At the USDA Agricultural Research Service’s Jornada Experimental Range (JER) in southern New Mexico, ongoing research is aimed at determining the utility of UAVs for rangeland mapping and monitoring, and developing a workflow consisting of acquisition, orthorectification, mosaicking, and classification of UAV imagery. An additional goal is to relate remotely sensed information from the imagery to ground-based rangeland monitoring measurements that have been developed and tested at the JER (Herrick et al., 2005; 2006a). We are currently pursuing two parallel tracks of investigation for UAV applications. The first is the use of a modified model airplane designed to minimize costs and maximize simplicity for monitoring purposes. The second consists of a technologically more advanced UAV capable of carrying a variety of sensors for research purposes. The objective of this paper is to describe and compare details of both unmanned systems, to present results of test flights conducted at the JER, and to assess the results of image acquisition, rectification, mosaicking and classification