This book is open access under a CC BY-NC 2.5 license. This book provides an unprecedented synthesis of the current status of scientific and management knowledge regarding global rangelands and the major challenges that confront them. It has been organized around three major themes. The first summarizes the conceptual advances that have occurred in the rangeland profession. The second addresses the implications of these conceptual advances to management and policy. The third assesses several major challenges confronting global rangelands in the 21st century. This book will compliment applied range management textbooks by describing the conceptual foundation on which the rangeland profession is based. It has been written to be accessible to a broad audience, including ecosystem managers, educators, students and policy makers. The content is founded on the collective experience, knowledge and commitment of 80 authors who have worked in rangelands throughout the world. Their collective contributions indicate that a more comprehensive framework is necessary to address the complex challenges confronting global rangelands. Rangelands represent adaptive social-ecological systems, in which societal values, organizations and capacities are of equal importance to, and interact with, those of ecological processes. A more comprehensive framework for rangeland systems may enable management agencies, and educational, research and policy making organizations to more effectively assess complex problems and develop appropriate solutions.

The science of range management, like many other resource disciplines, has embraced and integrated environmental concerns in the field, the laboratory, and policy. Rangeland Ecology and Management now brings this integrated approach to the classroom in a thoroughly researched, comprehensive, and readable text. The authors discuss the basics of ran

Rangelands are a type of land that include vast grasslands, shrublands, woodland, wetlands and deserts, grazed by domestic livestock or wild animals. They comprise almost one-half of all the lands in the world. This book analyzes the sustainability of beef cattle systems of the Spanish Rangelands known as Dehesas. These systems are considered as outstanding High Nature Value (HNV) farming systems and the most agroforestry systems in Europe. Additionally, on a global scale, China has around one-eighth of the rangelands (the second largest area of land in any country other than Australia). These rangelands are mostly inhabited by peoples of various ethnic minorities. This book provides an overview of the environment and current development trends in the pastoral regions including a glimpse of the people affected most by any conservation or development effort and provide a framework for future integrated conservation and development work in the pastoral regions of north and north-west China. Furthermore, land degradation and biodiversity loss are the most critical issues of ecological environmenti n the West of China and they are the main causes for poverty and constraints for economic development. This book examines rangeland degradation in China as well as rangeland management and livestock production in an effort to arrest and reverse rangeland degradation. In other chapters, changes in vegetation related with grazing are reviewed, the benefits of reintegrating burrowing bettongs as a part of rangeland restoration programs, and integrating national feral camel management plans that are being implemented across the camel range in Australia, aiming to control the damage caused by camels (there are around 750,000 feral camels in arid and semi-arid rangelands in Australia).

Rangelands comprise between 40 and 50 percent of all U.S. land and serve the nation both as productive areas for wildlife, recreational use, and livestock grazing and as watersheds. The health and management of rangelands have been matters for scientific inquiry and public debate since the 1880s, when reports of widespread range degradation and livestock losses led to the first attempts to inventory and classify rangelands. Scientists are now questioning the utility of current methods of rangeland classification and inventory, as well as the data available to determine whether rangelands are being degraded. These experts, who are using the same methods and data, have come to different conclusions. This book examines the scientific basis of methods used by federal agencies to inventory, classify, and monitor rangelands; it assesses the success of these methods; and it recommends improvements. The book's findings and recommendations are of interest to the public; scientists; ranchers; and local, state, and federal policymakers.

This book provides an integrated description of the indicators of rangeland sustainability that capture ecological, economic, and social dimensions. It takes a fresh look at the information available on current and emerging issues across rangelands, and presents collaborative research for future progress. Authors offer a framework for evaluating rangeland sustainability, the best available data to use, as well as an interactive tool for use at a variety of geographical scales. Readers with limited knowledge of rangelands, as well as professional rangeland ecologists and land managers, will gain an understanding of the best tools available today to assess sustainability across rangeland ecosystems in the U.S.

This open access book describes the serious threat of invasive species to native ecosystems. Invasive species have caused and will continue to cause enormous ecological and economic damage with ever increasing world trade. This multi-disciplinary book, written by over 100 national experts, presents the latest research on a wide range of natural science and social science fields that explore the ecology, impacts, and practical tools for management of invasive species. It covers species of all taxonomic groups from insects and pathogens, to plants, vertebrates, and aquatic organisms that impact a diversity of habitats in forests, rangelands and grasslands of the United States. It is well-illustrated, provides summaries of the most important invasive species and issues impacting all regions of the country, and includes a comprehensive primary reference list for each topic. This scientific synthesis provides the cultural, economic, scientific and social context for addressing environmental challenges posed by invasive species and will be a valuable resource for scholars, policy makers, natural resource managers and practitioners.

Rangelands are large natural landscapes that can include grasslands, shrublands, savannahs and woodlands. They are greatly influenced by, and often dependent on, the action of herbivores. In the majority of rangelands the dominant herbivores are found in domestic herds that are managed by mobile pastoralists. Most pastoralists manage their rangelands communally, benefitting from the greater flexibility and seasonal resource access that common property regimes can offer. As this book shows, this creates a major challenge for governance and institutions. This work improves our understanding of the importance of governance, how it can be strengthened and the principles that underpin good governance, in order to prevent degradation of rangelands and ensure their sustainability. It describes the nature of governance at different levels: community governance, state governance, international governance, and the unique features of rangelands that demand collective action (issues of scale, ecological disequilibrium and seasonality). A series of country case studies is presented, drawn from a wide spectrum of examples from Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, Europe and North America. These provide contrasting lessons which are summarised to promote improved governance of rangelands and pastoralist livelihoods.