to support the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists (IYRP) effort by serving as the Secretariat for the IYRP Support Group.  This includes hosting conference calls, posting minutes, managing the IYRP website, as well as the IYRP Support Group listserv.  In addition, the RP created a series of 6-foot posters that are being used for outreach at conferences and meetings around the world.  Plans for the future include participating in the Global Agenda for Sustainable Livestock conference in September 2019 and creating an academic poster on the IYRP for use at various conferences.  A full report on progress is included below. 

A member of the RP participated in the first International Land Coalition/ILRI Rangelands Initiative - Global meeting held in November 2018 at FAO headquarters in Rome, Italy.  Focal areas for the initiative are: 1. Land tenure 2. Rangeland restoration 3. Mobility issues.  Activities include exploring options for collaborative projects; creating a global photo resource; preparing regional position papers.

Web site Redesign Content Questions/Discussion: The Redesign project team experimented with weighting website Topic pages higher in search results but reconsidered this when the first page of results showed only topic pages.  The redesign team will look into having a search for only academic publications or to have the topics pages weighted equally with other content.  In addition, the ‘Tools’ section on the new site was discussed. A major concern is that many sections (i.e. multimedia, the glossary) listed under Tools are not actually tools; that section has been revised accordingly.  There was also discussion about whether search results should take users to a metadata/citation page or directly to the content. The majority felt users wants to go directly to the resource.  Finally, an outline for the new ’Member Resources’ site was presented. It will now be integrated with the main site.  State sites, global resources, grant funded projects, funders/supporters, and membership sections were also discussed.

Guest Speaker: “Advertising, Messaging, and Creative Communications Strategy” presented by Dr. Elizabeth Crisp Crawford, Department of Communication, NDSU.  Dr. Crisp discussed how to get out key messages by being nimble, positioning ourselves as a group with answers, newsjacking, and empowering producers. A brief workshop on capturing good images and videos followed the presentation.

Action Group Reports

Marketing and Social Media

• Will create lists of Extension professionals and ranchers to follow on social media and organizations to send press releases to when launching new website.
• Will create photo storage location (cloud-based) for repository and increase frequency of social media posts.

Content and Collections Management

• A draft policy will be sent out for comment.
• Focus for content development in 2019-20 will be on conference proceedings.
• Extension documents also will be a focus; guidelines for submitting Extension publications into database will be provided.

Partnership Sustainability

• Will create a 2-page white paper about the Partnership to be used to approach partner organizations for funding support.
• Will update template for services the Partnership can provide; template will have information about the Partnership that can be inserted into funding proposals including outreach, evaluation, and web development.
• Will document the Partnership’s ability to create customized educational products

RP Meeting Adjourned at 5:00pm following a summary of action plans with members identifying one particular task they hope to achieve during the next year.

Wednesday, May 22: Prairie Research Tour - Dr. Kevin Sedivec, NDSU, provided a tour of the

Central Grasslands Research Extension Center (CGREC) in Streeter, ND.  Topics covered included prescribed fire, cattle on rangelands, and bird research.  The tour provided members with the opportunity to see the prairie pothole region first-hand and learn about livestock studies and late-season grazing projects.  An excellent lunch was provided prior to a visit to the National Buffalo Museum on the return to Fargo.

Arizona Technical Team Statistical/RREA Report 2018-19

Throughout 2018 and into 2019, the Arizona RP technical team has continued to provide the technical foundation for the Partnership’s communications outlets and to participate in and help coordinate meetings, workshops, as well as special projects funded through competitive grants.  All activities have focused on providing information and educational resources to a variety of stakeholders including public and private land managers, teachers, students, policy makers, and the general public.  Specifically, the Partnership’s three-tiered websites (GlobalRangelands.org, RangelandsWest.org, and state rangelands sites) provide open access to research and education resources, practical tools, and multimedia programming on all aspects of sustainable rangeland management.  The GlobalRangelands database includes collections of resources emanating from rangelands-related organizations around the world, and RangelandsWest offers customized sections on trending topics specific to the Western U.S.  For example: https://globalrangelands.org/rangelandswest/highlighted-topics. State rangelands websites maintained by each of the Partnership members are also linked to the overall system with easy entry through a clickable map, see https://globalrangelands.org/rangelandswest. Ten state sites are hosted on the UA College of Agriculture servers.    

