The potential of grazing lands to sequester carbon must be understood to develop effective soil conservation measures and sustain livestock production.

Methane (CH4) uptake by steppe soils is affected by a range of specific factors and is a complex process. Increased stocking rate promotes steppe degradation, with unclear consequences for gas exchanges. To assess the effects of grazing management on CH4 uptake in desert steppes, we investigated soil-atmosphere CH4 exchange during the winter-spring transition period.

Livestock depredation by carnivores has become an important hurdle in conservation of predators at the top of the food chain. To develop feasible recommendations to minimize this conflict, it is important to learn the circumstances of the predation events and attitudes of people. We assessed the circumstances for livestock depredation by leopards in Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra in India.

Fungi strongly influence ecosystem structure and functioning, playing a key role in many ecological services as decomposers, plant mutualists and pathogens. The Mediterranean area is a biodiversity hotspot that is increasingly threatened by intense land use. Therefore, to achieve a balance between conservation and human development, a better understanding of the impact of land use on the underlying fungal communities is needed.

The Khangchendzonga National Park is a part of the eastern Himalaya global biodiversity hotspot and is located in the Sikkim state of India. Increasing livestock populations coupled with the government policy to ban grazing and its selective implementation resulted in conflict. Hence we undertook this multidisciplinary study involving consultations with traditional resource users, field surveys, and remote sensing.

The Khangchendzonga National Park, located in Sikkim is a part of the Eastern Himalaya biodiversity hotspot. Traditional sheep herding practices in the park based on village consultations and field surveys to understand the population trend, migration pattern, fodder preferences, incomes and benefit sharing, ecological impacts and risk mitigation techniques were analysed.

Current paradigms generally assume that increased plant nitrogen (N) should enhance herbivore performance by relieving protein limitation, increasing herbivorous insect populations. We show, in contrast to this scenario, that host plant N enrichment and high-protein artificial diets decreased the size and viability of Oedaleus asiaticus, a dominant locust of north Asian grasslands. This locust preferred plants with low N content and artificial diets with low protein and high carbohydrate content.

We assessed a donor-funded grassland management project designed to create both conservation and livelihood benefits in the rangelands of Mongolia's Gobi desert. The project ran from 1995 to 2006, and we used remote sensing Normalized Differential Vegetation Index data from 1982 to 2009 to compare project grazing sites to matched control sites before and after the project's implementation.