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Pastoral people in rangelands worldwide are experiencing uncertainty due to a combination of climatic, economic, and political stressors. Our study seeks to create a full view of the drivers, impacts, and adaptations to change for livestock herders in rural Mongolia, making use of herder traditional knowledge and select instrumental data. Interview respondents described undesirable trends in livestock herds, pasture, wildlife, and their livelihoods in three sites in northern, central, and eastern Mongolia from 1995 to 2015, including decreased lake levels. There was more agreement for precipitation trends than for temperature. We developed a systems model based on herder descriptions of the sequence and prominence of interacting drivers of change. Finally, we describe measures herders are taking to adapt to these changes, such as more frequent livestock movement. We present a transdisciplinary view of social-ecological change and applications for more regionally focused governance in an era of climate uncertainty.

Mountain social‐ecological systems (MtSES) are vital to humanity, providing ecosystem services to over half the planet's human population. Despite their importance, there has been no global assessment of threats to MtSES, even as they face unprecedented challenges to their sustainability. With survey data from 57 MtSES sites worldwide, we test a conceptual model of the types and scales of stressors and ecosystem services in MtSES and explore their distinct configurations according to their primary economic orientation and land use. We find that MtSES worldwide are experiencing both gradual and abrupt climatic, economic, and governance changes, with policies made by outsiders as the most ubiquitous challenge. Mountains that support primarily subsistence‐oriented livelihoods, especially agropastoral systems, deliver abundant services but are also most at risk. Moreover, transitions from subsistence‐ to market‐oriented economies are often accompanied by increased physical connectedness, reduced diversity of cross‐scale ecosystem services, lowered importance of local knowledge, and shifting vulnerabilities to threats. Addressing the complex challenges facing MtSES and catalyzing transformations to MtSES sustainability will require cross‐scale partnerships among researchers, stakeholders, and decision makers to jointly identify desired futures and adaptation pathways, assess trade‐offs in prioritizing ecosystem services, and share best practices for sustainability. These transdisciplinary approaches will allow local stakeholders, researchers, and practitioners to jointly address MtSES knowledge gaps while simultaneously focusing on critical issues of poverty and food security. ISSN:2328-4277

Transdisciplinary research is a promising approach to address sustainability challenges arising from global environmental change, as it is characterized by an iterative process that brings together actors from multiple academic fields and diverse sectors of society to engage in mutual learning with the intent to co-produce new knowledge. We present a conceptual model to guide the implementation of environmental transdisciplinary work, which we consider a “science with society” (SWS) approach, providing suggested activities to conduct throughout a seven-step process. We used a survey with 168 respondents involved in environmental transdisciplinary work worldwide to evaluate the relative importance of these activities and the skills and characteristics required to implement them successfully, with attention to how responses differed according to the gender, geographic location, and positionality of the respondents. Flexibility and collaborative spirit were the most frequently valued skills in SWS, though non-researchers tended to prioritize attributes like humility, trust, and patience over flexibility. We also explored the relative significance of barriers to successful SWS, finding insufficient time and unequal power dynamics were the two most significant barriers to successful SWS. Together with case studies of respondents’ most successful SWS projects, we create a toolbox of 20 best practices that can be used to overcome barriers and increase the societal and scientific impacts of SWS projects. Project success was perceived to be significantly higher where there was medium to high policy impact, and projects initiated by practitioners/other stakeholders had a larger proportion of high policy impact compared to projects initiated by researchers only. Communicating project results to academic audiences occurred more frequently than communicating results to practitioners or the public, despite this being ranked less important overall. We discuss how these results point to three recommendations for future SWS: 1) balancing diverse perspectives through careful partnership formation and design; 2) promoting communication, learning, and reflexivity (i.e., questioning assumptions, beliefs, and practices) to overcome conflict and power asymmetries; and 3) increasing policy impact for joint science and society benefits. Our study highlights the benefits of diversity in SWS - both in the types of people and knowledge included as well as the methods used - and the potential benefits of this approach for addressing the increasingly complex challenges arising from global environmental change.

Pastoralists and researchers (and others) are finding new ways of working together worldwide, attempting to sustain pastoral livelihoods and rangelands in the face of rapid and profound changes driven by globalization, growing consumption, land-use change, and climate change. They are doing this partly because of a greater need to address increasing complex or “wicked” problems, but also because local pastoral voices (and sometimes science) still have little impact on decision-making in the governmental and private sectors. We describe here, using six worldwide cases, how collaborative rangelands partnerships are transforming how we learn about rangelands and pastoralists, whose knowledge gets considered, how science can support societal action, and even our fundamental model of how science gets done. Over the long-term, collaborative partnerships are transforming social-ecological systems by implementing processes like building collaborative relationships, co-production/co-generation of knowledge, integration of knowledges, social learning, capacity building, networking and implementing action. These processes are changing mental models and paradigms, creating strong and effective leaders, changing power relations, providing more robust understanding of rangeland systems, reducing polarization and supporting the implementation of new practices and policies. Collaborative partnerships have recurring challenges and much work is yet to be done. These challenges rest on the enduring complexity of social-ecological problems in rangelands. At a practical level, partnerships struggle with listening, amplifying and partnering with diverse (and sometimes marginalized) voices, the time commitment needed to make partnerships work, the bias and naivete of scientists, the recognition that partnerships can promote negative transformations, management of power relations within the partnership, and the need to attribute impacts to partnership activities. We think that the future of this work will have more focus on systems transformations, morals and ethics, intangible and long-term impacts, critical self-assessment, paradigm shifts and mental models, and power. Overall, we conclude that these partnerships are transformative in unexpected and sometimes intangible ways. Key transformations include changing mental models and building the next generation of transformative leaders. Just as important is serendipity, where participants in partnerships take advantage of new windows of opportunity to change policy or create new governance institutions. We also conclude that collaborative partnerships are changing how we do science, creating new and transformative ways that science and society interact that could be called “transformative science with society.”

