Rangelands, Drylands & Pastoralism

Land-use emissions accompanying biomass loss, change in soil organic carbon (ΔSOC) and decomposing wood-products, were comparable with fossil fuel emissions in the late 20th century. We examine the rates, magnitudes and uncertainties for major carbon (C) fluxes for rangelands due to commercial grazing and climate change in Australia.

AIMS: The aims of this study were to identify areas of wind erosion and dust deposition and to quantify the effects of different grazing intensities on soil redistribution rates in grasslands based on the 137Cs technique.

Cork oak stands are a part of the agroforestry ecosystem in Portugal, characterized by a low crown cover from cork oak trees, managed towards cork production, and sometimes in combination with grazing.

Although common disturbances of grazing lands like plant defoliation are expected to affect their sensitivity to increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration, almost no research has been conducted to evaluate how important such effects might be on the direct responses of rangelands to CO2.

Many rangeland streams and associated fisheries have suffered from livestock grazing as a cost of upland-forage utilization. Due to damage from intensive usage, restoration of damaged streams is now a common land-management objective.

The aim of the research presented here was to analyse soil erosion in response to changes in agricultural and soil conservation practices throughout history.

Although common disturbances of grazing lands like plant defoliation are expected to affect their sensitivity to increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration, almost no research has been conducted to evaluate how important such effects might be on the direct responses of rangelands to CO2.

The dry rangelands of West Asia and North Africa are fragile and severely degraded due to low rainfall and mismanagement of natural resources. Rainwater harvesting (RWH) interventions are used to increase soil moisture content, vegetation cover, and productivity. However, adoption of rainwater harvesting by communities is slow.

Overgrazing is a primary agent to cause and aggravate desertification in the Horqin Sandy Grassland of northern China that has reduced the capacity of carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) storage in the region. Grazing exclosure practice is recommended to control the desertification by vegetation restoration.

Spatial dynamics of carbon fluxes in dryland montane ecosystems are complicated and may be influenced by topographic conditions and land tenure. Here we employ a modified version of the Carnegie Ames Stanford Approach (CASA) ecosystem model to estimate annual net primary production (NPP) at a fine spatial resolution (30m) in pinyon–juniper (P–J) woodlands of the Colorado Plateau.

Rapidly increasing demand for food, fiber, and fuel together with new technologies and the mobility of global capital are driving revolutionary changes in land use throughout the world. Efforts to increase land productivity include conversion of millions of hectares of rangelands to crop production, including many marginal lands with low resistance and resilience to degradation.

A critical challenge for range scientists is to provide input to management decisions for land units where little or no data exist. The disciplines of range science, basic ecology, and global ecology use different perspectives and approaches with different levels of detail to extrapolate information and understanding from well-studied locations to other land units.