Drought, change and resilience in South Africa's arid and semi-arid rangelands.

Drought, change and resilience in South Africa’s arid and semi-arid rangelands

Introduction Droughts are a frequent occurrence in South Africa’s arid and semi-arid rangelands and can have severe ecological and economic consequences. While these may be short-term and followed by recovery during subsequent years of higher rainfall, in some cases droughts can trigger substantial and irreversible ecological and socio-economic changes. Desertification, in the form of reduced p...

Rangelands in Arid Ecosystem

Bush encroachment control and risk management in semi-arid rangelands.

We study the role of bush encroachment control for a farmer's income and income risk in a stochastic ecological-economic model of grazing management in semi-arid rangelands. In particular, we study debushing as an instrument of risk management that complements the choice of an adaptive grazing management strategy for that sake. We show that debushing, while being a good practice for increasing ...

Pathways for positive cattle-wildlife interactions in semi-arid rangelands

Livestockwildlife interactions in rangelands are often viewed in terms of competition, but livestock and native ungulates can also benefit each other through longterm modifications of rangeland habitats. Here we synthesize research on rangelands in central Laikipia focusing on two types of cattlewildlife interactions that have implications for their longterm coexistence. The first interaction o...

Plant Species and Functional Types’ Diversity in Relation to Grazing in Arid and Semi-arid Rangelands, Khabr National Park, Iran

In arid and semi-arid rangelands, grazing as one of the natural or human induced processes has direct and indirect effects on structure and dynamics of plant community and ecosystems. A study was done to analyze the effects of grazing on plant species diversity and Plant Functional Types‘ (PFTs) diversity of arid and semi-arid rangelands. We analyzed plant richness and diversity data from 75 sa...