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Doug Tolleson Doug is the newest faculty member to be located at the V Bar V Ranch near Camp Verde. He comes to the University of Arizona from Texas A&M where he completed a PhD in Rangeland Ecology and Management in 2007. At Texas A&M, Doug was an Assistant Research Scientist and the Director of the Grazingland Animal Nutrition Lab for 9 years. Before his time on campus at A&M, he was a Research Associate for the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station in both Vernon (6 years) and Uvalde (3 years). As director of the Grazingland Animal Nutrition Lab, Doug taught workshops on monitoring grazing animal nutrition in the US as well as Mexico, East Africa, Mongolia, and India.
Since arriving at the V Bar V, Doug has been involved in implementing several extension and research activities. |
Contact Information 2657 S. Village Drive Cottonwood, AZ 86326 Phone: (928) 646-9113 x 18 Cell: (928) 821-3222 Email: dougt@cals.arizona.edu The Rimrock Report Quarterly Range Management Newsletter |
Monitoring rangelands with producers and agency personnel is a big part of Doug’s extension efforts in Arizona. So far these efforts have been conducted on ranches in Yavapai, Gila, and Maricopa counties. A range oriented newsletter, The Rimrock Report, has been published quarterly since April 2008. Range Rocks! is a youth program designed to get high school students out on the V Bar V to gain real-world science and work experience on a large public land range livestock operation. In this program, students learn range plant identification, various vegetation monitoring techniques, and see first-hand the effects of adaptive management on soil, plant, and animal resources. Blue Collar Plants is a work in progress, spearheaded by Range Research Specialist, John Kava with collaboration from the Yavapai County Master Gardeners. Once completed, this website and plant collection will help those interested in identifying range plants “with their working clothes on”, i.e. what do these plants look like at various times of the year, stages of growth, and when grazed. Doug has also participated in programs developed by other extension personnel including Range 101, and the Range Livestock Nutrition School. Doug’s research has been primarily focused on applying near infrared spectroscopy to improve nutritional and physiological monitoring of grazing animals. The next step in this work involves a “take the lab to the sample concept” with portable spectroscopy which would facilitate real-time decision support for ranchers and resource managers. Nutritional monitoring via fecal NIRS has been conducted in conjunction with the animal science program on the V Bar V since November of 2007. This research project involves collecting manure from cattle grazing in different pastures as they are rotated through the V Bar V grazing plan. A collaborative experiment between UA, the USFS, and a private rancher to determine the effects of protein supplementation on grazing distribution and utilization of weeping lovegrass is underway near Payson. Weeping lovegrass was used in a re-seeding effort following the Dude Fire in 1990 and has become a monoculture in many areas. Landscape level fire fuel and range forage mapping is the goal of a project initiated by TX A&M and the USFS in Arizona. The V Bar V has become a primary validation site for this study. |
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