Rangelands, Drylands & Pastoralism

Scattering slash (downed woody materials) after tree removal is increasingly prescribed by land managers as a treatment to promote the establishment and growth of understory vegetation in pinyon-juniper woodlands. However, the effects of scattering slash on soil resources and plant communities are poorly understood and often confounded with the release from tree competition.

Chemical composition of 28 selected species of meadow herbs on the abandoned grassland was observed in a 3-year period of vegetation in the temperate locality with mainly cold winters of the central part of Slovakia (Strážov Hills, locality Chvojnica, elevation 600 m.

Agistment is the practice of temporarily moving stock between properties, and is used by pastoralists both to strategically develop their enterprises and as a response to environmental heterogeneities such as variation in rainfall. This paper considers the agistment market in the northern Australian rangelands using the 'market failure framework'.

In the last 100 years or so, desertification, degradation, and woody plant encroachment have altered huge tracts of semiarid rangelands. It is expected that the changes thus brought about significantly affect water balance in these regions; and in fact, at the headwater-catchment and smaller scales, such effects are reasonably well documented.

In European mountain areas, shrub encroachment resulting from farmland abandonment is most often managed by mechanical operations such as roller chopping or controlled burning, which have proved to be ineffective and unsustainable. Recent agroecological findings highlight the potential impact of grazing on long-term shrub dynamics.