During 2018, website updates and refinements were made, including eliminating duplicate records in the underlying database (which includes collections from a variety of collaborators), as well as adding records for new resources.  This includes new volumes of the Society for Range Management (SRM) journals Rangelands and Rangeland Ecology and Management (REM), abstracts for papers and posters presented at SRM conferences, as well as new materials, particularly multimedia, added to the general Global Rangelands and Rangelands West collections.  Total numbers of resources in the database are currently 24,214 (an increase of 1,022 records).

The “brush management” topic page was developed with funding from the Western SARE Professional Development Program.  This project provided support for a series of workshops organized by the UA RP technical team in collaboration with the Altar Valley Conservation Alliance (AVCA).  Three workshops and five feature videos were completed in 2018.  All presentations, PowerPoints, handouts, a storymap and videos are available at: https://globalrangelands.org/brush-management-workshops.  Two of the videos developed during this project were aired on the PBS show “Arizona Illustrated”.

In 2018, the Partnership, with the Arizona RP eam as the lead, completed a two-year project to update the Renewable Resources Extension Act (RREA) Strategic Plan.  This resulted in the publication of the 2018-2022 RREA Strategic Plan and additional related resources through a customized webpage at https://globalrangelands.org/rreasp/.  Executive summaries are provided, as well as information about the national survey conducted at the outset of the project.

During this reporting period, the Rangelands Partnership also continued to expand its social media presence, and to tie outlets (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) to each other as well as the RP websites.  During 2018, the priority was posting and engaging on Facebook. Page “likes” on the RP Facebook site increased to 1013 as of December 2018, up from 915 on Jan. 1, 2018. Typically, 2-4 posts are scheduled weekly and the largest reach for an individual post was greater than 650 people. The Global Rangelands YouTube channel featured 260 videos in 21 playlists (up from 200 videos and 19 playlists in 2017) with currently 802,438 views of videos in all playlists (some videos appear in more than 1 playlist).  The RP twitter page currently has 610 followers (down 26).  The Global Rangelands website usage has increased steadily from 35,965 users in 2015 to 41,480 in 2016 to 58,292 in 2017 to 92,688 users in 2018; page views increased from 91,407 to 211,492 to 282,995 in 2017 and to 413,036 in 2018 with 115,881sessions documented (up from 71,752 sessions in 2017 and 51,364 sessions in 2016).  Thirty-nine percent of users are from the U.S., with the other 61% users from 206 different countries (up from 187 countries in 2016 and 204 in 2017). 

The Rangelands Partnership distributes a monthly e-newsletter to 130 RP members, university administrators, and international collaborators. Over 2018, the open rate for the newsletter was between 35% and 45%. (The industry standard for an educational newsletter is 17%.)  At the end of 2018, we launched a new format designed to be easier to view for online and mobile users.

How readers are choosing to view the newsletter:

The focus of the Arizona team for 2019 is to update and redesign the suite of rangelands websites using the latest version of Drupal.  This will ensure sustainability, implement a more intuitive interface, and streamline the multiple websites into one, under the auspices of the Rangelands Partnership.  When the new website is launched, the RP will use social media outlets to widely promote the new website to stakeholders. In addition, new updates of the SRM journals will be added annually to the database according to the agreed-upon embargo periods, and customized topics pages will be further developed. 

Society for Range Management (SRM) Journal Archive at the University of Arizona

As detailed in the revised Memorandum of Agreement with SRM, there is a 5-year rolling window delay for the Rangelands Ecology & Management (REM) journal and a 3-year rolling window for Rangelands. At the time of the RP 2019 Annual Meeting (May 19-23), the most recent year in the Global Rangelands/Rangelands West (GR/RW) database for REM is 2012 and for Rangelands, 2015. University of Arizona Libraries (UAL) staff have contacted Elsevier and requested the files for REM (v66, 2013) and Rangelands (v38, 2016). Records and PDFs for articles in these volumes will be uploaded to GR/RW within the next few months. [Update: The issues for v66 (2013) of REM and the issues for v38 (2016) of Rangelands were loaded in June 2019.]

