Santa Ana Pueblo Agriculture: Supporting Rangeland Monitoring and Decision Making in New Mexico With Nasa Earth Observations

The Pueblo of Santa Ana Department of Natural Resources (DNR) manages over 140,000 acres of rangeland in New Mexico, utilizing both Traditional Ecological Knowledge and geospatial technologies to address challenges like overgrazing, drought, and biodiversity conservation. Our team partnered with the DNR to conduct a feasibility study using the Rangeland Analysis Platform (RAP), which incorporates Earth observations from Landsat missions. Specifically, Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper, Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus, Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager, and Landsat 9 Operational Land Imager-2 to support adaptive management. We used RAP to assess trends in bare ground cover and biomass across the pueblo’s rangelands from 1985 to 2023, evaluating its accuracy by comparing RAP data to on-the-ground field measurements. Results indicated that RAP effectively estimates bare ground cover but showed limitations in estimating production in the arid environment of Santa Ana Pueblo. Overall, bare ground cover showed stable or decreasing trends over the study period, suggesting that the DNR’s land management practices have bolstered resilience against drought impacts over time. Further pixel-level analysis highlighted specific areas of interest, such as juniper reduction zones and riparian areas, where ground cover either stabilized or improved. While RAP offers a valuable tool for long-term bare ground cover monitoring, our findings underscored the need for an alternative data source for effective long-term biomass monitoring in Santa Ana Pueblo. These findings provide Santa Ana Pueblo with data to guide sustainable rangeland practices, enhancing ecological resilience and informing adaptive strategies to manage climate variability across diverse rangeland conditions.