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.
