Rangeland Ecology and Management (REM), January 2018
Editor’s Choice Award:
Weather-Centric Rangeland Revegetation Planning
Stuart Hardegree, John Abatzoglou, Mark Brunson, Matt Germino, Katherine Hegewisch, Corey Moffet, David Pilliod, Bruce Roundy, Alex Boehm, and Gwendwr Meredith
Rangelands encompass 40% of the Earth’s land surface. Arid and semi-arid ecosystems provide goods and services that support almost 3 billion people. About 1/3 of the world’s population depend directly on arid rangelands for their well-being. Conservative estimates indicate about 20% of the global arid and semi-arid rangelands are degraded, and about 30 million more acres become degraded each year. Despite major allocation of money to restoration/revegetation, success rates are often less than 5% in degraded and invaded ecosystems.
Fortunately, we have a solid force of scientists working together to improve our ability to restore/revegetate these structure-less and poorly functioning rangelands. In the first issue of Rangeland Ecology and Management this year, a group of them published an exciting article titled “Weather-Centric Rangeland Revegetation Planning” that discusses a new opportunity for improving rangeland restoration/revegetation success. They propose that restoration/revegetation outcomes may be improved by adopting a weather-centric approach that uses the full spectrum of available site-specific weather information from historical observations and seasonal climate forecasts, combined with adaptive management. Accurate and validated seasonal climate forecasts could greatly improve the success and cost-efficiency by limiting restoration/revegetation activities to periods where forecasts suggest higher probabilities of weather conditions needed for successful seedling establishment.
See the entire article in Rangeland Ecology & Management
71(1):1-11(January 2018)
Roger Sheley
Editor-in-Chief, Rangeland Ecology and Management
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