Livestock Wala'au

S3 Ep. 12: H-RIP, Hawaii Rangelands Information Portal

• Season 3 • Episode 12

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Aloha and mahalo for tuning in! In this episode, we're joined by Cherryle Heu and Ryan Longman, who are here to share an exciting development for Hawai'i's ranchers. They've launched the Hawaii Rangeland Information Portal, or H-RIP, a tool designed to enhance productivity and sustainability in the ranching industry. Tune in to discover how this tool can benefit you!

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https://cms.ctahr.hawaii.edu/forestry/Forestry-Agroforestry-Trees/Leucaena-leucocephala

Aloha! Today's episode is sponsored by the Livestock Extension Group of the University of Hawaii, Mānoa College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, the Center for Ag Profitability out of the University of Nebraska Lincoln, and the Western Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program. Aloha, welcome to the Livestock Walau, a podcast aimed to provide educational support, information, guidance, and outreach to our livestock stakeholders in Hawai'i and the U. S. We are your hosts, Mele Oshiro and Shannon Sand. And today we will be talking about, is it called HRIP or H R I P or Okay. That's what I was calling it in my head or the Hawaii rangeland information portal. Yeah. Thank you, Cherryle and Ryan for joining us today. You know, we really appreciate you taking the time to come and share the tool that you folks have been working on and developing in the project. So either one of you want to take the floor and sort of tell us a little bit more about yourself and kind of your position and responsibilities sort of in the project that you're working on. All right, well, I'll go first. So Cherryle, save the best for last. My name is Ryan Longman. I'm a research fellow at the East West Center, but I have a lot of connections with the University of Hawaii also. And I'm the, one of the PIs on this project. And, it's basically a project from the National Integrated Drought Information System. They'd given us some money to do some work, you know, drought related work in Hawaii. And, we kind of identified the ranching sector as, as a good starting point for that. So, yeah, the project kind of kicks off, back in 2020, I think. I'll just show you the timeline now if that's, that works that way. I'm kind of telling the story. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, you got, you have the, timeline here. Yeah. So for the folks that are just on audio listening, there is a video portion of this podcast that'll demonstrate the tools and some of the timelines and things that we're sharing here. So, we'll, we'll do our, do our best to, we'll link that in the show notes. Yeah. We'll link everything up for you. Yeah. All right. Well, yeah, let me set the stage here and let's real get into it with the actual tool. So NIDUS gave us this grant and, you know, we kind of did some exploratory work. They didn't tell us what to do, but we thought, you know, hey, let's, you know, let's try to focus on in the ranching sector. We know there's a need there and, you know, supporting food and, and, you know, sustainability in Hawaii. So, we just kind of started there. We started kicking around some ideas. You know, in 2020, obviously we know 2020. It's kind of difficult to get out there, but, you know, we had some conversations, And then, we hooked up with Mark Thorn in, in 2021, you know, based on some of the work he had done on forage production, and we looked at the tool that he had developed and we said, wow, this is a really good idea. Maybe we can do something to improve on it, you know, to, to bring in new data, to, to perhaps, you know, refine some of the equations, but it was a really good starting point. And so we had conversations with him and he gave us the green light. So we kind of started on that path of really kind of working on something that was already done. Kind of out there, but kind of working on improving it. So, you know, pretty soon after that we hooked up with, Carolyn Aviloa from NRCS. We found out all the great work that she was doing and her team on, looking at forage, growth for different grass types and their different rainfall regimens. And, so it was a really amazing work on her end, her team's end. We got introduced to the Hawaii Cattleman's Council and Nicole Galase know later in that same year. And then, you know, we started, you know, I did a Livestock Pau Hana, which was a, you know, kind of a, a first entry into the ranching community. You know, just kind of get my little, my little academia hat out there and just say, Hey, I'm Ryan and I'm working on a project. And I think that was kind of the extent of it. At that point, but just, just to enter the space kind of gradually with some intention. So this period was more about exploring methods, building relationships, and kind of testing those methods to see what worked and what didn't work. Then at the, about mid 2022, we got, we went back to NIDUS and said, Hey, we had this tool, but it's not ready to go yet. You know, we're not comfortable giving it to the ranching community. It needs more work. It needs better, guts to it. So they said, okay, we'll really like what you're doing. Let's give you some more money. They gave us two more years. Cherryle had already been working on the