Ecosystem services have been extensively studied in terms of their production, spatial extent, and valuation. Human reliance on ecosystem services is a function of the capacity of ecosystems to supply these services and the societal demand for these benefits. Considerably more attention has been placed on the supply of services compared with their demand. Sustainable land management depends on reconciling supply of and demand for ecosystem services among different stakeholders. The emphasis is now shifting from the supply to the attaining of a balance between supply and demand.

Twenty years ago I completed my Master’s work in the Chaco forests of northern Argentina. The native forests are, in fact, rangelands. In addition to livestock grazing, there is timber extraction, wildlife harvest (think tegu lizard cowboy boots), and charcoal production. I took part in a project comparing biodiversity among production systems. A new system promised to reverse biodiversity loss and soil degradation. But it’s a moot point now since much of that forest has been cleared for cropland—the highest rate of tropical forest loss in the world.

Although human influence across rural landscapes is often discussed, interactions between the native, natural systems and human activities are challenging to measure explicitly. We assessed the distribution of introduced, invasive species as related to anthropogenic infrastructure and environmental conditions across southwestern Wyoming. to discern direct correlations as well as covariate influences between land use, land cover, and abundance of invasive plants, and assess the supposition that these features affect surrounding rangeland conditions.

Balancing the number of grazing animals with the level of plant resources is a core issue in grazing management. Complete, full-coverage vegetation surveys are often used for this purpose, but these are expensive undertakings. We have presented a method to downscale information from regional sampling surveys by poststratification using a land cover map derived from satellite-based measures of reflectance values. This approach opens new prospects for landscape-level evaluation of productivity.

Growing recognition that periodic fire is critical for maintaining the health of many rangeland ecosystems and concerns over more frequent catastrophic wildfires have focused attention on prescribed fire as an ecosystem restoration and fuel management tool. In states such as Texas, where most land is privately owned, the level of success of outreach activities aimed at expanding the adoption of specific management practices is influenced by the extent to which landowners' perceptions, interests, and concerns regarding such practices are addressed.

Economic motivation for implementing targeted responses to rangeland degradation often lag the events that cause degradation and existing monitoring schemes often lack the sensitivity or the connections to ecological processes to reliably serve as a basis for evaluating success. In this paper, we present an approach for quantifying the relationship of economic output and land degradation during the intermediate stages of degradation. We also propose an approach that can provide enhanced incentives to implement proven responses before degradation processes are entrained.

In the Flint Hills of Kansas and Oklahoma, U.S.A., grazing land is managed predominantly to promote homogeneous grassland structure. This potentially limits the diversity of habitats for grassland obligate songbirds with narrow habitat preferences during the breeding season, prompting ecologists and conservationists to call for managing rangelands for increased heterogeneity. The Flint Hills also hosts multiple species of conservation concern during winter, but avian habitat requirements are less well known during this period and seldom considered in management recommendations.

The aim of this paper is to discuss the role of existing policies, programmes and legislation in promoting sustainable land management and livelihoods in mid‐central Botswana. The paper is based on data from the survey of relevant literature, analysis of policy and legal documents, field observations and a series of stakeholder workshops held in the villages of Mopipi, Mokobaxane and Rakops in Boteti Sub‐District between 2008 and 2009.

Mechanical and prescribed fire treatments are commonly used to reduce fuel loads and maintain or restore sagebrush steppe rangelands across the Great Basin where pinyon (Pinus) and juniper (Juniperus) trees are encroaching and infilling. Geospatial technologies, particularly remote sensing, could potentially be used in these ecosystems to (1) evaluate the longevity of fuel reduction treatments, (2) provide data for planning and designing future fuel-reduction treatments, and (3) assess the spatial distribution of horizontal fuel structure following fuel-reduction treatments.

In South Africa, the relative extent of range degradation under freehold compared to communal tenure has been strongly debated. We present a perspective on the processes that drive rangeland degradation on land under communal tenure. Our findings are based on literature as well as extensive field work on both old communal lands and ‘released’ areas, where freehold farms have been transferred to communal ownership.

Land and agrarian reform has the potential to expand South Africa's rangeland commons and enhance their contribution to the livelihoods of the rural poor, yet to a large extent this has been an opportunity missed. Shifting policy agendas have prioritised private land rights and commercial land uses, seeking to dismantle the racial divide between the white commercial farming areas and the ex-Bantustans by allocating former white farms to black farmers. These agendas and planning models reflect class and gender bias and a poor understanding of common property.