This is a multi-component measure of direct production in agriculture. A farm or ranch is defined as having $1,000 or more in gross agricultural sales. Other components of production include type of commodity produced, acres in production, dollar or volume levels of farm sales (a measure of scale), and the type of business organization (family, corporate, etc.). Farm structure is an indirect indicator of production capacity for food and fiber.

This indicator measures the annual harvest from rangelands of 1) native hay and non-forage plant materials, including landscaping and decorative plant materials, 2) edible and medicinal plants, 3) wood products, and 4) biomass for biofuels. Traditional non-forage biomass products have relatively high local value and may have exceedingly high international value. Under some conditions, the net effect of recurring harvests and/or removals of non-forage products could significantly impact ecosystem properties and processes at a broader scale than the activities themselves.

This indicator describes the extent to which economic policies and practices affect the conservation and sustainable management of rangelands. The indicator explores the relationship between micro-economic and macro-economic processes and long-term sustainable management on rangelands. Recent years have seen a transition from policies that primarily promote increased productive capacity on rangelands to a trend of encouraging ecosystem health and restoration. Extensive research has shown that important outputs of ranches are often not incorporated into conventional economic analyses. These outputs include things like family, tradition, and a rural way of life. In addition to their management-unit level effects, economic policies influence rural communities and regions.

An economic diversity index can be developed to describe the industries and sectors present in an economy. If economic diversity is defined as “a large number of different types of industries being present in an area” or “the extent to which the economic activity of a region is distributed among a number of industrial sectors,” a summary statistic can be used to describe the diversity of an area and compare it to other areas. Measures such as location quotients compare local areas’ proportional employment in industries to those of a larger region. The Shannon-Weaver Diversity Index measures diversity of employment, considering both numbers of industries present and the distribution of employment across them, against a uniform distribution where employment is equi-proportional across all industries.

Data on these variables provide information on the vitality of the local economy. High numbers in the unemployed, underemployed, and discouraged worker categories could indicate an economy in trouble and a community under stress. Such high numbers occurring in rangeland related industries (e.g., livestock production, recreation, tourism) would provide an indication of pressures on rangeland-dependent livelihoods and lifestyles.

The amounts of funds and in-kind contributions, like time volunteered, that organizations and individuals contribute to rangeland restoration activities indicate the strength of importance that people place on restoring and maintaining rangelands. These expenditures are made to maintain, enhance, or restore the rangeland ecosystem without explicit future monetary returns necessarily expected from the investment.

Federal transfer payments (e.g., food stamps, social security, Medicare/Medicaid, support for Women, Infants, and Children–WIC) are a relatively stable source of income to individuals and to local, especially county, governments during most economic conditions. This indicator is another aspect of economic resilience and the capacity to endure changes in economic conditions. The presence of such transfers could help counteract some of the adverse effects of poverty and income inequality.

This indicator is an indirect measure of income generated within workers’ areas of residence versus that from outside the area of residence. It indicates whether the residence community provides both economic and social benefits to the income earner. For rangeland communities, it indicates the extent to which rangelands provide the desirable rural setting where people want to live, but without the employment opportunities they require.

This indicator measures the differential between household income of existing residents in an area and that of in-migrants to the area. It addresses whether the people moving in are wealthier (or less wealthy) than those already there. Retirees or the wealthy may not rely on local natural resources for livelihoods in the same fashion as long-time residents or lower income in-migrants. Moreover, disparities in income are one indication of a lack of community cohesion that can be a barrier to local action on behalf of rangeland protection or sustainable management.

This indicator provides a surrogate measure of intensive human uses of rangeland through the use of road density measures and housing densities. Many intensive uses of rangeland are often not represented in land cover maps because of their small individual spatial extents. Examples of these types of land uses of rangeland include low-density rural housing developments, power lines, off-road vehicle (ORV) uses, mines, and oil and gas wells, along with their associated transportation infrastructure. The potential ecological impacts of intensive human uses of rangeland include loss and fragmentation of rangeland, rangeland plant communities, and open space, reduced primary and secondary productivity and biodiversity, increased soil disturbance and susceptibility to wind and water erosion, disruption of material flows and ecological processes in the landscape (e.g., groundwater flow), fire spread, and enhanced opportunities for successful establishment of invasive plants and animals.