Ty grew up in Gatesville in the Texas hill country and decided to go to school at Sul Ross State University in Alpine after falling in love with the area on a summer motorcycle trip with his grandfather. After graduating from high school in 2020, and armed with 8 years of plant identification know-how, Ty decided to study natural resource management with an emphasis on range and wildlife management. He was heavily involved with the Borderlands Undergraduate Mentorship Program as an undergrad and graduated with a bachelors in 2023 from Sul Ross. He was excited to lead a range centered grazing project and graduated with a Masters degree in 2025 at Sul Ross in the same field. Now Ty is currently in a joint program with Sul Ross and A&M Kingsville pursuing a doctoral degree in Range management. In his free time, he still enjoys the Big Bend region, camping, and eating good food with friends and family.

Rangelands comprise about 50% land types in the United States. They provide critical ecosystem services to humankind, such as water purification, carbon sequestration, and food production. Conserving the ecological function of rangelands is a primary focus of land stewards and is centered around vegetation communities. This project aims to explore South Texas rangeland management of livestock production and how its adverse effects alter the vegetation community over generation spanning timeframes. We are interested in gaining information that can be directly applied into leading management concerns. We will focus efforts on using remote sensing to mitigate time consuming vegetation monitoring methods, evaluating forage species palatability and selection, and the forage plant physiological reactions to intensity and frequency of varying harvest efficiencies. *

* Subject to change