REM usage stats (2018): 41,543 (20% decrease) compared to usage in 2017 of 51,733. Geographic locations of users for REM (in the rank of %): U.S (47%), India, Canada, UK, Australia.  Rangelands usage stats (2018): 16,821 (23% decrease) compared to usage in 2017. Geographic locations of users for Rangelands is (in the rank of % usage): U.S., Nigeria, France, Canada, and Australia. 

SRM Reports: RP Activities & SRM Outreach, Communication, and Website Committee

Annual Meeting, Minneapolis, February 2019

The Rangelands Partnership had another successful showing at the 72nd SRM Annual Meeting in Minneapolis, Feb. 10-14.  The RP booth met with a steady stream of visitors during the two-day trade show.  The new “I ❤️ Grass” stickers were a big hit, as were the “conference survival kit” raffle drawings (a particular draw for students!).  Many people stopped to talk and ask questions and we are in the process of following up on a number of contacts.

Two RP members became co-chairs of the SRM’s Outreach, Communications, and Website (OCW) Committee. At the meetings, discussions were led on the SRM’s goals for the OCW committee and vision for the future and toured the SRM website.

The Rangelands Partnership portion of the OCW meeting included updates on:

• GR/RW website redesign
• Restructuring International Year of Rangelands & Pastoralists (IYRP) activities
• CIG Grazingland Information System project report
• RREA webinar project update

Updates were also presented on the activities of the RP Social Media and Marketing Action Group. The Group has met regularly throughout the past year to discuss ideas for outreach on the RP home page and through Facebook.  Along with continuing efforts to regularly post content to the Facebook page, survey questions have been distributed in an effort to learn more about Facebook followers. These surveys have received positive engagement from those contributing to the comment section and overall have resulted in positive numbers within Facebook Insights. Posts to Facebook in the latter half of April resulted in a 375% increase in page views, a 200% increase in page likes, 300% increase in page followers, and increased post reach by 6%.

Several RP members had presentations in the SRM Annual Meeting program and posters on display during the Poster Sessions.

RP Websites Redesign Project

During 2018, the Executive Committee and the Arizona RP Technical Team began a process to redesign the Partnership’s suite of websites: Global Rangelands, Rangelands West, Member site and hosted state sites.  This has involved months of meetings with web design experts in the UA’s CALS Cyber and Communications Technologies (CCT) unit going through an intensive assessment process. In addition, as part of this process, a Partnership-wide survey was conducted to ensure the new websites reflect stakeholder needs, interests, and ease of use. The results of these efforts were presented at the 2019 RP Annual Meeting. 

The underlying redesign goal is to give the Partnership’s products and activities increased prominence through a seamless and easier to use interface, coupled with a modern look.  To this end, the role of the Partnership will be more identifiable on the new integrated website, with Rangelands West and Global Rangelands as two of its key resources. At the same time, social media is being used to increase visibility of the websites’ resources. Given changes in technology, website design, the Partnership itself, and recognizing members’ time and resource constraints, it is hoped the redesign will provide a sustainable foundation for the future of the Partnership.

Getting started on a website redesign involved asking and answering many questions. Who are our users? What content would be of significant interest to them? What is the number one thing that we want people to know about rangelands? Is there content that should be on the site but that isn’t there now? How can state sites be more effective and easier to manage? How can we increase the visibility of related grant projects involving the Partnership? What is the best way to feature the Partnership?