This work was supported by the US National Science Foundation through the Mountain Sentinels Research Coordination Network (NSF #1414106), the Swiss National Science Foundation through MtnPaths – Pathways for global change adaptation of mountain socio-ecological systems (#20521L_169916), and the Center for Collaborative Conservation at Colorado State University. As global environmental change continues to accelerate and intensify, science and society are turning to trans- disciplinary approaches to facilitate transitions to sustainability. Modeling is increasingly used as a technological tool to improve our understanding of social-ecological systems (SES), encourage collaboration and learning, and facilitate decision-making. This study improves our understanding of how SES models are designed and applied to address the rising challenges of global environmental change, using mountains as a representative system. We analyzed 74 peer-reviewed papers describing dynamic models of mountain SES, evaluating them according to characteristics such as the model purpose, data and model type, level of stakeholder involvement, and spatial extent/resolution. Slightly more than half the models in our analysis were participatory, yet only 21.6% of papers demonstrated any direct outreach to decision makers. We found that SES models tend to under-represent social datasets, with ethnographic data rarely incorporated. Modeling efforts in conditions of higher stakeholder diversity tend to have higher rates of decision support compared to situations where stakeholder diversity is absent or not addressed. We discuss our results through the lens of appropriate technology, drawing on the concepts of boundary objects and scalar devices from Science and Technology Studies. We propose four guiding principles to facilitate the development of SES models as appropriate technology for transdisciplinary applications: (1) increase diversity of stakeholders in SES model design and application for improved collaboration; (2) balance power dynamics among stakeholders by incorporating diverse knowledge and data types; (3) promote flexibility in model design; and (4) bridge gaps in decision support, learning, and communication. Creating SES models that are appropriate tech- nology for transdisciplinary applications will require advanced planning, increased funding for and attention to the role of diverse data and knowledge, and stronger partnerships across disciplinary divides. Highly contextualized participatory modeling that embraces diversity in both data and actors appears poised to make strong contributions to the world’s most pressing environmental challenges. Postprint

Mountain social-ecological systems (MtSES) provide crucial ecosystem services to over half of humanity. However, populations living in these highly varied regions are now confronted by global change. It is critical that they are able to anticipate change to strategically manage resources and avoid potential conflict. Yet, planning for sustainable, equitable transitions for the future is a daunting task, considering the range of uncertainties and the unique character of MtSES. Participatory scenario planning (PSP) can help MtSES communities by critically reflecting on a wider array of innovative pathways for adaptive transformation. Although the design of effective approaches has been widely discussed, how PSP has been employed in MtSES has yet to be examined. Here, we present the first systematic global review of single- and multiscalar, multisectoral PSP undertaken in MtSES, in which we characterize the process, identify strengths and gaps, and suggest effective ways to apply PSP in MtSES. We used a nine-step process to help guide the analysis of 42 studies from 1989 screened articles. Our results indicate a steady increase in relevant studies since 2006, with 43% published between 2015 and 2017. These studies encompass 39 countries, with over 50% in Europe. PSP in MtSES is used predominantly to build cooperation, social learning, collaboration, and decision support, yet meeting these objectives is hindered by insufficient engagement with intended end users. MtSES PSP has focused largely on envisioning themes of governance, economy, land use change, and biodiversity, but has overlooked themes such as gender equality, public health, and sanitation. There are many avenues to expand and improve PSP in MtSES: to other regions, sectors, across a greater diversity of stakeholders, and with a specific focus on MtSES paradoxes. Communicating uncertainty, monitoring and evaluating impacts, and engendering more comparative approaches can further increase the utility of PSP for addressing MtSES challenges, with lessons for other complex social-ecological systems. © 2020 by the author(s).

