Rangeland Resilience
Satellites Spot Silent Spreaders
Geospatial Tech Reshapes Land Defense
By Sean Donegan, President and CEO, Satelytics
In agriculture, a quiet crisis has been brewing for nearly half a century now. Every decade since 1970, the costs from invasive species have at least quadrupled— such that the global economy is now losing $ 423 billion per year to the problem. Species like cheatgrass, medusahead and ventenata are silent killers, wreaking havoc on ranchers ' lands and leading to cascading effects across supply chains. According to the United Nations, upwards of 1 million plant and animal species could be at risk of extinction if current trends hold.
Ranchers are acutely aware of this problem: much of their energy is devoted to identifying and rooting out invasive species. But there is only so much these ranchers can do on their own. Many of them are dealing with properties spanning hundreds of thousands of acres: manually inspecting such vast terrain is close to impossible. The result is that infestations often spread unchecked. By the time the ranchers notice that something is wrong, it ' s often far too late.
This situation might seem bleak, but in recent years, a new solution has emerged that promises to put this problem in the rearview for ranchers across the world. It ' s called geospatial analytics— and it ' s set to play a major role in safeguarding
10 | 515-574-2206 | 515-574-2189 | June 2025