Rangeland ecosystems are capable of providing an array of ecosystem services important to the wellbeing of society. Some of these services (e.g. meat, fibre) are transported to markets and their quantity, quality and value are established via a set of widely accepted standards. Other services (e.g. climate mitigation, water quality, wildlife habitat) do not leave the land, but are, in fact, mos...

This article explores the concept of resilience as outlined in a recent World Bank publication that applies the concept to rangeland areas in Africa. The paper does not attempt to speak to all of the dimensions of resilience and debates about the concept’s applications to pastoral ecology and rangelands. Instead, we utilize a panel data set from northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia that has bee...

Climate finance investments and international policy are driving new community-based projects incorporating payments for ecosystem services (PES) to simultaneously store carbon and generate livelihood benefits. Most community-based PES (CB-PES) research focuses on forest areas. Rangelands, which store globally significant quantities of carbon and support many of the world's poor, have seen litt...

According to the nonequilibrium theory, livestock grazing has a limited effect on long-term vegetation productivity of semiarid rangelands, which is largely determined by rainfall. The communal lands in northeastern South Africa contain extensive degraded areas which have been mapped by the National Land Cover (NLC) program. Much evidence suggests that long-term heavy grazing is the cause of th...

The rangelands of the Mongolian Plateau are dynamic social-ecological systems that are influenced by a complex network of drivers, including climate, social institutions, market forces and broad scale policies affecting land tenure. These factors are linked via feedbacks and often exhibit non-linear relationships. The sustainability and resilience of rangelands in this region are dependent on t...

Wild herbivores and livestock share the majority of rangelands worldwide, yet few controlled experiments have addressed their individual, additive, and interactive impacts on ecosystem function. While ungulate herbivores generally reduce standing biomass, their effects on aboveground net primary production (ANPP) can vary by spatial and temporal context, intensity of herbivory, and herbivore id...

This study was carried out to determine the chemical composition and in vitro dry matter digestibility of grazable material, during the growing season of plants, in three different altitudinal zones, in native rangelands, northwestern Greece. Samples were collected during the period from May to October of the years 2004 and 2005. Sample collection was accomplished by cutting aboveground biomass...

Grazinglands support the livelihoods of millions of people around the world, as well as supply critical ecosystem services. Communities reliant on rain-fed rangelands are potentially the most vulnerable to increasing climate variability given their dependence on highly climate-sensitive resources. Droughts, which are gradual natural hazards, pose substantial and recurrent economic and ecologica...

Shrub encroachment in arid and semiarid rangelands, a worldwide phenomenon, results in a heterogeneous landscape characterized by a mosaic of nutrient-depleted barren soil bordered by nutrient-enriched shrubby areas known as ‘‘fertile islands.’’ Even though shrub encroachment is considered as a major contributor to rangeland degradation, little is known about mechanisms favoring the reversibili...

Hann, Wendel J.; Wisdom, Michael J.; Rowland, Mary M. 2003. Disturbance departure and fragmentation of natural systems in the interior Columbia basin. Res. Pap. PNW-RP-545. Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station. 19 p. We integrated landscape data from science assessments of the interior Columbia basin (basin) into one variable that func...