An appreciation of how one derives information and knowledge to make land management decisions could help in creating systems to improve the decision-making process. The accumulation and interpretation of information, in turn, creates knowledge. In the hierarchy, data have value when they are combined for a purpose, and this process creates information. Knowledge is interpreted information that can be applied to new situations. The kind of knowledge system that will be capable of meeting the needs of resource managers is not a database application that will reside on some server. It will not come about quickly or as the result of a single group of individuals. With the scale and variety of rangeland uses and threats continuing to increase, much effort is being invested in developing new techniques to get quantitative information to monitor large landscapes.