We analyse social demography, livelihood diversification and land tenure among the Maasai people inhabiting Kenya (three sites) and Tanzania (one site) with contrasting land tenure policies. In Kenya, land was communally owned in the rural Amboseli, fully privatized in the peri-urban Kitengela in Athi-Kaputiei and partially privatized and communally owned in the rural Maasai Mara. In Tanzania, the government owned the land but granted user rights to local villages in rural Simanjiro in Tarangire-Manyara. We interviewed 100 households per site from May to July 2006. There were regional distinctions in social demography, livelihood diversification, hiring herding labour and settlement arrangements, portraying differential transition away from traditional pastoral Maasai society. The transition is most advanced in Kitengela located near Nairobi City, where privatization of land tenure in the 1980s triggered land sub-division, unprecedented land fragmentation and large-scale collapse of the commons, pastoralism and conservation. Land privatization and sub-division in Maasai Mara and Amboseli started in 2000s and were followed similarly by unprecedented fragmentation through fences and accelerated collapse of the commons, pastoralism and conservation, except where wildlife conservancies were later established. We found several differences at the household, regional and national levels. The average age of household heads was lower in Maasai Mara and Amboseli than in Kitengela and Simanjiro. The average number of wives per male household head was lowest in Kitengela, intermediate in Mara and Amboseli and highest in Simanjiro. Correspondingly, the mean number of children per family was lowest in Kitengela, intermediate in Mara and Amboseli and highest in Simanjiro. Household heads were more educated closer to urban centres. Household heads without formal education were thus most common in Amboseli, intermediate in Mara and Simanjiro and fewest in Kitengela. Livelihood diversification was marked in all the sites. Notably, cultivation was widespread and most of those interviewed were interested in crop cultivation. The average number of acres cultivated per household was far higher in Simanjiro than in all the other sites. The mean number of hired herders per household was higher in Kitengela, with the highest number of children enrolled in schools, than in the Mara, Amboseli or Simanjiro. The average number of households per settlement was highest in the Mara, intermediate in Amboseli and Simanjiro and lowest in Kitengela. The marked regional variation in social demography, livelihood diversification and land tenurial arrangements reflects underlying variation in proximity to urban centres, agro-climatological and national developmental and policy environments.

Africa makes a relatively minor contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions compared with developed nations, yet the African continent will be increasingly vulnerable to climate change processes in the coming decades. Critical challenges include meeting basic needs for food, water, shelter, and other necessities without undermining biodiversity and ecosystem services. Coordination efforts to address multiple climate-related stressors have generally occurred at the national level and taken an external approach, with national governments favoring collaboration with foreign-based NGOs and other international institutions over working with lower levels of government. However, the involvement of actors at the local level correlates with decisions that are better adapted to local social-cultural and environmental contexts, reducing implementation costs and increasing trust, thereby increasing the equity and efficacy of decentralized approaches. This chapter examines indigenous and local knowledge of climate change. It addresses climate and environmental change from the perspectives of Kenyan pastoralists who identified a myriad of environmental issues that occur and interact at different scales. They also identified ways forward at several scales from the local to the global. The continued functioning of ecosystems by and for local populations will depend critically upon sound policy, planning, and practice.

The promise of co-production to address complex sustainability challenges is compelling. Yet, co-production, the collaborative weaving of research and practice, encompasses diverse aims, terminologies and practices, with poor clarity over their implications. To explore this diversity, we systematically mapped differences in how 32 initiatives from 6 continents co-produce diverse outcomes for the sustainable development of ecosystems at local to global scales. We found variation in their purpose for utilizing co-production, understanding of power, approach to politics and pathways to impact. A cluster analysis identified six modes of co-production: (1) researching solutions; (2) empowering voices; (3) brokering power; (4) reframing power; (5) navigating differences and (6) reframing agency. No mode is ideal; each holds unique potential to achieve particular outcomes, but also poses unique challenges and risks. Our analysis provides a heuristic tool for researchers and societal actors to critically explore this diversity and effectively navigate trade-offs when co-producing sustainability. Co-production includes diverse aims, terminologies and practices. This study explores such diversity by mapping differences in how 32 initiatives from 6 continents co-produce diverse outcomes for the sustainable development of ecosystems at local to global scales.

For centuries, communities around the globe have worked together to manage resources—a process often referred to as community-based conservation. More recently in the US, diverse stakeholders have partnered to address complex environmental issues that span land ownership or administrative boundaries, calling these efforts collaborative conservation. Reviews of community-based and collaborative conservation have historically focused on developing countries. To synthesize published information on U.S.-focused groups, we conducted a literature review with the following objectives: 1) characterize geographic distribution, types of participants, and sources of funding for these groups; 2) assess issues motivating group formation, goals, activities to achieve those goals, and outcomes; 3) identify whether these goals, activities, and outcomes were biophysical, social, and/or economic. To accomplish these objectives, we searched for relevant peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and reports in online databases from 1800's-2017. Our review resulted in 245 documents describing 296 collaborative conservation groups across all 50 states (primarily the Western U.S.) and the District of Columbia. The top three issues motivating collaborative group formation included impacts of land and resource degradation on livelihoods, water quality and management, and managing land and resources across ownership boundaries. We found that there was little published information on the outcomes of group activities (16% of groups). For the limited number of groups for which the literature reported outcomes, there was no relationship between positive outcomes and group characteristics. Our findings suggest that renewed efforts to evaluate the impact of collaboration on conservation are warranted and could support learning and improved action.

