Forty-one years of the land around Carter Ranch near Ten Sleep, Wyoming, 1985 to 2026, shown at double speed. The film moves between Landsat and Sentinel-2 satellite imagery and USGS and USDA aerial photographs, different instruments captured years apart, so part of the visible change is the imagery rather than the ground. Regenerative management on the ranch began around 2016, the last decade of the record.
How much rest does rangeland need before it can carry grazing again? It is the question every rancher answers by eye each season. Carter Ranch, EverSoil's founding ranch, is working with researchers from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Biospheric Sciences Branch to answer it with measurement instead.
What the work does
The team combines decades of aerial photographs and satellite imagery with field measurements on the ground to map how vegetation on the ranch has changed, and what is growing there now. Carter Ranch covers 27,000 acres (7,000 deeded and 20,000 leased) in Wyoming's Bighorn Basin.
What the maps show
| Map | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Change over time | Vegetation cover from 1986 to 2025: where grasses, shrubs and trees have expanded, declined or held steady. |
| Plant communities, summer 2026 | A map of what is growing across the ranch at 10-meter resolution, built from imaging spectroscopy and keyed to 48 plant and ground classes. |
| Sagebrush and juniper | Where sagebrush and juniper overlap, the front where juniper is moving into sagebrush country, and how that has shifted from 2024 to 2026. |
| Uncertainty | Where the model is more and less certain, published alongside the maps rather than left out. |
Checked on the ground
Maps from space are only as good as their check against the ground. The summer 2026 plant-community map was checked against a field campaign on August 11-12, 2026. Initial results reveal a composition error of 19.8 percentage points across 23 class-site pairs, as published on the dashboard. We would rather show the error than hide it. Measured, not miracle.
Why it matters for EverSoil
EverSoil certifies outcomes: an upward soil-health trend on the land, and lab-tested beef from that land. Field monitoring through SnapLands' Land EKG measures the land ranch by ranch. Satellite and aerial data can extend that measurement to rangeland no field crew could cover, which is what it takes to verify land health across millions of acres.
Explore it yourself
Open the full dashboard to play the time-lapse, compare any two years, and download the maps. The project atlases are also available: Evidence, Decision and Method.
Who's involved
- Researchers from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Biospheric Sciences Branch: remote sensing, mapping and analysis
- Carter Ranch, Ten Sleep, Wyoming: the working ranch and its grazing decisions
- SnapLands: field monitoring through Land EKG
- EverSoil: the certification the work supports
This page describes a research collaboration and is shared for research purposes. It does not imply NASA endorsement of EverSoil certification or any product.
Run a ranch? See how to get started. Want to support the work? Donate to EverSoil.