project as a kind of a research assistant, then started as a master's student at the university of Hawaii. So she, this became her kind of job to work on the tool, full time job. Well, part time job, she had to be student stuff also. So she got in and came on as a student at that point. And, Then in 2022, we went to the Hawaii Cattlemen's Council annual meeting, kind of rolled it out in a real soft way, saying, hey, this is what we're doing again, talk with some folks, I gave a presentation there. And then we realized that, you know, really the guts of this thing really needed to have something. So we actually took Carolyn and her team's tool, the 528 forage production tool and built it into the Hawaii Rangeland information portal. So, we're actually leveraging all of that hard work, years and years of work from NRCS to be able to do that. Then in 2023, we also kind of went, did a little bit of road show. We met with some different ranchers, on the big island, kind of demoed the tool, we did some virtual presentations, just kind of get some feedback on how we could, we could make it better. And then this fall we were back at the, at the Cattlemen's Council meeting and just kind of, you know, talking through it some more. So this period was kind of like outreach to end users, building relationships again, and refining the methods, making sure it was in pretty good shape. Great. And then, um, you know, we had a soft launch over the last couple of weeks. We've been kind of getting information out to folks. We built it at the cyber infrastructure. And now UH is maintaining this. We kind of, you know, got some videos together like this timeline and real kind of demo. And we'll be getting that information out in a real soft launch type of way. And then we'll have an official launch sometime in the spring here, where actually NIDUS kind of comes in and does the communications on that. And it's kind of maybe a broader audience. So, and then we have a new proposal that's going to be, NIDUS is going to fund. And that's going to be the maintenance, the uptake. If we get feedback from ranchers, we're going to be able to. You know, incorporate that and kind of move forward in a way where this thing, you know, if folks like it, it gets maintained and we can continue on, you know, servicing it and making it better as as feedback and stuff comes in. So moving forward. It's about improvements and maintenance and kind of, you know, Building in feedback. So I know that's a lot of talking and I'll stop there, but, just kind of wanted to lay this out there. Cause I think, I think you kind of need the whole story to really understand why we're standing here today. Yeah. So I'm just going to ask a nosy question real quick, if that's okay, Ryan and Cherryle. So if, if a rancher wants to leave feedback, is there a feedback form? Is there an email address if they go to the website and have some feedback for it or sorry? Yeah, no, good. Great question. So we are Really hoping that we could get as much feedback as possible, whether what's easy to understand what's difficult to understand. You know, how can we make the website better? We're hoping that it can be as user friendly as possible. So right now we don't have a form. Exactly. We do have an email that anyone could send us. It is on the bottom of our website. It would be. H C D P at Hawaii dot edu as of now. So yeah, please feel free to reach out to us. Nice. I'm happy to answer your questions. And also, I might be jumping the gun here, but we're hoping to, run some one on one meetings, whether virtually or in person, we. In the past, as Ryan has mentioned, you know, we've been working, closely with ranchers to get this feedback directly. So if anyone is interested in continuously meeting with us, getting that direct, walk through and we can get that feedback directly as well. We'd be happy to. Yeah, that's awesome. Okay, Cherryle, so back to you. I was like, can you give us a little bit of information? Ryan kind of mentioned how you came into the project, but just give us a little more information and background related to you and kind of just how you came to be here. Oh, okay. Sure. From the origin. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it sounds like a good idea. We heard Ryan's story in the last podcast. Sorry, Ryan. I just turn my camera off. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not, I'm not sure where to start. I guess. Well, I'm Born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii. And I got my bachelor's degree in environmental science, in 2020, peak of COVID pandemic. And, just through some word of mouth, I got involved with this project as kind of like that research assistant website programmer position. And I've luckily, fortunately been able to You know, be hired from the start of this project, so it's been really fulfilling to watch it grow. And so, during that way, I was able to, you know, make personal growth myself by enrolling in graduate school. I'm hoping to finish up my master's degree this semester, and, and I'm hoping to continue to work with this community. And, you know, it's been really fulfilling to hear personal stories about, How ranchers have been suffering through droughts and, you know, just trying to do what I can to give back to communities and do what I can with my skills to, you know, assist them with in their lives. So it's been a really