International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists Initiative

https://globalrangelands.org/international-year-rangelands-and-pastoralists-initiative

Background

Beginning in early 2016, many organizations began working together to gain support for a United Nations designated International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists (IYRP) including the RP. This led to the formalization of an IYRP Steering Committee that has spearheaded this effort by actively engaging with colleagues and interested parties around the world. The Steering Committee, including members of the RP, has coordinated numerous meetings and events and has worked with members to gain the support of their respective governments for the IYRP. One important event brought particular attention to this effort. The United Nations Environment Assembly conference held in Nairobi in May of 2016 (UNEA-2) included a Side Event on “Sustainable Pastoralism and the Responsible Consumption of Livestock”. The outcome of UNEA-2 was a successful resolution “Combating desertification, land degradation, and drought and promoting sustainable pastoralism and rangelands”. While this resolution did not include a provision for an International Year, it did include language calling upon organizations around the world to “contribute to raising the awareness of sustainable pastoralism and rangelands.” It also called for a worldwide gap analysis related to rangelands issues which was recently completed (links below). 

Current Status

• Text of the Resolution: http://web.unep.org/environmentassembly/ministerial-declaration-resolutions-and-decisions-unea-4
• Gap Analysis Report - "A case of benign neglect: Knowledge gaps about sustainability in pastoralism and rangelands”: http://www.grida.no/publications/428
• UNEA-4 Ministerial Breakfast Report with Photos (March 12, 2019)

Grants Update:

• Completed: Updating the RREA Strategic Plan 2018-21 project (2016-18) - https://globalrangelands.org/rreasp/
• Completed: WSARE Professional Development Project on Brush Management (UA-Altar Valley Conservation Alliance-RP; 2017-2019) - https://globalrangelands.org/brush-management-workshops.
• Ongoing: The Art of Range (Podcast Series): Western Center for Risk Management Education (2018-2019) - https://artofrange.com/.
• Funded: A National Grazingland Information System: Expanding GlobalRangelands.org through a Grazingland Thesaurus and Mobile Content Access: NRCS CIG (2018-2021).
• Funded: Strengthening RREA Programming Through Enhanced Connections: Webinar Series (2019-2021).
• Funded: USAIN Geotagging Project is exploring tools and best practices for creating geo-referenced bibliographic records for rangeland-related papers from a test collection of Arizona workshop proceedings.
• Funded: AZ Cooperative Extension Project: Revise & Update Public Lands Grazing Topic - the goal of this 1-year project is to create a new multimedia topic page on the theme “grazing on public lands”, with special focus on the NEPA process.
• Funded: Global Rangelands-Rangelands West portion of five-year RREA project for Arizona (2016-2021).

10/2018-09/2019 Accomplishments

• Successful annual meeting of the Rangelands West Partnership (May 2019, Fargo, ND). Attendees (24 on-site; 4 virtual). Positive financial return for the
• Initiated a website redesign project to merge the Partnership’s websites and products together in one location. This will refocus attention on the benefits and accomplishments of the Partnership particularly for the western United States; streamline and modernizs the website design; and integrate the Global Rangelands, Rangelands West, and Member websites. University of Arizona IT team engaged a website redesign expert to assist in this iterative process.
• RP Executive Committee drafted new mission and vision statements.
• Recruited new member range specialists for North and South Dakota.
• Several RP-related grant projects were completed (noted above in Arizona’s RP technical report).
• Progress was made on the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists (IYRP) initiative (also noted above).
• Washington State University launched “The Art of Range” podcast in October 2018 involving RP members as well as SRM; funded by Western Center for Risk Management
• Received funding for a three-year NRCS Conservation Innovation Grant project “A National Grazingland Information System: Expanding Global Rangelands.org through a Grazingland Thesaurus and Mobile Content Access.
• Received funding for several other new projects (see also above).
• Continued distributing information and updates via RP social media and the RP Newsletter. The Newsletter format was updated with a more professional design and an agreement was made with SRM’s journal Rangelands to adapt certain RP newsletter articles for a new column. New initiatives in social media led to increased engagement with content posted. 

