During the 25th International Grassland Congress in Covington, Kentucky, our two PhD students Florian Männer and Lisa-Maricia Schwarz presented some of the results of their studies. Florian Männer gave a talk on "Predicting forage provision of grasslands across climate zones by hyperspectral measurements" and Lisa-Maricia Schwarz presented a poster on "Evaluating functional diversity as potential early-warning indicator of rangeland degradation". Both contributions are part of the NamTip project, which is looking for better ways to detect rangeland degradation at an early stage.