fulfilling project and I'm so grateful to be with this team. Great. Well, you know, I think it's we're grateful in the community for the ranchers to be able to have you folks developing things like this for them. You know, decision support tools are beginning to be really key components of management strategies and planning and programming for For them. So I think that's a, very, you know, it's a very useful tool for them. And even in other aspects, we, Shannon worked and I, and I, in her finance and stuff and talking about things like that. So having something like this is very important, but so you want to throughout. I mean, take us through some of the, take us to the tool itself, right? H-RIP is what you guys call it. It's a, what you range that as information portal. but what exactly is this tool? How are people going to use it? It is a lot of things. And I'm, I think we have a lot of features that I'd like to walk you guys through. Let me, absolutely. Okay. And so for our listeners, there is a visual component with this and Cherryle has said she's going to do her best to, to walk us all through this together. But if you could go to the YouTube channel, this is probably the best time to do that. Yeah, thank you for mentioning that. Yeah. So I guess I'll start with the URL. The website is now live for anyone to access. So it's hrip. dot Manoa, M A N O A dot Hawaii dot E D U, and so what, visual listeners are seeing are the home page, is the home page to the, website, HRIP, and if you scroll down a little, you just see some generic statewide conditions, so the first thing you see here is the gauge, which The and so gauge the El Nino Southern oscillation gauge, and this is kind of just telling us whether we're in an El Nino or a La Nina. I think many have heard those terms before, hopefully, and it's, you'll, I'll go back to this in a 2nd, but it's very, it's what we kind of base our rainfall outlooks, based on our historical, patterns. And we, you know, Are heavily relying on this gauge for now for our rainfall outlook. So I'll get back to that in a second, but we scroll down here to other statewide conditions, drought monitor, et cetera. But the real, the juice of this website is the site specific conditions. So what you see here is an interactive map of the state. Each island has a series of squares and each square here is about about one by one mile and. When you click on any of these squares here, you'll get a pop up with a link to it. So let's just randomly click on one of these squares and you'll be taken to a page. Right now I clicked on RID 019. It's all anonymously coded and everything you'll see on this Page now is dedicated to that square that we just clicked on. So I'll go through the components 1st. So the 1st thing you see is the climate dashboard. We call it and. This is where ranchers can get near real time information and we're hoping that it's. We're envisioning ranchers to kind of just open this and easily see. Their ranch information, so what we have here is. Daily and monthly data. So you can see how much your ranch got yesterday in rainfall, as well as last month. So daily rainfall is coming soon. We're hoping to get that ready shortly. But that will be so cool. That's great to hear. Yeah. We're really excited to incorporate that. So for now we have, you can just click on this daily and monthly button and you can toggle it and you can see, for instance. We're recording this in February, so you can see how much rainfall this ranch got. In last month, so January, and you can, you can also compare that to typical January. So, for instance, this ranch got. 1 percent less rain than the typical January. We can do the same for temperature as well, daily and monthly. And this bottom portion here is a drought index. So we show the last 12 months. Where this ranch has fallen in terms of drought, so if it falls under this red line here, it's considered to be in a drought and we also have an indicator to show. If you're in a drought, if you're in a. Moderate drought. Exceptional drought, et cetera. So we try to give near real time information to say, hey, you may be in a drought right now. Or, hey, last month, you got 50 percent less rain than normal. And we're hoping that ranchers can use this climate information to. You know, make their decisions, whatever decision making operations they may have. I'm just thinking with stocking decisions. Mele, you can pipe in or yell at me if I'm saying something wrong. But I'm just like, it's, it's nice to be able to look at if you can look at like, okay, like last month we got 50 percent less than usual. So maybe we need to look at, you know, the ground we're grazing on or like, again, stocking density. I think of things like that. Cause there are a lot of cattle . I would think that this would be a valuable tool. Yeah. We've been hearing a lot of stories about, you know, they, they could feel the drought, they can tell that they're going through a drought. They don't really have the statistics for it. And Exactly Prior to this and the data. You know, it's difficult to quantify how much rainfall you got, especially as we all know, 1 place can get rain and 1 mile get nothing. So it's really we realize the importance of site specific data. So that's what we really emphasize this tool that. Everything you see in that square is shown on this page. Yeah. Yeah, so that's the climate