Mountain social-ecological systems (MtSES) are transforming rapidly due to changes in multiple environmental and socioeconomic drivers. However, the complexity and diversity of MtSES present challenges for local communities, researchers and decision makers seeking to anticipate change and promote action towards sustainable MtSES. Participatory scenario planning can reveal potential futures and their interacting dynamics, while archetype analysis aggregates insights from site-based scenarios. We combined a systematic review of the global MtSES participatory scenarios literature and archetype analysis to identify emergent MtSES archetypal configurations. An initial sample of 1983 rendered 42 articles that contained 142 scenarios within which were 852 ‘futures states’. From these future states within the scenarios, we identified 59 desirable and undesirable futures that were common across studies. These ‘common futures’ were grouped into four clusters that correlated significantly with three social-ecological factors (GDP per capita, income inequality, and mean annual temperature). Using these clusters and their associated significant factors, we derived four MtSES scenario archetypal configurations characterized by similar key adaptation strategies, assumptions, risks, and uncertainties. We called these archetypes: (1) “revitalization through effective institutions and tourism”; (2) “local innovations in smallholder farming and forestry”; (3) “upland depopulation and increased risk of hazards”; and (4) “regulated economic and ecological prosperity”. Results indicate risks to be mitigated, including biodiversity loss, ecosystem degradation, cultural heritage change, loss of connection to the land, weak leadership, market collapse, upland depopulation, increased landslides, avalanches, mudflows and rock falls, as well as climate variability and change. Transformative opportunities lie in adaptive biodiversity conservation, income diversification, adaptation to market fluxes, improving transport and irrigation infrastructure, high quality tourism and preserving traditional knowledge. Despite the uncertainties arising from global environmental changes, these archetypes support better targeting of evidence-informed actions across scales and sectors in MtSES.

We review evidence of Holocene climate, vegetation, and cultural changes in Mongolia and critically examine evidence that Mongolia’s steppes are at the brink of ecological and cultural tipping points in the Anthropocene. Until 5,000 YBP there is no evidence of lasting human influences on ecosystems, but after this time, changes in vegetation and soil physical properties signal domestic livestock grazing impacts on steppe ecosystems. Contemporary (1991–2015) literature and region by region analysis of climate, livestock, remote-sensing and human population data reveal two potential tipping points. Temperatures warmed across the 5 regions. Since 1991, livestock densities and forage use increased in most regions, the spatial distribution of grazing pressure is more heterogeneous, and variability increased in stocking densities, forage use and forage production in all or most regions. Substantial plant species shifts and losses occurred in the mountain and forest steppe regions. Although a large proportion of Mongolia’s rangelands are altered from their ecological potential, few have crossed an irreversible threshold of ecological change. Rangelands in Mongolia’s Khangai, northern and central regions may be approaching an ecological tipping point if grazing pressure is not reduced. After 1991, herder populations initially rose and then decreased significantly across most regions. If demographic and social trends contribute to loss of herding knowledge and identity, a cultural tipping point could occur. We describe four potential future scenarios that could unfold if these tipping points are reached, hypothesize feedbacks between ecological and cultural thresholds, and discuss implications for policy and management.

Fragmentation, degradation and loss of natural habitats are now recognised as major threats to wildlife conservation and mobile pastoralism in East African savannas. These processes are driven primarily by land tenure and policy, increasing human population, expansion of settlements and agricultural farms, road networks, urban development and fencing. To understand and characterise the forces driving habitat fragmentation, we analyse how biophysical (soils, slope, rainfall, rivers) and human-created (roads, towns, parks, quarries) features influence where people choose to fence the land in the Athi-Kaputiei ecosystem of Kenya. We also explore the consequences of land fragmentation through fencing on the abundance and distribution of wildlife and livestock populations. We show that fences are most highly concentrated along the major roads and around the major urban centres. Movements of migratory wildebeest and zebra between the Nairobi National Park and the pastoral Kitengela Plains adjoining the park on the south are getting increasingly impeded by increasing concentration of fences. Populations of wildebeest and other herbivores have collapsed to a small fraction of their former abundance largely owing to destruction of their habitats and obstruction of their movements between the park and the pastoral lands by fences and other land use developments. Conserving the key seasonal wildlife dispersal areas in the Athi-Kaputiei Plains is critical to ensuring the future viability of several key wildlife species in Nairobi National Park. Several initiatives, including a conservation land lease program has been launched, but their spatial coverage and funding levels would need to be greatly expanded to secure sufficient open spaces for both wildlife and livestock.

The devastating 2015 earthquakes in Nepal highlighted the need for effective disaster risk reduction (DRR) in mountains, which are inherently subject to hazards and increasingly vulnerable to extreme events. As multiple UN policy frameworks stress, DRR is crucial to mitigate the mounting environmental and socioeconomic costs of disasters globally. However, specialized DRR guidelines are needed for biodiverse, multi-hazard regions like mountains. Ecosystem-based disaster risk reduction (Eco-DRR) emphasizes ecosystem conservation, restoration, and sustainable management as key elements for DRR. We propose that integrating the emerging field of Eco-DRR with community-based DRR (CB-DRR) will help address the increasing vulnerabilities of mountain people and ecosystems. Drawing on a global mountain synthesis, we present paradoxes that create challenges for DRR in mountains and examine these paradoxes through examples from the 2015 Nepal earthquakes. We propose four principles for integrated CB- and Eco-DRR that address these challenges: (1) governance and institutional arrangements that fit local needs; (2) empowerment and capacity-building to strengthen community resilience; (3) discovery and sharing of constructive practices that combine local and scientific knowledge; and (4) approaches focused on well-being and equity. We illustrate the reinforcing relationship between integrated CB- and Eco-DRR principles with examples from other mountain systems worldwide. Coordinated community and ecosystem-based actions offer a potential path to achieve DRR, climate adaptation, sustainable development, and biodiversity conservation for vulnerable ecosystems and communities worldwide.

