Livestock grazing affects over 60% of the world's agricultural lands and can influence rangeland ecosystem services and the quantity and quality of wildlife habitat, resulting in changes in biodiversity. Concomitantly, livestock grazing has the potential to be detrimental to some wildlife species while benefiting other rangeland organisms. Many imperiled grouse species require rangeland landsca...

We tested the accuracy of an atmospheric correction method that depends on clear water bodies to infer solar and atmospheric parameters for radiative transfer equations by measuring the reflectance signature of four prominent south Texas rangeland plants with the Earth Resource Technology (LANDSAT) satellite multispectral scanner (MSS) and a ground-based Exotech Model 20 spectroradiometer. The ...

— This paper contributes to the debate over land tenure in rural China by extending its spatial coverage to the country’s extensive rangeland regions. Key characteristics of pastoral tenure, identified from field appraisals in western China, include group tenure and fuzzy boundaries. Although these characteristics give rise to efficiency concerns, from a new institutional economics perspective ...

Rangeland ecosystems typify physical systems having an incomplete causal theory. This paper describes CARMA, a system for rangeland pest management advising that uses model-based matching and adaptation to integrate case-based reasoning with modelbased reasoning for prediction in rangeland ecosystems. An ablation study showed that removing any part of the CARMA’s model-based knowledge dramatica...

Afforestation of marginal agricultural lands represents a promising option for carbon sequestration in terrestrial ecosystems. An ecosystem carbon model was used to generate new national maps of annual net primary production (NPP), one each for continuous land covers of ‘forest’, ‘crop’, and ‘rangeland’ over the entire U. S. continental area. Direct inputs of satellite “greenness” data from the...

This study describes the components of available forage in Vahregan watershed, Central Iran and highlight issues relating to forage endowment and environmental dynamics. In this study, proper use factor and palatability models and their components use to develop the model of available forage and measure it. The components climatic, topography, land systems, vegetation, land use and grass and sh...

is when per capita production and consumption grow. This may occur when more hours are spent working; but more important, for the long-term, is new technology, which leads to higher rates of extraction and/or more effi cient use of resources. For most nations, economic growth refl ects a concurrent increase in population and per capita production and consumption, all facilitated by the developm...

Calibrated predictive relationships obtained from simple and multiple regression of thematic mapper or broad-band (BB) and 1.4 nm interval or narrow-band (NB) spectral data were evaluated for quantifying 11 rangeland components (including total vegetation, forb, grass, shrub, litter, and bare soil) and distinguishing among 6 long-term grazing treatments of sagebrush steppe. In general, all 4 da...

Land degradation of alpine rangeland in Dachigam National Park, Northern India, was evaluated in this study using MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) land products. The park has been used by a variety of livestock holders. With increasing numbers of livestock, the managers and users of the park are apprehensive about degradation of the grazing land. However, owing to weak infr...

Kachergis, E. (corresponding author, emily. [email protected]): Rangeland Resources Research Unit, USDA-Agricultural Research Service, 8408 Hildreth Road, Cheyenne, WY, 82009, USA Rocca,M.E. ([email protected]): Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, 80523, USA Fernandez-Gimenez,M.E. ([email protected]): De...