dashboard. You have any questions? I don't have anything. Mele. Do you have anything? No, I, I think Shannon hit it spot on when you talk about, stocking densities and sort of using this as a, way for you to sort of predict where you're going to go and a tool, you know, to make those decisions. So it's important. And, and Cherryle, you covered another important part of not having this, the statistics, the data behind things, you know, some of these producers even try to go for, different funding or other, Aspects of. Different grants and things that are out there for them. So this really helps to put some information behind, you know, site specific information behind those types of applications that they may want to go for. How many sites do you have for these just throughout the. I see a lot on Big Island. It looks like throughout the state. Do you guys have an actual number? Because there's a lot of spots on here. Yeah, we have currently we have 93, but what I do is I created a form where ranchers can select or submit their site. So, you can have. You know, a million because I see, like, Hilo is kind of light, compared to some, are you just, sort of the sites that are here? Are they specific to like, yeah, ranches and cattle and livestock production or also looking for sites that are just, you know, ag production land, right? And not just ones that are raising livestock. Mainly focused on ranches. I don't want to speak, you know. No, it's the only reason I asked is because I'm wondering, like, to just to increase them on a sites that are available. They're putting an information, you know, maybe a rancher is not going to be on there, but a site next to him or something like that would be there. And he could pull information from that site where relating to sort of precipitation or temperature, things like that, that could be useful for their production purposes. Well, Mele we could put it. We could make the whole thing sites everywhere. It's just a matter of like, not making it, making it. So it's a little personal, right? So, we started this out by just getting ranches where we knew we didn't want to put the ranches on there. We know it's personal information. Correct. Started out with the boxes. And then as we've talked to people, he was like, Oh, can you put my spot there? My spot there. And now we have a tool. Anybody who wants the information, we just put a, we drop a pin there. So it's not, it's, it's up to the public to tell us that we need more spots on there. And then we're going to do that for them. Yep. Yeah, let me just show you the form real quick. So this is, just a form I created that anyone can submit a site. So, you know, they can. Scroll through this map and click on. A point, and then I will create that square for them and I have a code running for you to immediately create that website for them. So it's really easy and we are hoping that. People more people will submit more sites, so. No, I hope I really don't want people to think, oh, my. My ranch isn't reflected on this map. I can't use this tool. It's really available to everyone in Hawaii. Yeah. And I think that's one thing, you know, producers that you say are, are not, that are not on here yet. That's an important point that even if they're not on here, there's likely an area that's very close in relation to production in the zones that they're at. And they'd be able to use that information. So that's cool. Very cool. I think it's a very useful tool. I'm I don't want to spoil anything, but I believe we're also hoping to use this tool for other purposes, whether it's conservation or agriculture focus. So stay tuned for it. But I do want to highlight another awesome feature of this tool, which is the forage production outlook. Yeah, so first let me walk you through the rainfall outlook. So I guess let me zoom into this portion here. So this is the gauge we saw earlier, to explain with an example. So right now we're in a strong El Nino and typically during strong El Ninos, we see dry conditions. So what we do is we have over a hundred years worth of rainfall data that's site specific. So what we do is we have. Historical average, so that means, the February, all of February's in 100 years, the average rainfall conditions. And what we do next is we take all February's in the past that are during a strong El Nino, and we get the average rainfall conditions for that, as well as the minimum rainfall we've seen during in that selection as well. So if you look at these statistics here, this rancher has seen 1. 5 inches Typically in February, but in an El Nino, they see 0. 