. 2000. Monitoring cattle behavior and pasture use with GPS and GIS. Can. J. Anim. Sci. 80: 405-413. Precision agriculture is already being used commercially to improve variability management in row crop agriculture. In the same way, understanding how spatial and temporal variability of animal, forage, soil and landscape features affect grazing behavior and forage utilization provides potential to modify pasture management, improve efficiency of utilization, and maximize profits. Recent advances in global positioning system (GPS) technology have allowed the development of lightweight GPS collar receivers suitable for monitoring animal position at 5-min intervals. The GPS data can be imported into a geographic information system (GIS) to assess animal behavior characteristics and pasture utilization. This paper describes application and use of GPS technology on intensively managed beef cattle, and implications for livestock behavior and management research on pasture. Global positioning system monitoring can provide researchers with efficient and accurate information on grazing behavior. Previous research focused on tracking animals using data gathered by observation. Recent advances in GPS technology have allowed the development of lightweight collar receivers suitable for monitoring animal position at 5-min intervals. Data can be imported into a GIS to assess animal behavior characteristics and pasture utilization. Precision animal location recording allows researchers to evaluate pasture utilization, animal performance, and behavior. Researchers may assess the merits of pasture or paddock shapes and sizes, fence designs, grazing systems, forage composition and availability, location of shade, water, and supplements, and other variables that affect beef cattle operations. The objectives of this article are: 1) to review previous tracking technology; 2) to explain GPS animal monitoring; 3) to describe GPS tracking collar application for beef cattle; and 4) to discuss pasture livestock behavior and management research implications.

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