Because grazing by livestock is one of the primary threats to rangeland biodiversity, but is unevenly distributed in space, rangeland monitoring programmes need to take account of the distribution of grazing pressure in order to distinguish between grazing-induced change, seasonal fluctuations and changes that are a result of other threats. Livestock watering places are one of the major influences that give spatial expression to gradations in grazing activity. Using research results from the goldfields of Western Australia, we show how distance from water can be incorporated in spatial models to predict cumulative grazing pressure at different sites within paddocks. Keywords: benchmarks, grazing gradients, monitoring, track density, watering points.