@inbook {JRN52673, title = {Management and policy implications of cross-and within-site, long-term studies}, booktitle = {Long-Term Trends in Ecological Systems: A Basis for Understanding Responses to Global Change}, year = {2013}, pages = {206-215}, publisher = {National Technical Information Services}, organization = {National Technical Information Services}, chapter = {15}, address = {Springfield, Virginia}, abstract = {

This chapter explains the implications long-term data bring to natural resource management and policy-making.\  It first explains the two perspectives of long-term data, then explains the values brought by the two perspectives to natural resource management.\  The two perspectives are retrospective and predictive:\  long-term data enable us to examine data retrospectively to identify temporal and spatial sensitivities, and to build these historical perspectives into predictive models where we can objectively evaluate potential future scenarios. The values are as follows.\  First, with the understandings gained by retrospectively examining the long-term data, the managers can develop data-based guidelines to direct the appropriate timing and application of management practices.\  Second, long term data provide the opportunity to evaluate policies and programs that have been implemented for resource conservation.\  The ability to evaluate environmental responses following policy implementation provides the data necessary to validate policies or may lead to their subsequent revision.\  Third, long term data collection provides the opportunity for clients, partners, and stakeholders to be engaged in scientific processes. These interactions create opportunities, not only for technology and information transfers, but for users to inform the science and its research directions.\  Fourth, the predictive models built based on long-term data can be used to estimate the effects of a variety of climatic and management scenarios and are critical to informed decision-making and effective communication between natural resource managers and policy makers.

}, keywords = {atmospheric chemistry, climate change, cross-site comparisons, disturbance, ecological response, ecology, ecosystem, EcoTrends, experimental forests, global change, human demography, human population growth, Long Term Ecological Research (LTER), long-term datasets, precipitation, rangeland, rangeland research stations, surface water chemistry}, url = {/files/bibliography/13-029-15.pdf}, author = {Kris Havstad and Joel R. Brown} } @inbook {50101, title = {The western United States rangelands, a major resource}, booktitle = {Grassland, Quietness and Strength for a New American Agriculture}, year = {2009}, month = {June 2009}, chapter = {Chapter 5}, abstract = {Rangeland is a type of land found predominantly in arid and semiarid regions, and managed as a natural ecosystem supporting vegetation of grasses, grass-like plants, forbs, or shrubs. There are approximately 761 m ac of rangeland in the United States, about 31\% of the total land area. This land type is characterized by 4 features: 1) limited by water and nutrients, primarily nitrogen (N), 2) annual production is characterized by tremendous temporal and spatial variability, 3) a nested landscape of public and private ownership, and 4) throughout their history of use these lands have been uniquely coupled systems of both people and nature. In the U.S. Department of Agriculture{\textquoteright}s 1948 Yearbook of Agriculture, the chapter on rangelands focused on a description of these lands occurring by region across the western United States, and the principles, developed mostly in the early 20th century, to manage these lands to provide the provisioning services of food and fiber through livestock grazing. In the last 60 years, these western rangelands have undergone a transformation as the U.S. population has grown to over 300 million and relocated to urban areas within the western and southwestern states. This population dynamic, along with tremendous changes in agricultural production and a reduction in the population involved in agriculture have resulted in significant changes in the uses and emphases placed upon these western lands. This land type is now often looked to provide a multitude of goods and services not only to rural populations, but also to tens of millions of people in large urban areas located within these rangelands. In this chapter it is our intent to reflect on the extent and nature of this transformation over the last 60 years. We start with a description of this human dynamic, and its sociological implications. We describe the major regions of the western continental U.S., the focal point of U.S. rangelands.}, keywords = {natural, rangeland, resource, western U.S.}, url = {/files/bibliography/09-011.pdf}, author = {Kris Havstad and Debra C. Peters and Allen-Diaz, B. and Brandon T Bestelmeyer and D.D. Briske and Joel R. Brown and M. Brunson and Jeffrey E. Herrick and P. Johnson and L. A. Joyce and Pieper, Rex D. and Svejcar, A.J. and Jin Yao and James Bartolome and Lynn Huntsinger} } @article {50222, title = {Mongolia{\textquoteright} s rangelands: Is livestock production the key to the future?}, journal = {Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment}, volume = {6}, year = {2008}, month = {September 2008}, pages = {386-391}, abstract = {Approximately half of the world{\textquoteright}s land areas is rangeland. Over 1.5 billion people live on or immediately adjacent to this land type. Common to these rangelands are over 1 billion domesticated animals, primarily cattle, sheep and goats that are managed by pastoralists. The ruminant digestive system common to these livestock species evolved over 20 million years ago and is a mutualistic digestive system that break cellulose bonds to free masses of metabolizable energy present it the nature and introduced forages of these rangelands. Approximately 10\% of eh world{\textquoteright}s population are pastoralists, and many of these people live at poverty levels. However, these landscapes can also provide additional goods and services other than food and fiber. This manuscript is a viewpoint article that debates the capacity of pastoralists, specifically those in Mongolia, to develop other goods and services in order to increase their standard of living while maintaining a sustained capacity to produce food and fiber A key need for managing a diverse set of goods and services form any landscape, including grasslands, of Mongolia, is knowledge of the values of alternative ecosystem services and their resulting economic opportunities. This knowledge is unavailable at this time except for a few services with market opportunities.}, keywords = {future, journal, livestock, Mongolia, rangeland}, url = {/files/bibliography/08-035.pdf}, author = {Kris Havstad and Jeffrey E. Herrick and Tseelei, E.A.} } @conference {50335, title = {Ecosystem Services from U.S. Rangelands: A Synthesis}, booktitle = {Society for Range Management Meeting Abstracts}, year = {2007}, abstract = {The over 300 million ha of public and private rangelands in the United States are characterized by low and variable precipitation, nutrient-poor soils, and high spatial and temporal variability in plant production. This land type has provided a variety of goods and services, with the provisioning of food and fiber dominating through much of the 20th century. More recently, food production from a rangeland-based livestock industry is often pressured for a variety of reasons, including poor economic returns, increased regulations, an aging rural population, residential development, and increasingly diverse interests of land owners. A shift to other provisioning, regulating, cultural, and supporting services is occurring with important implications for carbon sequestration, biodiversity, and conservation incentives. There are numerous goods and services possible from rangelands that can supply societal demands such as clean water and a safe food supply. The use of ecologically-based principles of land management remains at the core of the ability of private land owners and public land managers to provide these existing and emerging services. We suggest that expectations need to be based on a thorough understanding of the diverse potentials of these lands and their inherent limits. A critical provisioning service to rangelands will be management practices that either maintain ecological functions or that restores functions to systems that have been substantially degraded over past decades. With proper incentives and economic benefits, rangelands, in the U.S. or globally, can be expected to provide both historical provisioning and more unique goods and services in a sustainable fashion, albeit in different proportions than in the past.}, keywords = {ecosystem, rangeland}, author = {Kris Havstad} } @conference {50341, title = {New frontiers for ecosystem services}, booktitle = {60th Annual Meetings and Trade Show, Society for Range Management}, year = {2007}, month = {February 9, 2007}, pages = {Paper No. 188}, address = {Reno/Sparks, NV}, abstract = {The over 300 million ha of public and private rangelands in the United States are characterized by low and variable precipitation, nutrient-poor soils, and high spatial and temporal variability in plant production. This land type has provided a variety of goods and services, with the provisioning of food and fiber dominating through much of the 20th Century. More recently, food production from a rangeland-based livestock industry is often pressured for a variety of reasons, including poor economic returns, increased regulations, an aging rural population, residential development, and increasingly diverse interests of land owners. A shift to other provisioning, regulating, cultural, and supporting services is occurring with important implications for carbon sequestration, biodiversity, and conservation incentives. There are numerous goods and services possible from rangelands that can supply societal demands such as clean water and a safe food supply. The use of ecologically-based principles of land management remains at the core of the ability of private land owners and public land managers to provide these existing and emerging services. We suggest that expectations need to be based on a thorough understanding of the diverse potentials of these lands and their inherent limits. With proper incentives and economic benefits, rangelands, in the U.S. or globally, can be expected to provide both historical provisioning and more unique goods and services in a sustainable fashion, albeit in different proportions than in the past.}, keywords = {precipitation, private, public, rangeland}, author = {Kris Havstad} } @proceedings {51394, title = {Rangeland research in the Chihuahuan Desert}, year = {1995}, month = {1995}, abstract = {

