Extensive livestock farming systems in the Less Favored Areas (LFA) of the European Union (EU) are under social stress and requirement to adapt their production practices to new economic and social realities. This research argues that a restructuring plan for the cereal-sheep system of Castile-La Mancha may represent economic and ecological synergies.

Using data from previous studies, we tested two hypotheses about the impacts of grazing in a naturally heterogeneous landscape in arid central Australia: (1) that grazing leads to net change of resources at a paddock or landscape scale, and (2) that water and nutrients remain coupled as they move through the landscape.

Apart from a decrease in total perennial plant cover, degradation of North-African arid lands is not easy to qualify. Yet, simple and comprehensive yardsticks are necessary to assess degradation. We assigned components of competitive ability (C), stress tolerance (S) and ruderality (R) to 15 common perennials of Presaharian Tunisia.

Degradation of the dry semiarid ecosystems in the Mu Us Sandy Land of north central China was explored using high-resolution satellite images from 1978, 1987 and 1996. This study monitored both changes in grassland biomass production and reclamation activities to detect the nature and scale of land degradation since major economic reforms were introduced in 1978.

Multitemporal 1 km NOAA/AVHRR Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) maximum composite imagery was utilized in combination with rainfall, soil types, and field survey data on dominant rural activities to assess the risk of land degradation in southern Mauritania.

This study employs scale-dependence as an analytical approach to understanding effects of livestock grazing on rangeland degradation in northern Kenya.

Loss of biodiversity is the single most important threat to the conservation and sustainable use of drylands in northern Ethiopia due to many centuries of cultivation and heavy livestock grazing pressure. The current study assessed the restoration of biodiversity in highly degraded areas in eastern Tigray, northern Ethiopia using area enclosures (AEs).

The U.S. Army is responsible for preparing a well-trained combat force while maintaining the ecological diversity and integrity of the lands it manages. The ability to efficiently collect data that accurately capture plant community diversity and percent composition is imperative to proper monitoring and land management of military lands.

In a naturally heterogeneous landscape in arid central Australia, a previous study found that grazing changed the distribution of water and nutrients amongst different geomorphic strata of the landscape. In this concurrent study, we show that herbage biomass, cover and composition responded primarily to these geomorphic strata and not to grazing.

The distribution and quality of soil and land resources in heterogeneous grazing lands of central Australia were changed by grazing. Sites located at increasing distances from livestock watering points showed greater degrees of landscape organization and soil productive potential.

The rating of biodiversity in arid and semiarid regions on the basis of ecological function and genetic traits of adaptation to severe environmental stresses produces significantly higher values, than that based solely on the commonly applied structural criteria of forms of life and levels of organization.