Shrub encroachment in arid and semiarid rangelands, a worldwide phenomenon, results in a heterogeneous landscape characterized by a mosaic of nutrient-depleted barren soil bordered by nutrient-enriched shrubby areas known as ‘‘fertile islands.’’ Even though shrub encroachment is considered as a major contributor to rangeland degradation, little is known about mechanisms favoring the reversibili...

recent attitude of vegetation assessors is using of new ecologic approaches to evaluate and analyse the complex rangeland ecosystems. plant diversity is the most important indices to assess the ecological changes of rangelands. in order to survey of plant indices of rangelands, two exclosure areas (long-term and mid-term) and a grazing area in rangelands of javaherdeh (ramsar, iran) were select...

Historical perspective of fire and grazing Human applications of fire to benefit grazing animals is not a new concept. Historical evidence indicates that aboriginal people in North America (Anderson 2006), Australia (Murphy and Bowman 2007), and Africa (Archibald et al. 2005) frequently burned rangelands and forested lands to attract wildlife, remove standing dead plant biomass, to stimulate ne...

There is an intense debate about the effects of postfire salvage logging versus nonintervention policies on regeneration of forest communities, but scant information from experimental studies is available. We manipulated a burned forest area on a Mediterranean mountain to experimentally analyze the effect of salvage logging on bird-species abundance, diversity, and assemblage composition. We us...

PURPOSE: Yellow starthistle is one of most problematic invasive species in grass and rangelands in the western United States. It has expanded its distribution since the 1950’s threatening native species’ diversity and reducing the utility of rangelands for livestock. Control of yellow starthistle has relied heavily on the use of picloram and clopyralid. Although these herbicides have been widel...

Nine indicators of biodiversity conservation have been defined by the nations participating in the Montreal Process for assessing sustainability of temperate and boreal forests. Five of these indicators address compositional and spatial diversity of ecosystems; two address species diversity; and two are indirect measures of genetic diversity. Our objective was to evaluate their applicability fo...

In arid and semi-arid rangelands, grazing as one of the natural or human induced processes has direct and indirect effects on structure and dynamics of plant community and ecosystems. A study was done to analyze the effects of grazing on plant species diversity and Plant Functional Types‘ (PFTs) diversity of arid and semi-arid rangelands. We analyzed plant richness and diversity data from 75 sa...