National Wildlife Refuge

Land managers in the southeastern United States cultivate rice (Oryza sativa) to provide calorie-dense forage for autumn-migrating and wintering waterfowl and other migratory birds. Conservation planners require accurate yield estimates for rice and other energy-rich croplands to parameterize bioenergetic models and support data-driven, adaptive resource management efforts. We developed a rapid method to efficiently estimate rice yield and quantified associated precision, accuracy, sampling time, and operating costs in the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley (n = 16 fields). We...