Migration of ungulates is under pressure worldwide from range contraction, habitat loss and degradation, anthropogenic barriers and poaching. Here, we synthesize and compare the extent of historical migrations of the white-bearded wildebeest (Connochaetes taurinus) to their contemporary status, in five premier East African ecosystems, namely the Serengeti-Mara, Masai Mara, Athi-Kaputiei, Amboseli and Tarangire-Manyara. The current status, threats to migration, migratory ranges and routes for wildebeest were characterized using colonial-era maps, literature reviews, GIS and aerial survey databases, GPS collared animals and interviews with long-term researchers. Interference with wildebeest migratory routes and dispersal ranges has stopped or severely threatens continuation of the historical migration patterns in all but the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem where the threat level is relatively lower. Wildebeest migration has collapsed in Athi-Kaputiei ecosystem and is facing enormous pressures from land subdivision, settlements and fences in Amboseli and Mara ecosystems and from cultivation in Tarangire-Manyara ecosystem. Land use change, primarily expansion in agriculture, roads, settlements and fencing, increasingly restrict migratory wildebeest from accessing traditional grazing resources in unprotected lands. Privatization of land tenure in group ranches in Kenya and settlement policy (villagization) in Tanzania have accelerated land subdivision, fencing and growth in permanent settlements, leading to loss of key wildebeest habitats including their migratory routes and wet season calving and feeding grounds. These processes, coupled with increasing human population pressures and climatic variability, are exerting tremendous pressures on wildebeest migrations. Urgent conservation interventions are necessary to conserve and protect the critical wildebeest habitats and migration routes in East Africa.

The Mongolian Rangelands and Resilience (MOR2) Project sought to understand how climate and socio-economic changes affect social-ecological systems in rural Mongolia, and how herder responses feedback to influence ecological-social conditions. Led by Colorado State University, the interdisciplinary team included collaborating scientists from one US and nine Mongolian research institutions and NGOs. As such, MOR2 spanned boundaries among disciplines, cultures, and sectors of society. Conceptual and analytical integration across disciplines proved challenging. However, unforeseen and novel interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral collaborations emerged focused on herder observations of environmental changes, participatory scenario building, science capacity building, and community and policymaker engagement. The MOR2 team’s commitment to continual reflection and adaptation built trust and sustained collaborative relationships that led to important scientific results and a wide variety of broader impacts.

Rangelands, home to herders, grazed by livestock and wildlife and, defined predominately as grasslands, comprise approximately 40% of the earth's terrestrial land surface. Rangeland social–ecological system resilience is urgent in many regions under climate, land use, political, market, and demographic changes. Focused on community-based natural resource management collaboratives, researchers and practitioners from Kenya, Mongolia and the US West, gathered to develop a research-for-action project. Using a conceptual framework for development of transdisciplinary global change research a project was co-designed to address natural resource problems to help build resilience in collaborative organizations under change. Participants designed a research agenda and conceptualized a knowledge network. The co-design process showed the common visions of this group from around the world while also demonstrating the actual untidiness of development of transdisciplinary research involving diverse participants.

Despite increasing calls for knowledge integration around the world, traditional knowledge is rarely used in formal, Western‐science‐based monitoring and resource management. To better understand indicators herders use and their relationship to researcher‐measured indicators, we conducted in‐depth field interviews with 26 herders in three ecological zones of Mongolia. We asked each herder to (1) assess the overall condition of three different sites located along a livestock‐use gradient from their winter camp using a numeric scale, (2) describe the indicators they used in their assessment, and (3) explain what caused their pastures to remain healthy or become degraded. At each site, we collected field data on vegetation variables and compared these with herders’ ratings and indicators using linear regression. We used classification and ordination to understand how herders’ assessment scores related to plant community composition, and determine how well multivariate analysis of factors determining plant community composition aligned with herders’ observations of factors causing rangeland change. Across all ecological zones, herders use indicators similar to those used in formal monitoring. Herders’ assessment scores correlated significantly and positively with measured total foliar cover in all three ecological zones, and with additional measured variables in the steppe and desert steppe. Ordination revealed that herder assessment scores were correlated with the primary ordination axis in each zone, and the main factors driving plant community composition in each zone were the same as those identified by herders as the primary causes of rangeland change in that zone. These results show promise for developing integrated indicators and monitoring protocols and highlight the importance of developing a common language of monitoring terminology shared by herders, government monitoring agencies, and researchers. We propose a new model for integrating herder knowledge and participation into formal monitoring in Mongolia, with implications for rangelands and pastoral people globally. We suggest practical ways of involving herders in formal monitoring that have potential broad application for promoting local and indigenous people's participation in implementing international agreements such as the UN Convention to Combat Desertification and the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, both of which call for involvement of local people and indigenous/traditional knowledges.