5 inches of rain, so they can kind of gauge how this strong El Nino can affect their ranch and how climate changes based on. Historically speaking, we're not and we're not doing projections or modeling. We're just showing what your ranch has seen previously. And so this is how we kind of show that outlook. So, scrolling down here, similar to the statistics you saw up here down here. We show. The current month in the next 2 months, be assuming that we're still in the strong. And so you can see again. So, there's 3 bars. The 1st bar is that average February value, or the next would be the average March values. The 2nd bar shows the strong El Nino averages, and you can clearly see how much lower it is than average. And then again, the minimum we provide kind of as like a, worst case scenario. And so we take this information, we provide it, with some caveats, I guess, you know, we're assuming that there's a strong El Nino continuously until according to this graph until April. And that's, is. The projections at the moment, this graph changes monthly, so we do encourage ranchers to view check in, you know, on at least a monthly basis to make sure that that these outlooks are still, accurate and what we do with these numbers is if you scroll down, you'll see the forge production decision support tool. all we ask is for the ranchers to select their grass type. So we have 5 types and then we also have forage conditions. So, whether if you're in a drought, it may be unimproved conditions. Or if you've been receiving rain, you may see more forage growth and you get improved conditions. So, once they input that. I might have some difficult time explaining. explaining this verbally, but that's okay. Just do your best. It's all right. So we have, so when you hit submit, we have the three month outlook. So first is we input the rainfall information from the graph you see above that average, the strong El Nino average, the strong El Nino minimum. So we automatically input that information into this tool to provide them with, forage production estimates, so I should also emphasize this. Tool was we adopted the 528 tool from the N. R. C. S. they've been really generous and letting us use their model and. We kind of just automate that process a little more for the ranchers. So we input that rainfall information for them. All we ask is for that grass type and their forage conditions. And what we provide is a 3 month outlook. So based on your rainfall, the 528 tool can estimate your average production by month. And then what we do is we input that El Nino, strong El Nino rainfall conditions, the strong El Nino averages and the minimum to say, okay, based on the current strong El Nino and based on the rainfall you see, you receive typically during those phases, you could expect to say, 30 percent less production or worst case scenario, 55 percent less production. So we provide that for the next. We also have a six month outlook, assuming we have a strong El Nino and, we just, we focus mainly on forage only, not nothing to do with, you know, the amount of animals you have. We're kind of hoping that ranchers can use this information and make their own decisions. We don't want to. Tell them to do anything , but we're envisioning that ranchers can see this and say, Hey, I need to, I don't know, apply for funding De-stock, et cetera, let Let me jump in here to, you know, part of the co production process and I mentioned to see you last time I was on the co production is not we make a tool and. And give it to you. It's it's we make a tool and run it by folks and say, well, what can we do to make it better? And that's one of the things that came out. We originally in our first version said, Oh, you need to reduce your, your stock by this many cattle and increased by this many cattle. And somebody along the line was like, no, no, no, no. They're like, get that out of there. So like, I mean, it's like, Again, we're coming into the space completely blind to these things and ignorant to the whole sector. And so, it was really good information. So, like as Cherryle said, you know, it's just like, it's a percentage amount of information. You do what you want. It doesn't mention animals and we're happy we got that feedback. And we're happy to go production to get over that hurdle. Yeah, this sounds like such a useful tool. I was like, I'm very excited to see how it pilots out. So great to hear. Yeah. we're just hoping to, you know, be that extra resource for everyone. These ranchers and resource managers to, you know, provide them that information or context so that making decisions is easier for them. We also do have just to scroll past here some more information, such as the past 12 months of rainfall. Historical rainfall, so since 1920, we can show. Monthly rainfall as well. We also have temperature, evapotranspiration, a greenness index called NDVI. We show additional data if ranchers are interested. They may not be and that's totally fine. I think the highlight of our tool would be the climate dashboard as well as the decision support tool. I like how everything is sort of condensed onto 1 page where you can go and look at your humidity temperature. You know, you're not having to go to multiple places to figure that out. 1 question I guess I have is you on your forage, production tool section. It only allows you to choose 1 specific grass at a time though. Right? Yes. So you can. It only displays for one grass type. So if you have multiple, I would suggest screenshotting for now. And then you can submit again, a different grass type and I'll show you that information. That's a good point. I guess I could add like, you know, yeah, I mean, that's kind of how I would think to use it is, you know, you know, if your pasture or your areas are 50 percent kukui and 20 percent pangola or whatever the percentages of the different grass types are on there and you can sort of, calculate that out based on your different grass types that are there. So yeah, very cool. I think that's, you know, around when Mark had the, Mark Thorne had the other decision tool that we used to use and, it was useful. So I'm glad to see that there's something else out there that we can use