SALC : Neighbors
Ground
Metric
Herbaceous productionlbs/ac · all ground · 2025Mean of 3,970 SALC and 5,259 neighbor cells. Bars span p10–p90.
SALC
2,866
Neighbors
1,721
Gap
+1,145 1.7×
SALC − neighbors, lbs/ac
2018–21 gap
+509
2022–25 gap
+805
Shift in gap
+296
95% −91 to +682
crosses zero
crosses zero
Herbaceous production, lbs/ac
All ground · 312 ac SALC, 430 ac neighborsModeled herbaceous growth for the year. It is not harvested yield, not available forage and not what an animal ate: those depend on species, utilisation and grazing, none of which this measures.
Before SALC took over · 2008–2017
RAP only; the satellite records behind the other metrics do not reach back| Ground · lbs/ac | SALC | Nbr | Gap | What it means for the comparison |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All ground | 2,541 | 2,019 | +522 | Started +522, now +805. The change against the true baseline is +283 lbs/ac. |
| Crop | 602 | 661 | −59 | Started −59, now +1,352. The change against the true baseline is +1,411 lbs/ac. |
| Pasture | 2,888 | 2,625 | +263 | Started +263, now +356. The change against the true baseline is +93 lbs/ac. |
Same metric, three cuts of the ground
mean across cells| Ground · lbs/ac | 2018–2021 | 2022–2025 | Change in level | Shift in gap | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SALC | Nbr | Gap | SALC | Nbr | Gap | SALC | Nbr | ||
| All ground312 / 430 ac | 2,920 | 2,411 | +509 | 2,472 | 1,667 | +805 | −448 | −744 | +296−91 to +682 crosses zero |
| Crop50 / 135 ac | 403 | 644 | −241 | 1,707 | 355 | +1,352 | +1,304 | −289 | +1,593+269 to +2,919 |
| Pasture262 / 295 ac | 3,370 | 3,199 | +171 | 2,609 | 2,253 | +356 | −761 | −946 | +185−115 to +485 crosses zero |
| Crop minus pasturecontrol-adjusted | Crop shifted +1,593 and pasture shifted +185 over the same years, so +1,408 lbs/ac of the crop shift is not explained by whatever moved the pasture. | +1,408 | |||||||
Every metric on this ground
All ground| Metric | 2018–2021 | 2022–2025 | Change in level | Shift in gap | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SALC | Nbr | Gap | SALC | Nbr | Gap | SALC | Nbr | ||
| Herbaceous productionlbs/ac | 2,920 | 2,411 | +509 | 2,472 | 1,667 | +805 | −448 | −744 | +296−91 to +682 crosses zero |
| Perennial cover% | 48.9 | 42.9 | +6.0 | 42.9 | 31.1 | +11.8 | −6.0 | −11.8 | +5.8−0.8 to +12.6 crosses zero |
| Annual cover% | 15.1 | 15.1 | 0.0 | 16.5 | 13.3 | +3.2 | +1.4 | −1.8 | +3.2−0.6 to +6.9 crosses zero |
| Shrub cover% | 2.3 | 2.0 | +0.3 | 3.0 | 1.7 | +1.3 | +0.7 | −0.3 | +1.0−0.6 to +2.5 crosses zero |
| Bare ground% | 1.9 | 1.8 | +0.1 | 2.0 | 1.6 | +0.4 | +0.1 | −0.2 | +0.3−0.4 to +1.0 crosses zero |
| Summer share% of season | 39.3 | 33.2 | +6.1 | 37.7 | 27.6 | +10.1 | −1.6 | −5.6 | +4.0+1.4 to +6.4 |
| Surface temperature°C | 43.3 | 43.5 | −0.2 | 49.2 | 50.9 | −1.7 | +5.9 | +7.4 | −1.5−2.5 to −0.3 |
| Evapotranspirationmm · 2022–24 only | 795 | 726 | +69 | 726 | 650 | +76 | −69 | −76 | +7−79 to +90 crosses zero |
| Rain-use efficiencylbs/ac per in | 87.1 | 71.9 | +15.2 | 76.8 | 52.7 | +24.1 | −10.3 | −19.2 | +8.9−1.0 to +18.7 crosses zero |
Method
production from the NTSG biomass archive; other layers through Google Earth Engine| Metric | Unit | Source | Pixel | Grain | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Herbaceous production | lbs/ac | RAP aboveground biomass (vegetation-biomass v3) | 30 m | res-11 | Annual aboveground biomass, RAP's official product, read at native 30 m from the NTSG COG archive. RAP publishes a year behind, so 2026 is not out. |
| Perennial cover | % | RAP vegetation-cover-v3 | 30 m | res-12 | Perennial grass and forb cover. A stock rather than a flow, so a single wet season cannot buy it. |
