2006 Land Use in the Dakotas (Cropland Data Layer, USDA NASS). The color legend represents various land use types in the region.

Land use change ranges in each panel are in acres per thousand county acres. The white colored counties represent missing yields for at least one crop in all years.

Land use change ranges in each panel are in acres per thousand county acres. The white colored counties represent missing yields for at least one crop in all years.

Historical (1981-2005) vs. Projected (2031-’55) Yields. Each year’s crop yields are calculated as an average of all counties in North and South Dakota. Hashed representations of projected yields are from RCP 4.5 emissions scenario from seven GCMs, namely CESM (Community Earth System Model), CNRM (Center National de Recherches Météorologiques (France)), GFDL (Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory), GISS (Goddard Institute of Space Studies), HADGEM (Hadley Global Environment Model), IPSL (Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace (France)) and MIROC (Model for Interdisciplinary Research on Climate). Median projection in a given year is calculated by taking the median yield value of the yield projections from each of seven climate model outputs in each county and then taking the average across counties. We restrict spring wheat and alfalfa yield forecasts to zero for years in which these are projected to be negative values.

Historical (1981-2005) vs. Projected (2031-’55) Yields. Each year’s crop yields are calculated as an average of all counties in North and South Dakota. Hashed representations of projected yields are from RCP 4.5 emissions scenario from seven GCMs, namely CESM (Community Earth System Model), CNRM (Center National de Recherches Météorologiques (France)), GFDL (Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory), GISS (Goddard Institute of Space Studies), HADGEM (Hadley Global Environment Model), IPSL (Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace (France)) and MIROC (Model for Interdisciplinary Research on Climate). Median projection in a given year is calculated by taking the median yield value of the yield projections from each of seven climate model outputs in each county and then taking the average across counties. We restrict spring wheat and alfalfa yield forecasts to zero for years in which these are projected to be negative values.

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,Who: USDA ARS and NDSU range and wildlife researchers, graduate students, and undergraduate technicians,What: Structural characteristics and community composition collected from southwestern North Dakota rangelands from 2017 through 2020,Where: Hettinger Research Extension Center in Hettinger, North Dakota USA,Why: These two files come from a patch-burn grazing study in southwestern North Dakota that were comparing an iteration of patch-burn grazing with cattle to a version of patch-burn grazing with sheep for the grazing component. Feel free to contact me at jonathan.spiess@usda.gov or jwspiess@gmail.com.,How: We used 0.5m x 0.5m quadrats to measure vegetation structure characteristics and community composition along 100m transects in patches (subsections) of larger pastures or management units. We measured 1 quadrat spaced every 10 m starting at 0 on both sides of the transect for 22 total quadrats per transect in patch-burn grazing pastures. Transects were distributed amongst patches of each pasture and management unit.,17_18_19_20vegFG.csv is the primary dataset for this paper and repository here. We collected vegetation structure and community composition data in 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020.,RadGraph.csv was used to expedite making a community composition figure that is now in the supplemental materials for the paper.,,

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Proportion of agricultural land cover within 18-km radius developed using a circular focal moving window analysis.

Proportion of agricultural land cover within 18-km radius developed using a circular focal moving window analysis.