Livestock fodder needs in nearly all developing countries now exceed the sustainable yield of rangelands and other forage resources. In Africa, overgrazing has reduced range productivity virtually everywhere. It is important to provide animals with adequate nutrition to ensure the high productive and reproductive performance. Meanwhile, it is necessary to avoid the deterioration of the pasturel...

Land degradation in drylands is the process in which undesirable conditions emerge due to human and natural causes. Despite the particularly deleterious effects of degradation, and it’s potentially irreversible nature, regional assessments have provided conflicting extents, rates, and severities of degradation, both globally and regionally. Current monitoring of degradation relies upon the dete...

the arid zone encompasses land that has an imbalance between precipitation and losses through evaporation. globally, arid zones comprise large part of many countries in the mid-latitudes in both the northern and the southern hemispheres. both australia and iran are countries with a large arid zone. this negative water balance in the arid zone affects the type of land use in these countries. at ...

1 Texas AgriLife Research, Texas A&M System, Vernon TX 76384 2 Department of Wildland Resources, Utah State University, Logan, UT 84322-52305 3 Centre for the Management of Arid Environments, Locked Bag 22, Kalgoorlie, WA 6433, Australia 4 United States Department of Agriculture-Natural Resources Conservation Service, Springfield, CO 81073 5 United States Department of Agriculture-Natural Resou...

Soil characteristics and functions are critical determinants of rangeland systems and the ecosystem services that they provide. Rangeland soils are extremely diverse, but an emerging understanding is that paradigms developed in more mesic forest ecosystems may not be applicable. Vascular plants, biological soil crusts, and the soil microbial community are the three major functional groups of or...

The arid zone encompasses land that has an imbalance between precipitation and losses through evaporation. Globally, arid zones comprise large part of many countries in the mid-latitudes in both the Northern and the Southern hemispheres. Both Australia and Iran are countries with a large arid zone. This negative water balance in the arid zone affects the type of land use in these countries. At ...