The findings and recommendations of the NAS committee in over eighty professional papers presented at workshops designed to assess various aspects of range management.

In a two-year study, the National Academy of Sciences' Committee on Developing Strategies for Rangeland Management examined at length the scientific, political, economic, legal, and social issues arising from the BLM's stewardship role. This book, reporting the findings and recommendations of the NAS committee, contains over eighty professional papers presented at workshops designed to assess forage allocation, inventory of rangeland resources, impact of grazing intensity and specialized grazing systems on the use and value of rangeland, manipulative range improvements, application of socioeconomic techniques to range management decision making, and political and legal aspects of range management.

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.

In a two-year study, the National Academy of Sciences' Committee on Developing Strategies for Rangeland Management examined at length the scientific, political, economic, legal, and social issues arising from the BLM's stewardship role. This book, reporting the findings and recommendations of the NAS committee, contains over eighty professional papers presented at workshops designed to assess forage allocation, inventory of rangeland resources, impact of grazing intensity and specialized grazing systems on the use and value of rangeland, manipulative range improvements, application of socioeconomic techniques to range management decision making, and political and legal aspects of range management.

Desertification has occurred worldwide. The biophysical and socio-economic complexity of this phenomenon has challenged our ability to categorize, inventory, monitor and repair the condition of degraded lands. One of the most important distinctions to be made in relation to land degradation is between cultivated land used for annual crop production and `rangelands'. Grazing by free-roaming livestock is the traditional primary use of the world's rangelands. However, there is growing recognition of the importance of these vast acreages for wildlife habitat, hydrology and ground water recharge, recreation and aesthetics. This text focuses on the desertification of rangelands and explores processes, problems and solutions. Chapters in the first section evaluate interactions between `natural' and human-induced disturbance regimes, thresholds, and non-linear change with respect to vegetation, hydrology, nutrients and erosion. Chapters in the second section examine socio-economic constraints and approaches for preventing and reversing degradation. The book provides a contemporary, process-oriented perspective on rangeland degradation of value to students, policy-makers and professionals alike.