Cheetahs are often found outside of state-owned protected areas and require landscape scale management not provided by individual farms. Collaborative ventures between landowners or users have a potential to provide management at the spatial scale intrinsic to the species. And, collaborative networks can fill gaps in the landscape not protected by public reserves. We use models of collaborative ventures among freehold livestock farmers in Namibia and communal livestock farmers in Namibia and Kenya to illustrate benefits and challenges of collaborative management for wildlife conservation. Benefits include creation of large, managed landscapes, the potential for increased profits, and a potential reduction or compensation for losses from predators. Challenges to successful collaborations include the need to provide sustained, tangible benefits to land users, the need for coordination and expertise, and the potential for gaps in the newly protected landscape when collaboration between neighbors is not complete. The land-use models we share here have attempted to solve these challenges through local innovations and strategies that keep the livelihoods of the landowners or land users at the forefront of consideration.

Mongolian rangelands have experienced warming temperatures and increasing livestock densities over the past 20 years. Remote sensing studies report widespread degradation, but there are no long-term field studies of vegetation responses to shifts in climate and stocking densities. In 2013, we resampled plots originally sampled in 1994–1995 in the desert-steppe, steppe and mountain-steppe, and analyzed changes in vegetation in relation to changes in climate, stocking densities and forage use. Summer temperatures significantly increased and stocking densities fluctuated in response to droughts followed by harsh winters. Total herbaceous biomass in 2013 was similar to (desert-steppe and steppe) or greater than (mountain-steppe) in 1995, and total foliar and herbaceous cover were unchanged since 1995 in all zones. In the mountain-steppe, functional type and species cover shifts were consistent with warming temperatures and increasing grazing pressure. All species richness and diversity indicators declined significantly in the mountain-steppe since 1995, as did richness in the steppe. Some Mongolian rangelands may be losing resilience due to interacting climate and grazing pressures, but our data suggest degradation observed at our study sites is reversible. Mountain-steppe systems appear more vulnerable to grazing- and climate-induced vegetation change than steppe and desert-steppe.

Livestock-caused rangeland degradation remains a major policy concern globally and the subject of widespread scientific study. This concern persists in part because it is difficult to isolate the effects of livestock from climate and other factors that influence ecosystem conditions. Further, degradation studies seldom use multiple plant and soil indicators linked to a clear definition of and ecologically grounded framework for degradation assessment that distinguishes different levels of degradation. Here, we integrate two globally applicable rangeland degradation frameworks and apply them to a broad-scale empirical data set for the country of Mongolia. We compare our assessment results with two other recent national rangeland degradation assessments in Mongolia to gauge consistency of findings across assessments and evaluate the utility of our framework. We measured livestock-use impacts across Mongolia's major ecological zones: mountain and forest steppe, eastern steppe, steppe, and desert steppe. At 143 sites in 36 counties, we measured livestock-use and degradation indicators at increasing distances from livestock corrals in winter-grazed pastures. At each site, we measured multiple indicators linked to our degradation framework, including plant cover, standing biomass, palatability, species richness, forage quality, vegetation gaps, and soil surface characteristics. Livestock use had no effect on soils, plant species richness, or standing crop biomass in any ecological zone, but subtly affected plant cover and palatable plant abundance. Livestock effects were strongest in the steppe zone, moderate in the desert steppe, and limited in the mountain/forest and eastern steppes. Our results aligned closely with those of two other recent country-wide assessments, suggesting that our framework may have widespread application. All three assessments found that very severe and irreversible degradation is rare in Mongolia (1-18% of land area), with most rangelands slightly (33-53%) or moderately (25-40%) degraded. We conclude that very severe livestock-induced rangeland degradation is overstated in Mongolia. However, targeted rangeland restoration coupled with monitoring, adaptive management and stronger rangeland governance are needed to prevent further degradation where heavy grazing could cause irreversible change. Given the broad applicability of our degradation framework for Mongolia, we suggest it be tested for application in other temperate grasslands throughout Central Asia and North America.

For centuries, pastoralists have influenced savanna ecology through their construction of settlements, traditional movement patterns in search of forage, water and safety for their livestock. Construction of settlements initiates localised changes in the vegetation due to clearance of vegetation at construction and collection of construction materials. During the occupation period a lot of dung is deposited in and around settlements. When pastoral families abandon settlements and move away, they leave behind mud huts and livestock corrals surrounded by fences. These sites become nutrient-rich patches supporting a different abundance and diversity of plants and large mammals compared to the rest of the savanna. This study aimed to broaden our understanding of how pastoral land use influences plant diversity in East African savannas. Past work on the effects of settlements has been done in dry places (

