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...

The Great Plains of North America encompass approximately 85 million ha (210 million acres) consisting of shortgrass, mixed-grass, and tallgrass prairie with about 60% of this area converted to crop agriculture and the remainder used primarily for livestock production. Large-scale gradients of precipitation (west to east, <30 to >100 cm; <12 to >40 inches) and mean annual temperature (north to ...

Buckley Biggs, N., J. Hafner, F. E. Mashiri, L. Huntsinger, and Lambin. 2021. Payments for ecosystem services within the hybrid governance model: evaluating policy alignment complementarity on California rangelands. Ecology Society 26(1):19. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-12254-260119

Climate change is one of the most important challenges in sustainable development which has negative effect on terrestrial and aquatic ecosystem. The lead factor of this phenomenon is Co2 accumulation in atmosphere. One of the suitable ways of facing the mentioned issue is carbon sequestration in plant biomass and soil as a simple as well as inexpensive refined way in rangelands. With respect t...

In Australia, desertification tends to be associated with land degradation in the rangelands. It results from unsustainable land use and the impact of European settlement, rather than changing climate. Desertification can, however, be exacerbated or triggered by climate variability. Some of the degradation occurred in the early stages of pastoral development but the problem has continued. The e...

Understanding landscape conversion is vital for assessing the impacts of ecological and anthropogenic disturbances at regional and global scales. Since rangelands cover nearly half of the global land surface, and because a large part of rangelands is located in semi-arid ecosystems, they serve as critical land cover types for determining regional biodiversity, global biogeochemical cycles, and ...