Doug Tolleson
Assistant Extension/Research Specialist
Rangeland Management

Doug is the range specialist at the V Bar V Ranch.  He came to the University of Arizona from Texas A&M in January 2008 and has implemented several extension and research activities during his time here.

The most visible extension activity to date is probably the The Rimrock Report, a range oriented newsletter, published quarterly since April 2008. Each issue contains a lead article dealing with current topics of interest for ranchers, students, or range professionals as well as a “Plant of the Week” and the “View from the Rim”. Doug’s flagship extension effort is Range Rocks! a youth program designed to get high school students out on the range to gain real-world science and work experience on a large public land livestock operation.

In this program, students learn range plant identification, vegetation monitoring techniques, and see first-hand the effects of adaptive management on soil, plant, and animal resources. To date, over 150 agriculture and environmental science students (approximately 25% minority and 1.25 M : 1.0 F) from 3 local high schools have participated. In the winter of 2011, Range Rocks! students from Northpoint Academy in Prescott spent 2 days teaching what they learned to ~50 elementary students from Phoenix.. Blue Collar Plants, spearheaded by Range Research Specialist John Kava with collaboration from the Yavapai County Master Gardeners officially launched in January 2009. This website and plant collection will help those interested in identifying range plants “with their working clothes on”, i.e. what do these plants look like at various times of the year, stages of growth, and when grazed. Doug has also participated in programs developed by other extension personnel including the Natural Resource Conservation Workshop for Arizona Youth, Arizona/Utah Range Livestock Workshop, Range 101, and the Range Livestock Nutrition School. Doug is currently serving as president-elect of the Arizona Section, Society for Range Management for 2011 and is planning the summer and winter meetings for the section. Click here to see the video announcement for the upcoming summer meeting.

Doug’s research has been primarily focused on applying near infrared spectroscopy to improve nutritional and physiological monitoring of grazing animals.  The next step in this work involves a “take the lab to the sample concept” with portable spectroscopy which would facilitate real-time decision support for ranchers and resource managers. Nutritional monitoring via fecal NIRS has been conducted in conjunction with the animal science program on the V Bar V since November of 2007. This research project involves collecting manure from cattle grazing in different pastures as they are rotated through the V Bar V grazing plan. Additional NIRS work involves monitoring carbon and nitrogen on semi-arid rangeland, determining fecal starch in feedlot cattle, and diet overlap in cattle and elk. These type projects have been facilitated by the addition of an NIRS/Range Field Laboratory at the V Bar V headquarters. Landscape level fire fuel and range forage mapping is the goal of the Burning Risk Advisory Support System. The V Bar V has become a primary validation site for this study. Doug has recently started work on the Mali Livestock and Pastoralist Initiative, a project to develop an NIRS laboratory and livestock market reporting system in that West African country. New for 2011 is Doug’s collaboration with the Climate-Rangeland Connections group. This is a multi-state grant project whose goals are to:

1. Increase the capacity of Southwestern rangelands to support both sustainable livestock production and the sequestration of greenhouse gases, 
2. Increase the preparedness of sustainable rangeland livestock production systems for uncertain climate conditions in the future, and
3. Increase society’s awareness of climate-rangeland connections and the needed human capital to manage these in the Southwestern United States.