This Research Topic is hosted in partnership with the "Grazing in Future Multi-Scapes" international workshop. The workshop will be held online, 30th May - 5th June 2021. Throughout different landscapes of the world, “grazing” herbivores fulfill essential roles in ecology, agriculture, economies and cultures including: families, farms, and communities. Not only do livestock provide food and wealth, they also deliver ecosystem services through the roles they play in environmental composition, structure and dynamics. Grazing, as a descriptive adjective, locates herbivores within a spatial and temporal pastoral context where they naturally graze or are grazed by farmers, ranchers, shepherds etc. In many cases, however, pastoralism with the single objective of maximizing animal production and/or profit has transformed landscapes, diminishing biodiversity, reducing water and air quality, accelerating loss of soil and plant biomass, and displacing indigenous animals and people. These degenerative landscape transformations have jeopardized present and future ecosystem and societal services, breaking the natural integration of land, water, air, health, society and culture. Land-users, policy makers and societies are calling for alternative approaches to pastoral systems; a call for diversified-adaptive and integrative agro-ecological and food-pastoral-systems designs that operate across multiple scales and ‘scapes’ (e.g. thought-, social-, land-, food-, health-, wild-scapes), simultaneously. There needs to be a paradigm shift in pastoral production systems and how grazing herbivores are managed –grazed- within them, derived initially from a change in perception of how they provide wealth. The thoughtscapes will include paradigm shifts where grazers move away from the actual archetype of pastoralism, future landscapes are re-imagined, and regenerative and sustainable management paradigms are put in place to achieve these visions. From this will come a change in collective thinking of how communities and cultures (socialscapes) perceive their relationships with pastoral lands. The landscapes are the biotic and abiotic four-dimensional domains or environments in need of nurture. Landscapes are the tables where humans and herbivores gain their nourishment, i.e. foodscapes. Foodscapes and dietary perceptions, dictate actions and reactions that are changing as developed countries grapple with diseases related to obesity, and people starve in developing countries. Societies are demanding healthscapes and nutraceutical foodscapes, and paradoxically, some are moving away from animal products. While indigenous species of animals, including humans (wildscapes), have been displaced from many of their lands by monotonic pastoralism, multifunctional pastoral systems can be designed in view of dynamic multi-scapes of the future. The purpose of this Research Topic is to influence future mental and practical models of pastoralism in continually evolving multi-scapes. We seek a collection of papers that will cultivate such a shift in thinking towards future models of sustainable multipurpose pastoralism. The contributions will be synthesized to establish how multifunctional pastoral systems can be re-imagined and then designed in view of the integrative dynamics of sustainable future multi-scapes.

The current analysis was conducted to evaluate the potential of nutritional, manure and animal husbandry practices for mitigating methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) - i.e. non-carbon dioxide (CO2) - GHG emissions from livestock production. These practices were categorized into enteric CH4, manure management and animal husbandry mitigation practices. Emphasis was placed on enteric CH4 mitigation practices for ruminant animals (only in vivo studies were considered) and manure mitigation practices for both ruminant and monogastric species. Over 900 references were reviewed; simulation and life cycle assessment analyses were generally excluded

This in-depth, multi-authored work originally published in France takes readers deep into traditional world of shepherds. Far from a nostalgic glimpse into a romanticized lifestyle, this book teaches how this sophisticated art and set of tangible skills has application in modern, North American range/livestock management. Through academic study and analysis and in-depth interviews with master shepherds readers will be amazed by the deep connection between the nutritional need for animals to feed, the powers of observation used by the shepherds to effectively care for and manage large herds, and how the traditional moving of the animals is more fitting to many landscapes than even the most progressive rotational grazing and moveable fencing systems. The compilation carries enough weight to dazzle the most ardent student and enough real-world know-how to equip the 21st-century herdsman with new insights and philosophies.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by the University of Otago, New Zealand. Farming Inside Invisible Worlds argues that the farm is a key player in the creation and stabilisation of political, economic and ecological power-particularly in colonised landscapes like New Zealand, America and Australia. This open access book reviews and rejects the way that farms are characterised in orthodox economics and agricultural science and then shows how re-centring the farm using the theoretical idea of political ontology can transform the way we understand the power of farming. Starting with the colonial history of farms in New Zealand, Hugh Campbell goes on to describe the rise of modernist farming and its often hidden political, racial and ecological effects. He concludes with an examination of alternative ways to farm in New Zealand, showing how the prior histories of colonisation and modernisation reveal important ways to farm differently in post-colonial worlds. Hugh Campbell's book has wide-ranging implications for understanding the role farms play in both our food systems and landscapes, and is an exciting new addition to food studies.

This book proposes a unique and comprehensive integrated synthesis of the current understanding of the science of Himalayan dynamics and its manifestations on physical systems and ecosystems at different spatial and temporal scales. In particular, this work covers relevant aspects of weather and climate, paleoclimate, snow, glacier and hydrology, ecology/forestry among other topics associated with the Himalayas. It highlights the role of the Himalayas in defining local to regional to global scale impact on weather and climate. It includes Himalayan impact on defining physical basis of changing glacier systems, permafrost melting/thawing, climate variability, and hydrological balances. As a result, this volume represents an important synthesized overview both for environmental and earth science researchers, and for policy makers and stakeholders interested in the physical and dynamical processes associated with the Himalayan massif.

Pastoralists make the most of resources distributed unevenly over space and time to provide a range of goods and services. Operating in a shock-prone environment, pastoralists deploy endogenous strategies such as mobility, diversification in agriculture or in non-agricultural activities, management of social networks, etc. However, accurate and reliable knowledge about the economics of pastoralism is yet to be understood and absorbed at the local, regional and national levels, based on reliable data. In the absence of such knowledge, governments and private firms neglect investment that would allow those systems to better connect to markets, and are unable to provide appropriate services, infrastructure and tenure security. With Argentina, Chad and Mongolia as pilot cases, this study by CIRAD, commissioned by FAO, funded by IFAD and facilitated by pastoralist associations (Fundación Gran Chaco, Réseau Billital Maroobé, and the National Federation of Pasture User Groups), aimed to fulfil this knowledge gap through a multifunctional assessment of pastoral production systems and their economic contribution. Importantly, incorporating self-consumption of pastoralist households’ productions themselves as an key component of gross revenue shows a significant increase in their contribution to national GDPs. The diversified sources of revenue and the importance of self-consumption also indicate that pastoral systems fulfil a range of functions (income, food security, flexible labor, etc.). Further, the study promotes close cooperation between pastoralist associations, research institutions and development partners. Such new partnerships allow strengthening the capacity of those pastoralist associations in collecting and managing their own data, as well as using this data in policy dialogue.