Challenges of the Past Year:

• Intensive workload for redesign of Rangeland Partnership websites.
• Recruiting new members when retirements or position changes occur.
• Consolidating and reorganizing content on websites as part of redesign process.
• Engaging Partnership members actively in updating topics and other website content, as well as Action Group objectives.
• Tracking and maintaining quality output from the many grants the Partnership members have received.
• Continuing to build and expand unique state rangelands websites with locally-specific content – and adding metadata records for that content to the RP database with limited time and
• Maintaining productivity for engaging, relevant, and educational social media posts.
• Continuing to assess options for long-term sustainability and funding
• Helping to gain an IYRP designation within often unclear UN procedures.

In Process / Next Step Activities:

• Incorporate feedback received from the Partnership in the redesign of the suite of websites; relaunch later this year.
• Continue to work with IT/web design experts in development of the redesigned website.
• Continue to keep Partnership members engaged in redesign and Action Group responsibilities.
• Encourage members to identify the RP in publications, posters, and presentation.
• Continue to develop collaborative grant proposals that specifically identify connection to the RP.
• Continue to pursue harvesting rangelands records from institutional repositories; create a toolkit for members to use for setting up harvesting
• Review and finalize the new mission and vision statements.
• Develop templates to assist members in including the RP in grant proposals and other outreach activities.
• Develop a succession plan for key
• Encourage members to contribute to social media and marketing locally, regionally, nationally and internationally to highlight the partnership.

Impact Statements:  The Rangelands West Partnership (now called “Rangelands Partnership) seeks to provide quality web-based information, resources, and tools to improve land management and ensure sustainability of rangelands. Expected and ongoing outcomes and impacts include:

• Increased quantity of peer-reviewed rangeland information and resources to meet the needs of a broad range of users and audiences from around the Total number of resources in the database are currently 24,214 (an addition of 1,022 records).
• Strengthened relationships and information sharing among rangeland professionals, librarians, and IT specialists in Western U.S. states through multiple communications outlets, i.e listserv messages, monthly e-newsletter; social media posts, and annual meeting.
• Developed standardized methods for metadata, incorporating input from the RP members and other interested stakeholders into revised data entry procedures.
• Continued increases in RP website usage. The Global Rangelands website usage has increased steadily from 41,480 in 2016 to 58,292 in 2017 to 92,688 users in 2018; page views increased from 282,995 in 2017 to 413,036 in 2018 with 115,881sessions documented (up from 71,752 sessions in 2017 and 51,364 sessions in 2016). Thirty-nine percent of users are from the U.S., with the other 61% from 206 different countries (up from 187 countries in 2016 and 204 in 2017).
• Continued increases in RP social media. The RP Facebook increased page likes to 1013 as of December 2018 (up from 915 on 1/1/2018). Typically, 2-4 posts are scheduled weekly and the largest reach for an individual post was greater than 650 people. The Global Rangelands YouTube channel featured 260 videos in 21 playlists (up from 200 videos and 19 playlists in 2017) with currently 802,438 views of videos in all playlists (some videos appear in more than 1 playlist). The RP Twitter page currently has 610 followers.
• Completed “brush management” workshops and web resources topic page project funded by WSARE Professional Development Program. All presentations, PowerPoints, handouts, storymap and videos are available at: https://globalrangelands.org/brush-management-workshops.  Two of the videos developed during this project were aired on the PBS show “Arizona Illustrated”. Pre- and post-evaluations were conducted for the workshops as well as four months after the final one was held.  Comments were highly complementary and while only 43% of participants attending the first workshop felt confident to plan a brush control project, that number increased after workshops two (76%) and three (78%) and up to 80% in the final survey.   
• Completed a two-year project to update the RREA Strategic Plan. This resulted in the publication of the 2018-2022 RREA Strategic Plan and additional related resources through a customized webpage: https://globalrangelands.org/rreasp/.  Executive summaries are provided as is information about the national survey conducted at the outset of the project.
• Based on user feedback, the redesigned RP website will provide improved navigation and accessibility of user-driven information.
• Significant steps taken toward the achievement of the primary vision of the RP to be a premier website for dissemination of scientific information on rangeland ecology and
• The Rangelands Partnership is increasingly recognized as an authority on rangelands that has led to many fruitful collaborations on grants and targeted projects.