Building Ranch Resilience to Drought: Management Capacity, Planning, and Adaptive Learning During California's 2012–2016 Drought

Drought is one of the most complex and destructive natural hazards for rangeland managers to cope with given its inherently variable spatial and temporal impacts. California's devastating 2012–2016 drought highlights a critical need to develop adaptive strategies for coping with an increasingly variable climate. During the 2012–2016 drought, we interviewed 48 California ranchers to assess both on-ranch drought impacts and the effectiveness of implemented drought management practices. Three themes were identified based on the Adaptive Decision-Making Framework: 1) management capacity (i.e., operator demographics and operation structure), 2) drought planning and flexibility, and 3) adaptive learning (i.e., impacts experienced and effectiveness of drought management practices). Ranchers underscored the significance of drought planning, flexible management strategies, and prior experience as key factors that enabled them to navigate the 2012–2016 drought. In addition, ranchers described how explicit, proactive planning informed drought management decisions that prioritized long-term economic and ecological resilience. Although multispecies grazing was the least used proactive practice, it was identified as the most effective proactive practice by interviewed ranchers who had adopted it as a drought management tool (4.38 out of five effectiveness ranking; eight operators). Multispecies grazers (MSGs) significantly differed from single-species grazers (SSGs) in adoption of several reactive drought management practices, suggesting MSGs potentially have greater flexibility in coping with and adapting to drought. Resurgent strategies that prioritize management flexibility to mitigate drought impacts, such as multispecies grazing, may offer promise in helping ranchers adapt to future droughts. Interviewed ranchers emphasized that forward planning, including a range of proactive and reactive management strategies, were key in building flexibility and, ultimately, their resilience to drought.