Grasses, which dominate many terrestrial ecosystems, sustain high densities of grazing mammals, so are of great economic and ecological importance.
Private landowners are often de facto stewards of biodiversity and ecosystem services. In California's Sierra Nevada foothills, ranchers frequently present the only defense against biological invasions in private rangelands.
Improper cropping and overgrazing have led to land degradation in semi-arid regions, resulting in desertification. During desertification, vegetation changes have been widely observed, and are likely controlled to some extent by soil water.
The complex interactions between human activity and natural processes determine non-linear dynamics in ecosystems that can difficult their management. Human settlements in arid lands contribute to the modification of disturbance regimes, including the introduction of new disturbances and the elimination of others.
Conservation auctions are a type of market-based instrument (MBI) that can achieve a more cost-efficient allocation of public funds than approaches such as devolved grants. In this paper, the conduct of a multiple round conservation auction to improve biodiversity management in a rangelands area is outlined.
To document trends in land use and herbaceous production, 71 field sites sampled among cropped fields, fallow fields and rangelands in the Fakara region (Niger) were monitored from 1994 to 2006. The overall trend in land use confirmed the historical increase of the cropped areas since mid 20th century, at an annual rate of 2% from 1994 to 2006.
1. The distribution and abundance of invasive species can be driven by both environmental variables and land management decisions. However, understanding these relationships can be complicated by interactions between management actions and environmental variability, and differences in scale among these variables.
Most of the Mediterranean woodlands in Spain, Portugal, and California are managed as agrosilvopastoral enterprises, producing some combination of livestock, wood, cork products, and crops, as well as wildlife habitat and diverse environmental services.
In 2007, an epizootic of equine influenza (EI) occurred in Australia, involving parts of the states of Queensland and New South Wales. Following an extensive control program, the disease was eradicated within 4 months, after infecting more than 75 000 horses on over 10 000 properties.
In this study, we asked the Ariaal herders of northern Kenya to answer “why, what and how” they classified landscape, and assessed and monitored the biodiversity of 10 km2 of grazing land.
Large tracts of European rural land, mostly in the less favored areas (LFA), are devoted to low-inputs and large scale grazing systems (LSGS) with potential environmental and social functions. Although these LSGS may provide harbor for a good part of European nature values, their continuity is facing contrasting threats of intensification and abandonment.
In the UK the funding mechanism for moorland restoration is being implemented primarily through agri-environment schemes, yet to date remarkably few comparative grazing studies with domesticated livestock have been conducted on this type of vegetation community.