Restoration of grasslands dominated by tall fescue (Schedonorus phoenix [Scop.] Holub) to native tallgrass prairie usually requires burning, herbicides, or reseeding. We tested seasonal grazing by livestock in winter, combined with cessation of fertilization, as a restoration tool for modifying the competitive dynamics among herbaceous plants to restore tallgrass prairie communities in southeas...

Application of existing and novel management techniques can alter traditional livestock grazing patterns and significantly improve the sustainability of arid rangelands. Livestock often congregate and heavily graze riparian areas and other sensitive rangeland, while abundant forage remains in other areas. Increasing the uniformity of grazing can help protect fisheries, wildlife habitat, and oth...

Ecologists are searching for models, frameworks, and principles that provide a bridge between theory and the practice of restoration. Successional management has been proposed as a useful model for managing and restoring invasive-plant-dominated rangeland because it provides a framework in which ecological processes can be manipulated by managers to achieve a desired plant community. Succession...

Although the emerging field of precision livestock farming (PLF) is predominantly associated with intensive animal production, there is increasing interest in applying smart technologies in extensive rangeland systems. Precision livestock farming technologies bring the possibility of closely monitoring the behaviour, liveweight and other parameters of individual animals in free-ranging systems....

Landscape approaches can be subjected to mistakenly targeting a single "best" level of governance, and paying too little attention to the role that cross-scale and cross-level interactions play in governance. In rangeland settings, resources, patterns of use of those resources, and the institutions for managing the resources exist at multiple levels and scales. While the scholarship on commons ...

Rangelands of the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau (QTP), although sparsely populated and contributing little to China’s overall economy, play an important environmental role throughout Asia. They contain high biodiversity values and can also potentially provide China with a source of cultural and geographic variety in the future. Chinese government reports paint a gloomy picture, considering vast porti...

Extensive livestock grazing even in unsuitable land has increasingly grown in most parts of semi-arid rangeland. Therefore, it is of paramount importance to identify suitable land for livestock grazing for optimum utilization while causing minimum impact to the environment. This paper adapted the schematic model based on the concepts presented by the Food and Agriculture Organization of suitabi...

In this study, a land use/land cover change analysis method was developed to examine patterns of land use/land cover conversions of cropland to urban uses and conversions of rangeland to cropland uses in the United States (US) Midwest region. We used the US 2001 and 2006 National Land Cover Datasets (NLCD) for our spatial analyses of these conversion trends. Our analysis showed that the eastern...