Three major classes of symbiotic fungi were identified in the roots of native grasses and shrubs on arid rangelands of the southwestern U.S. The first class is vesicular-arbuscular mycorrhizae, common to most higher plants. These fungi enhance nutrient and water uptake in plants. The second major class of symbiotic fungi are common soil or saprobic fungi. Because of their association with the host plant their capacity is enhanced to access nutrients from immobile inorganic and complex organic resources and supply them to the plant. One demonstrated benefit of a saprophytic seed-borne fungus, Alternaria alternata, was that it decomposed the seed capsule at germination and transferred nutrients to the germinating seedling, improving chances for survival and establishment. {\textquoteright}These fungi likely play a role in the management of carbon resources in the ecosystem. Third major class of fungi regularly associated with grass and shrub roots were Chytridiomycetes, a primitive aquatic fungus. These fungi appear to regulate the colonization by the other two fungal classes. These fungi, acting in concert with each other, enhance nutrient and water uptake of native plants. They directly affect survival ability and competitiveness of all plant species in arid rangelands. We are researching these fungi because we think that new technologies for rangeland revegetation of degraded areas will require the presence of these fungal classes for successful reestablishment and survival of native plant species.

}, keywords = {cattle growers{\textquoteright} short course, Chihuahuan Desert, rangeland, research}, url = {/files/bibliography/446.pdf}, author = {Kris Havstad and D.M. Anderson and J.R. Barrow and Richard E. Estell and E.L. Fredrickson and Gibbens, Robert P. and Jeffrey E. Herrick and Walter G. Whitford} }