Water, forage and predation constrain ungulate distributions in savannas. To understand these constraints, we characterized distributions of 15 herbivore species from water, locations of peak density and degree of clustering around the peaks using zero-inflated count data models and mapping census data collected in the Mara reserve and the adjoining pastoral ranches in Kenya during a wet and dry year. Herbivores followed a humped pattern (n = 46), suggesting constrained foraging in which they balance the benefits of proximity to water with the costs of foraging where food is depleted near water and travelling to more abundant food distant from water; an exponentially decreasing pattern (n = 11), indicating strong attraction to water or vegetation near water; or a uniform (n = 3) pattern. The details rather than the types of these patterns varied between years. Herbivores concentrated farther from water and more tightly around locations of their peak densities in the ranches than the reserve. Herbivores were more abundant and widely distributed from water in the wet than the dry year, and segregated along the distance-to-water gradient, presumably to minimize interspecific competition for food. Pastoralism compressed herbivore distributions and partially excluded some species (warthog, hartebeest, topi, wildebeest, zebra, eland, buffalo and elephant) from, while attracting others (Grant’s and Thomson’s gazelles, impala, giraffe) to the ranches, relative to the reserve. Regulating cultivation, fencing, settlements and livestock stocking levels in the ranches would allow continued wildlife access to water, reduce competition with, displacement or harassment of wildlife by people, livestock and dogs near water.

Complex sustainability problems (e.g., climate change) are challenging to understand and manage, leading to an increase in approaches that connect scholars to society and research to action (collaborative approaches). The transdisciplinary approach (TDA) represents one such approach. While TDA is new to many, there are several prior collaborative approaches including collaborative adaptive management, knowledge integration, participatory action research, and indigenous/local knowledge. Other contemporary and parallel approaches include citizen science, translational science, evidence-based practice, and knowledge with action. The varied disciplinary roots and problem areas contribute to a lack of interaction among these parallel but distinct approaches, and among the scholars and stakeholders who practice them. In this paper, we consider the connections, complementarities and contradictions among these distinct but related collaborative approaches. This review offers insights into the interaction between science and practice, including the importance of social processes and recognition of different ways of knowing, as well as how to conduct collaborative approaches on a variety of scales and think about how to generalize findings. The review suggests a need to rethink roles and relationships in the process of knowledge co-creation, both extending the roles of researchers and practitioners, creating new hybrid roles for “pracademics”, and placing greater awareness on issues of power.

We examine livestock-wealth inequality by gender and age of the household head among Maasai households located in areas of contrasting land tenure and land productivity in the Amboseli, Athi-Kaputiei and Maasai Mara regions of Kenya and Tarangire-Manyara Region of Tanzania. We also investigate whether livestock-poor households are more likely to diversify their livelihood options from pastoralism to include crop cultivation. Livestock wealth inequality was high in each of the four sites. Surprisingly, the Tarangire-Manyara site in Tanzania had the highest levels of inequality despite the fact that Tanzania had recently had a socialist political system while Kenya had been capitalistic since independence in 1963. The disparities in livestock assets between the rich and the poor households were lowest in the Maasai Mara site. Also, there was no direct relationship between low livestock wealth and the probability that a household would take up crop cultivation. However, areas under cultivation were the largest in Tarangire-Manyara and the lowest in Amboseli, possibly reflecting the influence of land tenure policy in Tarangire-Manyara and low rainfall in Amboseli. Most male headed households had more livestock wealth than female headed households. In Maasailand, high livestock-wealth inequalities and a growing restriction on livestock mobility, compounded with internal and external population pressures and land fragmentation, are likely to reduce pastoral resilience to droughts that are becoming more frequent and severe due to a warming global climate and widening climatic variability.

There is mounting concern about declines in wildlife populations in many protected areas in Africa. Migratory ungulates are especially vulnerable to impacts of changing land use outside protected areas on their abundance. Range compression may compromise the capacity of migrants to cope with climatic variation, and accentuate both competitive interactions and predation. We analyzed the population dynamics of 11 ungulate species within Kenya's Nairobi National Park, and compared them to those in the adjoining Athi-Kaputiei Plains, where human settlements and other develop- ments had expanded. The migratory wildebeest decreased from almost 30,000 animals in 1978 to around 5,000 currently but the migratory zebra changed little regionally. Hartebeest, impala, eland, Thomson's gazelle, Grant's gazelle, water- buck, warthog and giraffe numbers declined regionally, whereas buffalo numbers expanded. Bimonthly counts indicated temporary movements of several species beyond the unfenced park boundaries, especially during very wet years and that few wildebeest entered the park during the dry season following exceptionally wet conditions in 1998. Wildebeest were especially vulnerable to anthropogenic impacts in their wet season dispersal range on the plains. Deterioration in grassland conditions in the park following high rainfall plus lack of burning may have discouraged these animals from using the park as a dry season refuge. Our findings emphasise the interdependency between the park and the plains for seasonal wildlife movements, especially in exceptionally dry or wet years. To effectively conserve these ungulates, we recommend implementation of the new land-use plan for the Athi-Kaputiei Plains by the county government; expansion of the land leasing program for biodiversity payments; collecting poacher's snares; negotiation and enforcement of easements, allow- ing both wildlife and livestock to move through the Athi-Kaputiei Plains, providing incentives for conservation to land- owners; and improving grassland conditions within the park through controlled burning so that more wildlife can gain protection there.

