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.
Land abandonment is a major issue worldwide. In Argentina, the Monte Desert is the most arid rangeland, where the traditional conservation practices are based on successional management of areas excluded to disturbances or abandoned. Some areas subjected to this kind of management may be too degraded, and thus require active restoration.
The Mediterranean region covers about 854 million ha, but only 118 million (or 14 per cent) are suitable for agricultural production. In North Africa and the Middle East (MENA), agricultural land covers about 5 per cent; in Egypt and Algeria, it occupies less than 4 per cent and, in Libya, less than 2 per cent of the total national land area.
Grazing intensity and bush encroachment are disturbance factors that may alter the floristic composition of herbaceous species. This paper investigates impacts of grazing (intensity) and bush encroachment on herbaceous species and rangeland conditions in Borana, southern Ethiopia.
Burning of savanna is a globally important source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In Australia, burning of savanna contributes between 2% and 4% annually of the nation’s reportable emissions. Complete removal of this source of emissions is unrealistic because fire is a ubiquitous natural process and important land-management tool.
Beef cattle grazing is the dominant land use in the extensive tropical and sub-tropical rangelands of northern Australia.
The USDA initiated the Conservation Effects Assessment Project (CEAP) to quantify the environmental benefits of conservation practices at regional and national scales. For this assessment, a sampling and modeling approach is used.
Although the ecological thresholds for restoring fire-adapted ecosystems back to their original state are better understood than in the past, the key hurdle to reintroducing historical fire regimes at landscape scales is a social one.
Public land management agencies, such as the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), are charged with managing rangelands throughout the western United States for multiple uses, such as livestock grazing and conservation of sensitive species and their habitats.
We examined the effect of changes in land use and land tenure on bush encroachment and vegetation condition. An analysis of aerial photographs from three time steps (1949, 1985 and 2004) was used to document changes in woody plant density in different vegetation types on commonage and an adjacent commercial farm in Fort Beaufort, South Africa.
Understanding both the carbon dynamics within Australia’s northern savannas and the opportunities presented through diversification into carbon markets is of relevance to pastoral land managers both in Australia and globally.
Low rainfall, water scarcity and land degradation severely intimidate the production capacities of the rangelands in the arid environments. Water harvesting focuses on improving the productive use of rainwater on the local scale (field to subcatchment scale) before the runoff water leaves the geographical unit in question.