The Rangeland Brush Estimation Toolbox (RaBET) can be used to estimate canopy cover of woody plants on rangelands, today or in the past. RaBET is a true field-scale assessment of changes in woody plant cover over time. You can use it to determine where brush treatments may be needed, the long-term results of brush treatments you have already done, and where more treatments may be needed.
The Rangeland Brush Estimation Toolbox (RaBET) is an operational ArcGIS toolbox developed to assess changes in woody vegetation over space and time over large heterogeneous landscapes. RaBET was created through a collaboration between the USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), Conservation Effects Assessment Project (CEAP) for Grazing Lands.
RaBET provides 30m Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM), Thematic Mapper Plus (TM+), and Operational Land Imager (OLI) satellite-based maps of woody cover and an analysis tool that allows you to define and more closely examine areas of interest, like pastures, ranches, or specific treatment areas.
Woody cover maps are generated from 4-year composites of Collection 1 Landsat TM, Landsat TM+, and Landsat-OLI surface reflectance imagery. Multiple Landsat image tiles are used to cover an entire MLRA (Major Land Resource Area). Data gaps may exist for tiles and/or years within the composite due to lack of cloud free imagery. Maps have been masked using NLCD (National Land Cover Dataset) to exclude roads, agricultural fields, water bodies, and developed areas; see NLCD table for cover class details.