Overgrazing is a primary agent to cause and aggravate desertification in the Horqin Sandy Grassland of northern China that has reduced the capacity of carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) storage in the region. Grazing exclosure practice is recommended to control the desertification by vegetation restoration. How the restoration improves the C and N storage needs to be answered to the policy makers for their future land use planning and decisions.

Spatial dynamics of carbon fluxes in dryland montane ecosystems are complicated and may be influenced by topographic conditions and land tenure. Here we employ a modified version of the Carnegie Ames Stanford Approach (CASA) ecosystem model to estimate annual net primary production (NPP) at a fine spatial resolution (30m) in pinyon–juniper (P–J) woodlands of the Colorado Plateau. NPP estimated by CASA was generally comparable to validation data from a statistical NPP model and field observations.

In order to investigate spatial and temporal characteristics of the purely grazing-based livestock husbandry system in southwestern Madagascar, individual animals from 12 cattle and 12 goat herds that were equally distributed across four villages were fitted with GPS tracking collars and their behaviour during pasturing was directly observed to identify seasonal variations in land use and movement patterns along the regional altitude and vegetation gradient.

Grazing intensification and abandonment are increasing the risk of degradation of Mediterranean grasslands. The development of techniques for monitoring grazing effects on herbaceous vegetation is an essential need for the management of these rangelands. However, the high variability of these systems make physiographical and management effects hard to disentangle and quantify. We present a methodology to support rangeland management and assess grazing effects on environmentally heterogeneous areas, and provide an example of its application in a Mediterranean rangeland in central Spain.

The Kalahari ecosystem is characterized by natural resource conflicts and land-use pressure resulting from intensification of human activities. This paper addresses three issues of concern associated with the Kalahari ecosystem resource management: (i) the major land-use/land cover shifts in the Kalahari ecosystem since 1970 and the resulting pattern in vegetation species composition, cover and density; (ii) the possible explanations for the observed shifts; and (iii) the possible resource conflicts likely to arise.

Eastern Mediterranean ecosystems are prone to desertification when under grazing pressure. Therefore, management of grazing intensity plays a crucial role to avoid or to diminish land degradation and to sustain both livelihoods and ecosystem functioning. The dynamic land-use model LandSHIFT was applied to a case study on the country level for Jordan. The impacts of different stocking densities on the environment were assessed through a set of simulation experiments for various combinations of climate input and assumptions about the development of livestock numbers.

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.

Inappropriate agricultural practices and conversion of marginal land to cultivation and grazing have led to severe land degradation in the Ethiopian highlands. Consequently, the government has invested substantial resources in soil and water conservation (SWC). One of such interventions was exclosure, which was aimed restoring biodiversity, biomass and soil fertility. The aim of this study was to analyze the impact of exclosures on soil fertility restoration and examine its variability across age, agro-ecology and landscape position.

Livestock grazing is an important form of land use, affecting ecosystems worldwide. In ecoregions that evolved with low densities of large ungulates, such as those in the western United States, there is ongoing debate as to the appropriate concentrations of livestock that can be sustained. Limited landscape-scale monitoring makes it difficult to pinpoint the landscape-scale impacts of livestock on ecosystems.

Mediterranean ecosystems are global hotspots of biodiversity threaten by human disturbances. Growing evidence indicates that regeneration of Mediterranean forests can be halted under certain circumstances and that successional stages can become notoriously persistent. The Mediterranean sclerophyllous forest in central Chile is been largely transformed into savannas dominated by the invasive legume tree Acacia caven as result of interacting management and ecological factors.