| Annual cover | % | RAP vegetation-cover-v3 | 30 m | res-12 | Annual grass and forb cover. |
| Shrub cover | % | RAP vegetation-cover-v3 | 30 m | res-12 | Woody encroachment. Rising on SALC crop ground, which is the counterpoint in this dataset. |
| Bare ground | % | RAP vegetation-cover-v3 | 30 m | res-12 | Within two points on both sides in every year. Carried because the absence of a difference is itself the reading. |
| Summer share | % of season | Sentinel-2 MSAVI2 | 10 m | res-12 | Share of a cell's own season-long greenness that falls June-September, measured against that cell's own winter floor. Relative to the cell, so no absolute greenness line is imposed anywhere. |
| Surface temperature | °C | Landsat 8/9 C2 L2 ST_B10 | 100 m | res-12 | June-August median, cloud and shadow masked. NATIVE resolution is 100 m, wider than a res-12 hex, so read it block to block and not cell by cell. |
| Evapotranspiration | mm | OpenET ensemble v2.0 | 30 m | res-12 | March-October total. Most ensemble members are driven by vegetation indices, so this shares a signal with summer share. Corroboration, not independent proof. |
| Rain-use efficiency | lbs/ac per in | RAP aboveground biomass / gridMET precipitation | 30 m | res-11 | Production divided by that side's area-weighted annual precipitation. Holds the weather constant, which is the whole reason the comparison is same-county. |
Rainfall, both sides
gridMET, inches, area-weighted| Side | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SALC | 33.3 | 29.1 | 47.6 | 29.2 | 29.5 | 27.7 | 31.8 | 43.8 |
| Neighbors | 33.1 | 29.0 | 46.8 | 29.5 | 29.8 | 27.6 | 31.4 | 43.6 |
- Five fields, 742 acres, all within 5 km. Three are SALC-managed, two are the adjacent neighbors.
- Measurement grain is the res-12 H3 hex, 9,229 of them. Cells are kept where they overlap a field and clipped where they cross the line.
- Crop and pasture are drawn management units, not a land-cover classification. The same planted wheat reads as either depending on whether it is sprayed and harvested.
- 2018–2021 is not a pre-SALC baseline. SALC took the ground over in 2018, so both periods sit inside its tenure. The pre-takeover table above carries the years that are.
- The p10–p90 bars are spread across cells, not precision. Cells are not independent: 603 SALC crop cells carry 99 res-11 production values. The 95% interval beside each shift treats the YEAR as the replication unit, which is the honest basis for expecting another four years to look like these.
- Crop ground on the SALC side is one field, 50 acres. Two neighbor fields sit opposite it. This is not a replicated experiment and it shows what happened on these fields, not why.
- Neither neighbor field alone drives the crop result. Against the west field the production shift is +1,685 lbs/ac and perennial cover +35.8 points; against the east field, +1,465 and +29.6.
- A period is labelled with the years it actually contains. Where a source has not published a year, the row says so rather than averaging fewer years under the full label.
- Cells whose measurement spans two fields are dropped, not drawn and not counted: a 30 m pixel across a fence is a blend of both sides.
- Map cells are binned, so a cell reads to the bin width shown in the legend rather than to the pound. Chart and table numbers are unbinned.
- Every figure in a table row is worked out from the numbers printed beside it, so a row adds up: a gap is the difference of its two levels, a shift is the difference of its two gaps. A derived figure can therefore sit one unit of its last digit from the same figure worked out at full precision.