Rangelands, Drylands & Pastoralism

Appropriation of public lands associated with agricultural frontier expansion is a longstanding occurrence in the Amazon that has resulted in a highly skewed land-tenure structure in spite of recent state efforts to recognize tenure rights of indigenous people and smallholders living in or nearby forests.

Achieving forest conservation together with poverty alleviation and equity is an unending challenge in the tropics. The Makira REDD+ pilot project located in northeastern Madagascar is a well-suited case to explore this challenge in conditions of extreme poverty and climatic vulnerability.

Land use governance in the Brazilian Amazon has undergone significant changes in the last decade. At the national level, law enforcement capacity has increased and downstream industries linked to commodity chains responsible for deforestation have begun to monitor some of their suppliers’ impacts on forests.

Soil degradation in India is estimated to be occurring on 147 million hectares (Mha) of land, including 94 Mha from water erosion, 16 Mha from acidification, 14 Mha from flooding, 9 Mha from wind erosion, 6 Mha from salinity, and 7 Mha from a combination of factors.

The Australian National Soil Research, Development and Extension Strategy identifies soil security as a foundation for the current and future productivity and profitability of Australian agriculture. Current agricultural production is attenuated by soil degradation. Future production is highly dependent on the condition of Australian soils.

The status of grazinglands in the USA is increasingly dynamic with large areas being converted to cropland in response to demands for increased crop production. Here we focus on two types of grazinglands: rangelands and pasturelands.

Tree and shrub abundance has increased in many grasslands, causing changes in ecosystem carbon and nitrogen pools that are related to patterns of woody plant distribution. However, with regard to spatial patterns, little is known about (i) how they develop; (ii) how they are influenced by grazing; or (iii) the extent to which intraspecific interactions dictate them.

AIM: Improving our understanding of the drivers of forest fragmentation is fundamental to mitigating the consequences of anthropogenic fragmentation for biodiversity. Moreover, the impacts of fragmentation on biodiversity depend on the spatial scale at which fragmentation occurs.

Spatio-temporal dynamics of pastoral grazing resources influences the pastoral production system. Obtaining timely and reliable information on the status of these resources will support planning and early response to climatic variability.

A confluence of factors has shaped the composition and structure of vegetation on rangelands in the American West. These factors include climate, soils, topography, history of grazing and fire (both wildfire and prescribed fire) as well as legacy effects from prior land management practices.

Twelve white Fulani × N'dama cross-bred calves weighing 83.79 ± 1.16� kg were used in an 84-day experiment to investigate the utilization of forage resources from natural grazing land. The experimental diets were sole grazing, grazing + hay, grazing + silage and grazing + Leucaena leucocephala leaves.