Beef cattle grazing is the dominant land use in the extensive tropical and sub-tropical rangelands of northern Australia. Despite the considerable knowledge on land and herd management gained from both research and practical experience, the adoption of improved management is limited by an inability to predict how changes in practices and combinations of practices will affect cattle production, economic returns and resource condition.

Vast areas of forests in North‐eastern Ethiopia have been replaced by cropland, shrub land or grazing areas. Thus, information about how vegetation composition and structure varies with disturbance is fundamental to conservation of such areas. This study aimed to investigate the effects of disturbance on the population structure and regeneration potential of five dominant woody species within forest where local communities harvest wood and graze livestock. Vegetation structure and environmental variables were assessed in 50 quadrats (20 m × 20 m).

Using data from previous studies, we tested two hypotheses about the impacts of grazing in a naturally heterogeneous landscape in arid central Australia: (1) that grazing leads to net change of resources at a paddock or landscape scale, and (2) that water and nutrients remain coupled as they move through the landscape. We found that key nutrients were likely to be lost at the landscape scale as grazing increased, rather than just being redistributed. Water infiltration increased but runoff was probably lost more readily due to the lack of barriers to flow.

Carl Malmström's historical forest maps of the province of Halland, in south-western Sweden, were published over 70 years ago, but are still important to science and conservation. They show the transformation of a seventeenth century landscape of temperate broadleaves to a landscape dominated by open land and heather (Calluna vulgaris) in the nineteenth century, and to a landscape of coniferous forest plantations in the twentieth century. This article summarizes and reviews the original research, first published in Swedish in 1939.

Apart from a decrease in total perennial plant cover, degradation of North-African arid lands is not easy to qualify. Yet, simple and comprehensive yardsticks are necessary to assess degradation. We assigned components of competitive ability (C), stress tolerance (S) and ruderality (R) to 15 common perennials of Presaharian Tunisia. We used for that purpose phyto-ecological studies, data about life-form, grazing value and demography and circumstantial data.

Shrub cover has increased in semi-arid regions worldwide. This change has generally been viewed as land degradation, due to shrub-induced declines in pastoral productivity. As a consequence, widespread management treatments to reduce shrub density have been applied in many pastoral areas. These treatments, however, often do not have long-term positive benefits for forage production.

Historically monitoring of grazing impacts in rangelands has been seriously compromised by the small area, infrequency and variability of field-based sampling plots. Remote sensing of vegetation cover, which can be a surrogate for overall ecosystem condition, permits adequate spatial and temporal monitoring of land condition but can still be compromised by considerable inter and intra-paddock (field) variability. Cross-fence sample pairs control for local clines and patchiness in spatial and temporal variables such as vegetation, landform, soil type, surface-flows, and rainfall.

Investigations were made of plant and soil responses to severe degradation through heavy grazing and browsing in arid, succulent, subtropical thicket. Severe degradation of thicket is of major concern in terms of threatened biodiversity, unsustainable utilization and collapse of other ecosystem services. We used a natural, field contrast, case‐study approach, sampling within plots under lightly and heavily stocked conditions.

Rangelands and savannas occupy 70% of the Australian continent and are mainly used for commercial grazing of sheep and cattle. In the center and north, where there are extensive areas of indigenous land ownership and pastoral production is less intensive, savanna burning is frequent. Greenhouse gas emissions from rangelands have been overwhelmingly from land clearing and methane production by livestock.

Spanish mountains have been affected by the expansion of shrubs and forests since the mid‐20th century. This secondary succession in vegetation has some positive effects, but also drawbacks, such as an increase in fire risk, loss of diversity in land use, a reduction in landscape and cultural value, less water available in river channels and reservoirs, constraints on livestock farming, a reduced number of local species and loss of biodiversity.

The relative magnitudes of, and factors controlling, denitrification and dissimilatory nitrate reduction to ammonium (DNRA) were measured in the soil of a re-connected temperate floodplain divided into four different land management zones (grazing grassland, hay meadow, fritillary meadow and a buffer zone). Soil samples were collected from each zone to measure their respective potentials for nitrate attenuation using ¹⁵N both at the surface and at depth in the soil column and additional samples were collected to measure the lability of the organic carbon.

Rehabilitating degraded rangelands using enclosures offers various benefits to agro‐pastoral households. However, enclosure benefits cannot be generalized as there are variations across dryland ecosystems and societies. This study assessed the qualitative and quantitative benefits derived from rehabilitating degraded rangelands using private enclosures in Chepareria, West Pokot County, Kenya.