County-scale estimates of Grazing Land for the Conterminous United States v1

This is a companion dataset to a manuscript in review by Rangeland Ecology & Management: Bettigole, C, M McClure, 5, A Wilson, S Kolodney, C Kazanski, S Gennet. (2025) Mapping grazing lands for the conterminous United States. Rangeland Ecology & Management (in review) Abstract from the manuscript Grazing by domestic ruminant livestock is one of the most extensive land uses in the continental United States, providing ecosystem services related to soil, water, air quality, and biodiversity, while serving as a major component of local communities and our food system. Livestock production is also a concern for environmental outcomes related to water quality, soil erosion, and climate. Despite its importance, national-scale data on the extent and distribution of livestock grazing are sparse due to the matrix of federal, state, tribal and private management entities tasked with cataloging the spatial extent of grazing land ownership and management. Here, we compile a comprehensive geospatial dataset of federal, state, tribal, and privately-owned grazing land at the county level in the continental United States based on data from state land boards, federal data portals, and the USDA NASS system. In this study we estimate where grazing actually takes place at the county-scale, rather than relying on land cover proxies (e.g. grassland, rangeland, pasture), as previous studies have done. Our analysis shows there is 2,798,283 km2 of grazing land in the continental United States – 36.5% percent of the nation’s total land – composed of 155,526 km2 (5.9%) state-owned grazing land, 941,218 km2 (33.6%) federal grazing land, 106,531 km2 (3.8%) Tribal land managed by Native Americans, 59,950 km2 (1.9%) Tribal land managed by non-native producers, and 1,527,484 km2 (54.6%) privately-owned grazing land. This is in the middle of the range of previous estimates – 2.4 million km2 (31% of land area) to 3.24 million km2 (43%). We also assessed the relationship among grazing land distribution, ecological resilience, and residential development patterns. Our spatial analysis hints at positive correlations between grazing land and landscape resilience, indicating the importance of this land use for nature conservation, especially in the semi-arid Mountain West, and in counties with a high proportion of federal grazing land. Our results show that the vast majority of counties west of the Mississippi River primarily place new residential development on land that was previously used for grazing. Given high development pressures in counties with large proportions of grazing land, we see the resilience of these landscapes currently under threat. This dataset provides new insight on how grazing lands are distributed across the US, their ecological significance, and the risk they face from climate change and land-use conversion.