Spatiotemporal variation in demographic rates can have profound effects for population persistence, especially for dispersal‐limited species living in fragmented landscapes. Long‐term studies of plants in such habitats help with understanding the impacts of fragmentation on population persistence but such studies are rare. In this work, we reanalyzed demographic data from seven years of the short‐lived cactus Opuntia macrorhiza var. macrorhiza at five plots in Boulder, Colorado.

Rangeland rehabilitation has multiple, sometimes conflicting goals, such as the reestablishment of the predisturbance vegetation, soil protection, and forage production. The rehabilitation techniques should be also cost‐effective and practicable. Given the difficulties and high costs of restoring Succulent Karoo rangelands and the continuously high grazing pressure in the communal lands, tradeoffs should be accepted in the achievement of these goals.

The resilience, diversity and stability of mountain ecosystems are threatened by climatic as well as land‐use changes, but the combined effects of these drivers are only poorly understood. We combine two high‐resolution sediment records from Iffigsee (2065 m a.s.l.) and Lauenensee (1382 m a.s.l.) at different elevations in the Northern Swiss Alps to provide a detailed history of vegetational changes during the period of first pastoralism (ca. 7000–5000 cal. BP, 5000–3000 BC) in order to understand ongoing and future changes in mountain ecosystems.

The European hare (Lepus europaeus) has declined throughout its native range but invaded numerous regions where it has negatively impacted native wildlife. In southern Sweden, it replaces the native mountain hare (L. timidus) through competition and hybridisation. We investigated temporal change in the invasive range of the European hare in Ireland, and compared its habitat use with the endemic Irish hare (L. timidus hibernicus). The range of the European hare was three times larger and its core range twice as large in 2012–2013 than in 2005.

Increasing land utilization through diverse forms of human activities, such as agriculture, forestry, urban growth, and industrial development, has led to negative impacts on the water quality of rivers. To find out how catchment attributes, such as land use, hydrologic soil groups, and lithology, can affect water quality variables (Ca²⁺, Mg²⁺, Na⁺, Cl⁻, HCO₃⁻, pH, TDS, EC, SAR), a spatio-statistical approach was applied to 23 catchments in southern basins of the Caspian Sea.

Resistance to the use of prescribed fire is strong among many private land managers despite the advantages it offers for maintaining fire‐adapted ecosystems. Even managers who are aware of the benefits of using prescribed fire as a management tool avoid using it, citing potential liability as a major reason for their aversion. Recognizing the importance of prescribed fire for ecosystem management and the constraints current statutory schemes impose on its use, several states in the United States have undertaken prescribed burn statutory reform.

The Gunnison sage-grouse (GUSG) is an iconic species recently proposed for protection under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). In Colorado's Upper Gunnison River Basin, ranchers own the majority of water rights and productive river bottoms as well as approximately 30% of the most important GUSG habitat. This project used mixed-methods interviews with 41 ranch owners to document how ranchers perceive the proposed ESA listing and how they plan to respond to a listing decision. Results show that ranchers support on-the-ground GUSG conservation but are concerned about listing implications.

Governance plays a key role in rangeland management. In China, all rangeland, including pastoral land and agro-pastoral land, is owned by the State. Since 1980, use rights have been granted to households by the Chinese government extending the household contract responsibility system (HCRS). But in the agro-pastoral areas of northwestern (NW) China, the rangeland degradation is more severe than that in pastoral areas. The HCRS is difficult to implement because the limited and fragmented grazing land cannot be contracted to individual households.

Woody plant encroachment—the conversion of grasslands to woodlands—continues to transform rangelands worldwide, yet its causes and consequences remain poorly understood. Despite this being a coupled human-ecological phenomenon, research to date has tended toward ecological aspects of the issue. In this paper, we provide new insight into the long-term relationships between human demographics and woody plant cover at the landscape scale.

In China, three major rangeland management policies have caused dramatic social, economic, and ecological changes for pastoral regions in the past 30 yr: the Rangeland Household Contract Policy (RHCP), Rangeland Ecological Construction Projects (RECPs), and the Nomad Settlement Policy (NSP). The impacts of these policies are greatly debated. In this paper, we conduct a systematic review of academic perspectives on the impacts of the three policies and the causes of ineffective and negative effects.

The objective of this study was to determine the impact of livestock grazing management systems on soil and vegetation dynamics under different environmental conditions of Botswana. Soil and vegetation were randomly sampled along transects located in three ranches and adjacent communal grazing land in 2009 and 2010. Our results showed that grazing management systems did not consistently affect soil texture, organic carbon, pH and bulk density.

Long-term agricultural sustainability and water quality may be threatened by inadequate land management. Carbon (C) losses at the catchment scale largely depend on land use and management practices. In “Abelar” farm (A Coruña, NW Spain), swine slurry was directly discharged during a period of about 30 years onto agricultural maize fields and rangeland under cattle production. In 1998, the agricultural fields and rangeland were planted to stands of Eucalyptus globulus .