Annual weeds continue to expand throughout the West eliminating many desirable species and plant communities. Wildfires are now common on lands infested with annual weeds, causing a loss of wildlife habitat and other natural resources. Measures can be used to reduce burning and restore native plant communities, but restoration is difficult and costly.
Annual weeds continue to expand throughout the West eliminating many desirable species and plant communities. Wildfires are now common on lands infested with annual weeds, causing a loss of wildlife habitat and other natural resources. Measures can be used to reduce burning and restore native plant communities, but restoration is difficult and costly.
The understanding and management of land resources used by grazing animals are of major importance to ecologists and agricultural and environmental scientists. This book fills a major gap in the market by synthesising a range of perspectives on grazing systems, drawn from plant science, animal science and ecology. It outlines the principles of herbage growth and competition; of animal nutrition and grazing behavior; and of the interactions of plant and animal factors that are central to an understanding of grazing systems. Chapters on the management of grazing systems cover both intensive and extensive systems (including rangelands) from all major agroecological zones of the world. The book is written by leading authorities from the USA, UK, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Israel and France. It represents a major contribution to the literature for advanced students and research workers concerned with plant science (especially grasslands), animal science (especially ruminants), and natural and agricultural ecosystems.
The 51 papers in this proceedings include an introductory keynote paper on ecotones and hybrid zones and a final paper describing the mid-symposium field trip as well as collections of papers on ecotones and hybrid zones (15), population biology (6), community ecology (19), and community rehabilitation and restoration (9). All of the papers focus on wildland shrub ecosystems; 14 of the papers deal with one aspect or another of sagebrush (subgenus Tridentatae of Artemisia) ecosystems. The field trip consisted of descriptions of biology, ecology, and geology of a big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) hybrid zone between two subspecies (A. tridentata ssp. tridentata and A. t. ssp. vaseyana) in Salt Creek Canyon, Wasatch Mountains, Uinta National Forest, Utah, and the ecotonal or clinal vegetation gradient of the Great Basin Experimental Range, Manti-La Sal National Forest, Utah, together with its historical significance. The papers were presented at the 10th Wildland Shrub Symposium: Shrubland Ecotones, at Snow College, Ephraim, UT, August 12-14, 1998.
This book is open access under a CC BY-NC 2.5 license. This book provides an unprecedented synthesis of the current status of scientific and management knowledge regarding global rangelands and the major challenges that confront them. It has been organized around three major themes. The first summarizes the conceptual advances that have occurred in the rangeland profession. The second addresses the implications of these conceptual advances to management and policy. The third assesses several major challenges confronting global rangelands in the 21st century. This book will compliment applied range management textbooks by describing the conceptual foundation on which the rangeland profession is based. It has been written to be accessible to a broad audience, including ecosystem managers, educators, students and policy makers. The content is founded on the collective experience, knowledge and commitment of 80 authors who have worked in rangelands throughout the world. Their collective contributions indicate that a more comprehensive framework is necessary to address the complex challenges confronting global rangelands. Rangelands represent adaptive social-ecological systems, in which societal values, organizations and capacities are of equal importance to, and interact with, those of ecological processes. A more comprehensive framework for rangeland systems may enable management agencies, and educational, research and policy making organizations to more effectively assess complex problems and develop appropriate solutions.
