Livestock management platform StockSmart wins Microsoft’s "AI for Good" award

As artificial intelligence creeps into the workplaces and the day-to-day lives of people, some have mixed feelings. Fortunately, others are exploring ways to use it to benefit our lives and landscapes. Just in time for National Grasslands Week, the Microsoft "AI for Good" program announced that StockSmart, a livestock grazing management tool, will receive financial and technical support to enhance the tool’s capability. 

The award includes Microsoft Azure cloud computing credits and the opportunity to work with scientists from the AI for Good Lab, which will enable the winning team of researchers from Washington State University, the University of Arizona, and the USDA Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station to further develop and enhance StockSmart for ranchers, range specialists, and others who use it.  

For healthy livestock, wildlife, and rangelands, it’s important to know appropriate numbers of animals for grazing an area – the stocking rate. This can change from season to season and year to year, depending on previous grazing, weather, and fire or insect outbreaks. Land managers also have to estimate future forage and weather conditions. Given all the variables, calculating rangeland stocking rates is a challenge – it’s been a time-consuming, costly, and somewhat piecemeal process. The researchers behind StockSmart sought to make this easier by developing an automated process to assess grazing capacity, develop grazing management plans, and determine where to reduce wildfire fuels through targeted grazing. Their solution was the easy-to-use StockSmart app. StockSmart provides users with near real-time, accurate data on vegetation conditions so they can make more informed and cost-effective grazing management decisions that support long-term rangeland health.

StockSmart also plays an important role in managing rangeland fuels. Many rangelands evolved with fire, like many western forests and ecosystems. However, fires now can pose risks to resources we value or communities. Invasive grasses like cheatgrass are highly flammable and have changed the way grassland fires behave. Further, unmitigated wildfire can tear through a native grassland ecosystem, offering a pathway for invasive grasses to establish and begin to dominate an area, leading to increased fire frequency and risk.   

Rocky Mountain Research Station Research Ecologist Matt Reeves is eager to take StockSmart to next-level capability with AI: “These Azure credits will provide horsepower and computational ability to track monthly changes in forage and fine fuel amounts. This will revolutionize our ability to plan and conduct fuel treatments, especially with targeted grazing.”

AI for Good supports individuals and organizations based in the state of Washington that use AI to advance sustainability, humanitarian action, and public health. 

The app is available at Stock-Smart.com. Additional information about the tool, supporting research, and its application is available on the StockSmart tool page on this website.