About the project

The national Managing Rangelands for Drought Resilience project was a collaborative cross-hub project that demonstrated and built pastoralists’ confidence in applying new digital tools and management systems in their businesses. It shared unbiased information and rangeland managers’ insights into potential technologies for their businesses through the Hubs' combined networks to reduce the risk around adopting data-driven management technology.

National project lead

Northern Hub (Northern WA and NT Drought Resilience Adoption and Innovation Hub)

National project partners

Southern NSW Innovation Hub, South-West WA Hub, Southern QLD and Northern NSW Hub, and Tropical North Queensland Hub

Technology to improve drought preparedness in Western NSW

The Southern NSW Innovation Hub’s Managing Rangelands for Drought Resilience project focused on working with pastoralists from Western NSW to test and demonstrate how satellite-based mapping technology can predict groundcover changes up to six months ahead of drought.

Pastoralists Bill and Pip Ryan worked with Dr John Leys of Wind Erosion Consulting to assess how to use the freely available satellite vegetation cover data from the Geoglam Rangeland and Pasture Productivity (RaPP) mapping tool to set an on-farm trigger point to prepare in advance for drought.

In December 2023, a workshop held at Booligal in western NSW gathered insights from local pastoralists about how they use AgTech, the value of the RaPP mapping tool, and other digital tools for monitoring and managing rangelands. Southern NSW Innovation Hub and NSW Farmers hosted the workshop and partnered with Agrista and Wind Erosion Consulting to gather feedback and assess awareness and understanding of key technology tools.

NSW project lead

Southern NSW Innovation Hub

NSW project partners

• Wind Erosion Consulting (John Leys)
• NSW Farmers
• Agrista

Project funding

The Managing Rangelands for Drought Resilience project recieved funding from the Australian Government's Future Drought Fund.

Project case studies and impact

Read the Hub's Managing Rangelands for Drought Resilience impact case study

Find out more about the project in 'Tapping into data and technology for drought resilience', published in the October 2023 edition of The Farmer magazine from NSW Farmers. Or download the full project case study and report.

Watch a story from 7 News Riverina about how the technology worked in Western NSW below: