Soil characteristics and functions are critical determinants of rangeland systems and the ecosystem services that they provide. Rangeland soils are extremely diverse, but an emerging understanding is that paradigms developed in more mesic forest ecosystems may not be applicable. Vascular plants, biological soil crusts, and the soil microbial community are the three major functional groups of or...

People who interact with rangelands on a regular basis gain practical insights about how rangelands work by living on and working with them. This local knowledge is refi ned over time as individuals see the way the land responds to weather, management, and disturbances. Local knowledge (LK) is a type of knowledge “integrally linked with the lives of people, always produced in dynamic interactio...

natural ecosystems provide many goods and services for human beings via their multiple functionalities. one of these important functions is the role of natural ecosystems in regulation of hydrologic cycle and increasing the infiltarion and retention of water in soil context and preventing from water runoff which may cause in unfavorable consequences like soil erosion and flooding. quantificatio...

In the central Great Plains, pastures and rangelands often are not economically competitive with grain crops. This has led to increases in acreages of row crops at the expense of rangelands, pastures, and hay crops on marginal lands resulting in severe erosion problems. The productivity of forages, pastures, and rangelands needs to be increased to levels that would make them economically compet...

In recent years, a clearer understanding of the complexities of pastoral development has been arising on the basis of work done by African and international researchers and development practitioners. They are refuting the causality of notions normally attributed to pastoralism, such as land mismanagement and degradation. They are also showing how extensive pastoral production has been underesti...