Public land management agencies, such as the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), are charged with managing rangelands throughout the western United States for multiple uses, such as livestock grazing and conservation of sensitive species and their habitats. Monitoring of condition and trends of these rangelands, particularly with respect to effects of livestock grazing, provides critical information for effective management of these multiuse landscapes.

Degradation of the dry semiarid ecosystems in the Mu Us Sandy Land of north central China was explored using high-resolution satellite images from 1978, 1987 and 1996. This study monitored both changes in grassland biomass production and reclamation activities to detect the nature and scale of land degradation since major economic reforms were introduced in 1978. The position of the high-resolution images within the vegetation cycles was inspected from National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) NDVI images at 10-day repetition and seasonal precipitation patterns.

The System-wide Program for Collective Action and Property Rights (CAPRi)sponsored an International Conference on Policy and Institutional Options for theManagement of Rangelands in Dry Areas, May 7-11, 2001 in Hammamet, Tunisia.

For 3 years, the Future of Australia's Threatened Ecosystems (FATE) Program has been working towards achieving multiple benefits for rangelands by applying conservation through sustainable use (CSU) approaches to the kangaroo industry. A critical component of this work is landholder involvement in kangaroo management that results in commercial gain. We are developing strategies for landholders to add value to the harvest at the same time as achieving better control over the impact that kangaroos can have on their land.

In this paper the use of fenced grazing camps to manage the rangeland commons is challenged. A historical perspective is presented on fencing and rotational grazing in South Africa. Two case studies in KwaZulu-Natal and the Northern Cape illustrate the factors that influence the management of rangelands under communal land tenure without the use of fences. It is argued that herding is preferred over fencing.

This paper aims to contribute to the debates on communal rangelands and analyses the gendered dimension of land rights and land access in the rural areas of Namaqualand. The actual gender relations within rural communities and the emergence of strategies that are being pursued in communal land processes are obscured and often ignored in policies about communal rangelands, which overemphasise ‘the ecological and economic impact’ and the balancing of these dimensions.

Recovery of the Florida panther (Puma concolor coryi) depends on habitat conservation on private rangelands. However, cattlemen-panther conflicts and lack of trust in wildlife agencies is undermining panther conservation efforts. Based on semi-structured interviews and group meetings with Florida cattlemen, we examine how cattlemen’s land stewardship practices support panther conservation, and causes of conflicts with the panther and wildlife agencies.

Assessing the health of rangeland ecosystems based solely on annual biomass production does not fully describe the condition of the plant community; the phenology of production can provide inferences about species composition, successional stage, and grazing impacts. We evaluated the productivity and phenology of western South Dakota mixed-grass prairie in the period from 2000 to 2008 using the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). The NDVI is based on 250-m spatial resolution Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite imagery.

The grassland biome of South Africa is a major resource for livestock farming; yet the soils of these rangelands are stressed differently by various management systems. The aim of this study was to investigate how basic soil properties respond to different management systems. For this purpose we sampled rangeland management systems under communal (continuous grazing), commercial (rotational grazing) and land reform (mixture of grazing systems) farming.

Nomadic pastoralism has thrived in Asia’s rangelands for several millennia by tracking seasonal changes in forage productivity and coping with a harsh climate. This pastoralist lifestyle, however, has come under intense transformations in recent decades due to socio-political and land use changes. One example is of the high-altitude trans-Himalayan rangelands of the Jammu and Kashmir State in northern India: major socio-political reorganisation over the last five decades has significantly impacted the traditional pasture use pattern and resources.

Proteins comprise one of the largest N inputs to soils. There is, therefore, a need to investigate the factors involved in the inputs and fate of proteins in soil. While land use management is expected to influence the amount and diversity of soil proteins, the responses of protein as a source of mineralizable N to land use changes have not yet been studied. We hypothesized that extractable soil protein could be a sensitive indicator in evaluating the effect of stress in ecosystem.