As the future climate becomes hotter or drier, forests may be exposed to more frequent or severe droughts. To inform efforts to ensure resilient forests, it is critical to know which forests may be most exposed to future drought and where. Longer duration droughts lasting 2–3 years or more are especially important to quantify because forests are likely to experience impacts. We summarized exposure to 36‐month drought for forests across the conterminous United States using the Standardized Precipitation‐Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) overlaid on forest inventory plot locations. Exposure was quantified under 10 scenarios that combined five modeled climates and two Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs, 4.5 and 8.5) through 2070. Future projections indicate a tripling of the monthly spatial extent of forests exposed to severe or extreme drought—38% of forests were exposed on average by mid‐century as opposed to 11% during 1991–2020 (2041–2070). Increases in drought exposure were greatest under hotter (HadGEM2‐ES), drier (IPSL‐CM5A‐MR), and middle (NorESM1‐M) climate models, under either RCP. Projections agreed that forests in portions of the western United States, especially the southwestern United States, could face high levels of exposure. Forest types including pinyon/juniper, woodland hardwoods, and ponderosa pine were projected to be exposed to drought more than 50% of the time on average across all scenarios by mid‐century, when no forest type was exposed more than 25% of the time under any scenario during the recent period. Projections agreed less for the eastern United States, but in some scenarios, particularly under RCP 8.5, large portions of the East could be exposed to drought nearly as often as parts of the West. Moreover, a substantial portion of oak/hickory forests occur in eastern regions, where projections agree on increased drought exposure. This study provides novel insights about the changing conditions forests face in both the eastern and western United States. Our results can be combined with information about the sensitivities and adaptive capacities of forest ecosystems to prioritize drought adaptation efforts.

The use of geospatial sciences and technologies for the management of grazinglands has fostered a plethora of applications related to ecology, wildlife, vegetation science, forage productivity and quality, and animal husbandry. Some of the earliest use of remote sensing dates to the proliferation of aerial photography in the 1930s. Today, remote sensing using satellite imagery, global navigation satellite systems (GNSS), and internet-connected devices and sensors allow for real- and near real-time modeling and observation of grazingland resources. In this special issue of Remote Sensing, we introduce nine original publications focusing on varying aspects of grazingland management, such as animal health and telemetry, climate change, soil moisture, herbaceous biomass, and vegetation phenology. The work in this issue spans a diverse range of scale from satellite to unmanned aerial systems imagery, as well as ground-based measurements from mounted cameras, telemetry devices, and datalogging devices. Remote sensing-based technologies continue to evolve, allowing us to address critical issues facing grazingland management such as climate change, restoration, forage abundance and quality, and animal behavior, production, and welfare.

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