to help sort of predict and estimate forage production. Which is an important tool. Now, is there any, maybe I'm jumping the gun and asking this question, but is there any outlook for you folks or thoughts to add more grass types into there? Yes. So the 5 2 8 tool actually has over, I wanna say at least 10, maybe more grass types. It's the 5 2 8 tool is a combination of multiple different grass growth models, including mark Thorne's. So, we selected these five for now since we understood they're the more, most, more popular ones, and the model is more supportive for these grass mon, these grass types. But if there is a higher demand for different grass types, then we'd be happy to add that pretty easily as well. Nice. And 1 plug, I guess I do want to add that ranchers are able to bookmark their ranch page here so that they can access it immediately and I'm working on a mobile version as well. So they can see the climate dashboard. Oh, yeah. Now would be awesome. Yeah, cool. Well, that's amazing. I mean, it's great. I mean, you know, Ryan, when we had you on earlier, we talked about the tool and you know, you discussed it. So it's great to be able to see it now and, how these folks can use, the information here. And like I said, I like that it's all on one site. Yeah, Yeah, I just, I mentioned this before we hit record, but one nice thing about this project is that it hasn't been rushed. You know, folks have understood that, you know, people are going to be making could potentially be making decisions that affect their livelihoods here. So, you know, NIDUS understands that folks working on it understands here. So a lot of care and attention's kind of got into it. And we're releasing it now a couple of years in, you know, with the confidence of we've done, you know, The best job we can at this point, you know, and it's still with this idea that we can make it better, you know, that the next step is going to involve folks using it and telling us how we can make it better on that. We're looking forward to that kind of feedback. Yeah, that's exciting. Awesome. Is there anything else Cherryle that you wanted to show us on the site? No, I think that's. The highlights, we also, you know, have tutorial pages. If you click on the about page up here, you'll get walk through tutorials. If you're ever feeling lost when you're navigating the page. But yeah, I really want to emphasize that we are here. You can reach out to us. If you have any confusion, if you have any. Concerns or feedback, please do not hesitate to reach out. Yeah, we'll be sure to include all the resource links and, for the web page and, the tutorials and things and their contact information for sure. And to our resource notes too, for this episode. Yeah, appreciate it. You know, when, we first wrote the proposal and, you know, I saw things that like stakeholder consultations with ranchers, like, when I first saw it written down, I was like, well, how am I going to do that? Like, I don't know any ranchers. And I mean, like, what are they going to think of me? And I just think, you know, at a first initial idea was like, okay, I want to do these things, but how do I do them? So I have to give a lot of credit or a lot of thanks to like, Nicole Gillespie, say. And Mark Thorne for kind of letting me, letting me into that space, you know, holding my hand and bringing me in. And, you know, once you're in, I mean, what an amazing community of people, the ranchers are, you know, we've been, we've been really, you know, we've been embraced in, in a sense of, Hey, you know, we appreciate you guys doing this and. So it's been a real nice feeling. Like Sheryl said, it feels like you're giving something back and it's meaningful work. And I think in academia that you don't always do meaningful work, you know, so I think we're blessed in that sense of being able to do something that, you know, could benefit folks down the road. I mean, at the end of the day, everyone's got to make decisions. That's the way I always say, everyone's got to make decisions. And this is just a piece of information to help you make that decision. We're not telling you what to do or how to do it. Maybe it could be, it's either, maybe you go with your gut or you go with this tool or something else, but it's out there for, for folks to use if they want to. And if they think there's something missing, there is, that email address on the, the website, correct? Yes. Yeah. on the website and I'll just say at HCDP. At hawaii.edu. Yeah, please feel, we're also a Cherryle, still a student till till, the, the spring. Anyway, , we're willing to do one-on-one consultations. So if you can reach out to us and say, Hey, I'd like to do the tool. Maybe I don't like, I do those computers too much, but I heard the podcast, I'd wanna do it right. We do a one, we'll jump on a Zoom call and, if you don't even like Zoom, if there's enough interest, we'll fly over to the big island and sit down with you and, and show you the tool that way. A lot of resources and time put into this, and I'm not willing to just say, Oh, it's done and walk away. Like there's an opportunity to get this in the hands of folks, or at least to let them see it for one time and let them make the decision after that. Like I will, I'm willing to do whatever it takes to have those conversations, zoom in person, but I just need to know that that interest is there. And if it comes my way through your channels or the email or any way we can get it, Mark, Nicole. I'll take it and, yeah, that's, please reach out and let us know you want to learn more about it and we'll be there to help you. Yeah, that is good. And that, and that was, I guess my next question, right? Is, so are you still looking for more folks to continue to add more sites onto the tool? You still want more. I'm assuming. