Rangelands, Drylands & Pastoralism

The Inner Mongolian grassland steppe is the most important grazing land in China in terms of cow milk, mutton, and cashmere production. However, intensive livestock grazing has severely degraded the steppe grassland. A sophisticated grazing management is therefore essential for an economically viable use of the grassland without amplifying its desertification.

Wetlands are biologically important elements of landscapes and among the most threatened ecosystems on Earth. On the island of Mauritius, many remaining wetlands are being rapidly converted and fragmented by intense land-use demands.

Driven principally by government regulation and societal expectations, mining companies around the world are seeking to mitigate the environmental impacts of mining through mined land rehabilitation programs. The ultimate goal of rehabilitation is to establish an acceptable and sustainable post-mining land use.

Extreme climatic events like the 2003 summer heatwave and inappropriate land management can threaten the existence of rare plants. We studied the response of Eryngium alpinum, a vulnerable species, to this extreme climatic event and different agricultural practices. A demographic study was conducted in seven field sites between 2001 and 2010.

Development of accurate classification methods for rapidly changing catchments like that of Lake Basaka is fundamental to better understanding the catchment dynamics, which were not addressed in previous studies.

After the rangeland law has been implemented, the areas used for field have been started to be converted to rangelands. A forage mixture of alfalfa, birdsfoot trefoil, perennial ryegrass, and smooth brome was sown in the rangeland of Hacıpehlivan village, Biga, Çanakkale in 2004 fall.

Historical domestic livestock grazing in sensitive landscapes has commonly been regarded as a major cause of land degradation in Iceland. Shieling areas, where milking livestock were taken to pasture for the summer, represented one element of grazing management and in this paper we consider the extent to which historical shieling-based grazing pressure contributed to land degradation.

Degradation of common pool resource (CPR) in developing countries has often been traced to high rate attached by poor people in discounting future flow of benefits, market failure, pressure on carrying capacity or sometimes property right failure.

Sedge dominated peatlands do not rehabilitate well after being drained for rangelands and specific approaches are required in order to restore these sites. Restoration by blocking drainage canals aims to recover peatland functions, principally by raising the water table.

Testate amoebae represent a crucial component of soil microfauna and have been studied extensively in ombrotrophic peatlands. However, little is known about their ecology in moorlands which are important habitats in terms of biodiversity and carbon storage potential. Moorlands are under threat from a range of factors such as drainage, burning, over grazing, pollution and climate change.

BACKGROUND: Pastoralism in the USA began coincidently with the initiation of profound ecological change resulting from colonization in the sixteenth century. Relationships between pastoralism and wildlife conservation in three different contexts of land tenure, environmental legacy, and geography are examined.

Near infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS) has potential to provide timely, and lower cost estimates of soil properties than current laboratory techniques.