Determining detailed vegetation characteristics to classify arid rangelands often presents unique problems due to the high reflectance of the soil background, a mixture of green and senescent grasses, and the prevalence of shrubs in grasslands. These components can make it difficult to determine the proportion of grass cover. On the Jornada Experimental Range (JER), operated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service near Las Cruces, NM, ongoing research is aimed at determining the relationship between ground-based observations and remotely sensed data.