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, for sure. We could really handle an unlimited amount, I'd say, of sites. And, you know, even if it's like one pixel off, you can just add it on there and we'd be happy to, Include that information on there on our website. So yeah, there's no like you said though I was like you you could be in the same square mile and it could be raining in the front and not in the back Yeah, Well, we can even reduce the square if you wanted to just kind of have this generic set up. But if folks said, Hey, this square is great, but it's too big. We could even make it smaller. It wouldn't even be, you know, just for just, we need that kind of feedback to do those things. Yeah. I think that's what I like. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Cherryle. No, sorry. It's just you can submit more than one site as well. So if you're large enough, we can you can have 10 if you would need it. Sweet. Okay, well, that was my other question was that, you know, some producers might have multiple locations, or leasing multiple locations. Across the island, so that's that's useful for them to be able to to have 2 different submitted sites. Yeah. And yeah, Shannon made a good point. I mean, we all know how quickly our climate change and rainfall changes across our islands that . Multiple sites in different locations is, even if they're nearby can be very beneficial. So, well, is there anything else you guys want to add about, you know, produces, I mean, all this information, like I said, we'll put the links, in our show notes and everything. But, for any other producers that are out there, you know, I guess that are hesitant, is there any other information you guys want to share with them so that they, can make use of your tool? Well, first, I want to thank you both for having us really. It's been, we're really hoping to, you know, spread the word that this tool is out there in general. And yeah, I just say we are really just, you know, in open arms, just we'll take anything we can get. So please, you know, don't feel intimidated or anything by us. Yeah, we're we're we're here for you. I mean, at the end of the day, we're here for you. We're not going anywhere. I have another grant. I'm ready to keep this tool going, if all the cards align, we'll be at the Cattlemen's Council annual meeting again with our computer and asking folks to come up and play around with the tool. And so, but please don't wait till then to see the tool. Like, come see it. Now, we've been lucky with a couple of wetter months in the islands due to some storms and stuff we've had, but, The reality is we're still in a strong El Nino and, the projections are not looking very wet for the future, so, you know, if there's a chance to look and see, you know, how things play out, with the tool, then, you know, I encourage you to do that. And, please, let's, let's, let's talk if you have any questions. Thank you. Absolutely. Well, I want to congratulate you two and your team for, you know, getting this to where it is right now, because I'm sure it's a lot of work and a lot of hours, and headaches probably. Right. I mean, I, you know, Shannon and I had to learn to do the podcast and editing and those little things, you know, so this is a big tool and yeah, and I'm not very good at it. And we're almost four years in, so yeah. So yeah. Congratulations on this. I think it's a great addition to some of the decision tools that are going to be out there and hope that, our, you know, livestock producers will make use of it. So, yeah, you guys are a great team. Thanks for having us really. Thank you all for joining us. So we really appreciate it. All right. Well. Thank you everybody for listening and joining us today. We hope our listeners found this informative and it'll be useful to them. Also, if you have not done so already, please be sure to fill out our feedback fast to let us know your thoughts about this podcast. So we know what you would like to hear more of. Right and make sure to follow us on our social media pages at Livestock Vala'au and Livestock Extension Group if you haven't already. Be sure to visit the UH CTAHR Extension website and our YouTube channel which will be linked in the show notes. That's right and for additional information about this topic, like Mele said, see the show notes of the podcast and the description box of the YouTube page. Thanks for listening to the Livestock Wala'au and before we go, show some love for your favorite podcast, that's us by the way, by leaving us a review anywhere you listen to this and then stay tuned for next month's episode. Yeah, thanks again to the sponsors, the Livestock Extension Group of the University of Hawai'i Mānoa College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, the Center for Ag Profitability of the University of Nebraska Lincoln, and the Western Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program. Mahalo for listening. A hui hou A Hui hou