Published in Arabian Journal of Geosciences
There are contested views on the effects of grazing on soil carbon. A study was done to assess the effect of grazing and other controlling factors on soil organic carbon in arid and semiarid rangelands. Five rangeland sites were selected for sampling. Each rangeland was divided into three grazing intensities: ungrazed, moderately grazed, and severe...
Published in Landscape Ecology
ContextBurrowing mammals play a role in rangeland disturbance worldwide, enhancing habitat for certain species while negatively affecting others. However, little is known concerning effects of disturbance spatial pattern on co-occuring fauna. In the North American Great Plains, colonial black-tailed prairie dogs (Cynomys ludovicianus) may enhance h...
Rangelands cover ~23 million hectares and support a $3.4 billion annual cattle industry in California. Large variations in forage production from year to year and across the landscape make grazing management difficult. We here developed optimized methods to map high-resolution forage production using multispectral remote sensing imagery. We conduct...
Published in Environmental Monitoring and Assessment
Green vegetation cover fraction (VCF) is an important indicator of vegetation status in ecology and agronomy. Digital image analysis (DIA) has been widely accepted as a new VCF measurement technique. In this study, we present a novel fully automatic threshold segmentation algorithm for VCF measurements, which is named as upper inflection point plus...
Published in Environmental Earth Sciences
Soil components including organic matter (OM) are of vital importance in sorption/desorption kinetics of potentially toxic trace elements (PTEs), e.g., zinc (Zn). Nowadays, biochars as a source of OM have received increased attention because of their potential for improving soil properties. Effect of wheat straw biochar (0, 1.5 and 3% w/w) and zinc...
Published in Pastoralism
Pastoralists have long overlapped with wildlife in rangelands of sub-Saharan Africa. With growing recognition of the importance of wildlife outside of protected areas, conservation efforts are increasingly managed through hybrid governance activities worldwide, activities which often involve pastoralists. These efforts are especially prevalent in E...
© 2017 Desert surfaces are typically stable and represent some of the longest-lived landforms on Earth. For surfaces devoid of vegetation, the evolution of a desert pavement of gravel and small stones protects the surface from erosion by wind and water and vegetation further protects the surface in arid and semi-arid rangelands. The susceptibility ...
Published in Oecologia
Savanna ecosystems are an integral part of the African landscape and sustain the livelihoods of millions of people. Woody encroachment in savannas is a widespread phenomenon but its causes are widely debated. We review the extensive literature on woody encroachment to help improve understanding of the possible causes and to highlight where and how ...
Published in Natural Hazards
This paper examines the theory and supporting evidence for links between desertification, drought and dust storms with a particular focus on studies undertaken in and around the Gobi Desert. Overgrazing of rangeland by pastoralists has been the most commonly cited cause of desertification in global drylands for more than 30 years, but the evidence ...
