Preventing rangeland degradation: a shared problem for Australia and China

Rangeland degradation continues in Australia, China and elsewhere. The stocking rate/animal production relationship has been a successful concept for pastoralists wanting to avoid degradation and/or raise incomes. However, there are no means available of alerting pastoralists to the approach of critical thresholds that would ‘flip’ rangelands into alternative states when grazing-stressed. Critical threshold forecasting for avoiding degradation (and seizing restoration opportunities) could be made available online. Research has yet to find, assemble and test the set of indicators needed to forecast the approach of critical thresholds envisaged in State-and-Transition thinking. Forecasting at paddock, property and regional scales would have to involve high-performance computing because the thresholds will be space and time dependent. The case for Australia and China to contribute cooperatively to this research effort rests on the large number of contrasting rangeland ecosystems across the two countries that represent rangelands globally. A proven history of past collaboration is extant with existing research programs on plant population dynamics, landscape patchiness/leakiness and soil biota status, and their responses to the separate and combined effects of climate and grazing animals. The road to adoption would involve partnerships with pastoralists throughout the process, remote sensing to identify approaching thresholds in real time, application of high-performance computing and possibly artificial intelligence, and packaging of forecasts for different socio-economic rangeland systems.

‘This country just hangs tight’: perspectives on managing land degradation and climate change in far west NSW

Discussions of land degradation often display a disconnect between global and local scales. Although global-scale discussions often focus on measuring and reversing land degradation through metrics and policy measures, local-scale discussions can highlight a diversity of viewpoints and the importance of local knowledge and context-specific strategies for sustainable land management. Similarly, although scientific studies clearly link anthropogenic climate change to land degradation as both cause and consequence, the connection may not be so clear for local rangelands communities due to the complex temporal and spatial scales of change and management in such environments. In research conducted in October 2015, we interviewed 18 stakeholders in the far west of New South Wales about their perspectives on sustainable land management. The results revealed highly variable views on what constitutes land degradation, its causes and appropriate responses. For the pastoral land managers, the most important sign of good land management was the maintenance of groundcover, through the management of total grazing pressure. Participants viewed overgrazing as a contributor to land degradation in some cases and they identified episodes of land degradation in the region. However, other more contentious factors were also highlighted, such as wind erosion, grazing by goats and kangaroos and the spread of undesired ‘invasive native scrub’ at the expense of more desirable pasture, and alternative views that these can offer productive benefits. Although few participants were concerned about anthropogenic climate change, many described their rangeland management styles as adaptive to the fluctuations of the climate, regardless of the reasons for these variations. Rather than focusing on whether landholders ‘believe in’ climate change or agree on common definitions or measurement approaches for land degradation, these results suggest that their culture of adaptation may provide a strong basis for coping with an uncertain future. The culture of adaption developed through managing land in a highly variable climate may help even if the specific conditions that landholders need to adapt to are unlike those experienced in living memory. Such an approach requires scientific and expert knowledge to be integrated alongside the context-specific knowledge, values and existing management strategies of local stakeholders.

Merging Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Station Observations to Estimate the Uncertainty of Precipitation Change in Central Mongolia

Across the globe, station-based meteorological data are analyzed to estimate the rate of change in precipitation. However, in sparsely populated regions, like Mongolia, stations are few and far between, leaving significant gaps in station-derived precipitation patterns across space and over time. We combined station data with the observations of herders, who live on the land and observe nature and its changes across the landscape. Station-based trends were computed with the Mann–Kendall significance and Theil–Sen rate of change tests. We surveyed herders about their observations of changes in rain and snowfall amounts, rain intensity, and days with snow, using a closed-ended questionnaire and also recorded their qualitative observations. Herder responses were summarized using the Potential for Conflict Index (PCI2), which computes the mean herder responses and their consensus. For one set of stations in the same forest steppe ecosystem, precipitation trends were similar and decreasing, and the herder-based PCI2 consensus score matched differences between stations. For the other station set, trends were less consistent and the PCI2 consensus did not match well, since the stations had different climates and ecologies. Herder and station-based uncertainties were more consistent for the snow variables than the rain variables. The combination of both data sources produced a robust estimate of climate change uncertainty.