Biodiversity in rangelands is decreasing, due to intense utilization for livestock production and conversion of rangeland into cropland; yet the outlook of rangeland biodiversity has not been considered in view of future global demand for food. Here we assess the impact of future livestock production on the global rangelands area and their biodiversity. First we formalized existing knowledge about livestock grazing impacts on biodiversity, expressed in mean species abundance (MSA) of the original rangeland native species assemblages, through metaanalysis of peer-reviewed literature. MSA values, ranging from 1 in natural rangelands to 0.3 in man-made grasslands, were entered in the IMAGE-GLOBIO model. This model was used to assess the impact of change in food demand and livestock production on future rangeland biodiversity. The model revealed remarkable regional variation in impact on rangeland area and MSA between two agricultural production scenarios. The area of used rangelands slightly increases globally between 2000 and 2050 in the baseline scenario and reduces under a scenario of enhanced uptake of resource-efficient production technologies increasing production [high levels of agricultural knowledge, science, and technology (high-AKST)], particularly in Africa. Both scenarios suggest a global decrease in MSA for rangelands until 2050. The contribution of livestock grazing to MSA loss is, however, expected to diminish after 2030, in particular in Africa under the high-AKST scenario. Policies fostering agricultural intensification can reduce the overall pressure on rangeland biodiversity, but additional measures, addressing factors such as climate change and infrastructural development, are necessary to totally halt biodiversity loss.

Resident white-bearded wildebeest (Connochaetes taurinus) have experienced widespread population declines across much of their range over the past few decades, the drivers of which are attributed to landscape changes. Despite the ecological significance of this decline, surprisingly little is known about the resource needs and habitat use of these animals. Using global positioning system data collected from 2010 to 2013, we assessed resource selection of wildebeest inhabiting three study areas in Kenya with varying degrees of natural and anthropogenic disturbance to identify potential behavioral mechanisms underlying potential landscape-driven declines. Wildebeest were observed to consistently avoid anthropogenic features and dense woody cover, irrespective of season, suggestive of avoidance of landscape features that would likely be associated with increased predation risk. Wildebeest also avoided primary roads, particularly across the Athi-Kaputiei Plains where human density and landscape alteration was greatest. The strongest response to normalized difference vegetation index was observed across the Amboseli Basin, the least productive and anthropogenically altered of our three study areas, leading to pronounced seasonal shifts in space use. Selection of natural and anthropogenic features was similar across the Mara and Athi-Kaputiei Plains, with the exception of the response to roads which likely relates to differences in road use. We also observed strong shifts in space use between day and night periods, particularly in relation to anthropogenic features and likely related to human circadian activity patterns. The observed variability in selection provides detailed information to how wildebeest react to local environmental factors across landscapes, and provides insight to how landscape fragmentation amplifies habitat loss for wildebeest by driving spatial avoidance, a likely mechanism contributing to population declines in this species. The quantified responses of wildebeest to landscape features can aid future conservation management efforts and planning to sustain imperiled wildebeest populations.

In 2014, the USAID project ‘Grazing lands, livestock and climate resilient mitigation in Sub-Saharan Africa’ held two workshops, hosted by the Colorado State University, which brought together experts from around the world. Two reports resulted from these workshops, one an assessment of the state of the science, and the other an inventory of related activities in the region to date.. In this short communication we summarize the main points of the first report – The state of the science (Milne and Williams, 2015). A second report is in preparation.

Wildlife habitats in pastoral lands adjoining protected areas in east African savannas are getting progressively degraded, fragmented and compressed by expanding human populations and intensification of land use. To understand the consequences of these influences on wildlife populations, we contrasted the density and demography of 13 wild and three domestic large herbivores between the Masai Mara National Reserve and the adjoining pastoral ranches using aerial surveys conducted in the wet and dry seasons during 1977-2010. Species of different body sizes and feeding styles had different densities between landscapes and seasons. Small-sized herbivores, requiring short, nutritious grasses, and browsers were more abundant in the ranches than the reserve in both seasons. Medium-sized herbivores moved seasonally between landscapes. Larger-bodied herbivores, requiring bulk forage but less susceptible to predation, were more abundant in the reserve than the ranches. The proportions of newborn warthog (Phacochoerus africanus) and juvenile topi (Damaliscus korrigum) were higher in the ranches, with shorter grasses and lower predation risk than in the reserve. These results suggest that pastoral lands adjoining protected areas in African savannas are important as seasonal dispersal and breeding grounds for wild herbivores. However, human population growth and dramatic land use changes are progressively degrading wildlife habitats in pastoral areas, thus restricting the seasonal wildlife dispersal movements between the protected areas and adjoining pastoral lands. Conservation efforts should focus on (1) creating and maintaining functional heterogeneity in protected areas that mimic moderate pastoral grazing conditions to attract small and medium-bodied grazers and (2) securing dispersal areas, including corridors, to ensure continued seasonal large herbivore movements between protected and pastoral systems.

In this article, we discuss the drivers, causes, and impacts of land-use change in the Maasai Steppe of northern Tanzania. Remote sensing data were used to analyze land-use change, and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) was used to link-up with wildlife population dynamics and livestock distribution data derived from aerial censuses. Agriculture increased fivefold between 1984 and 2000, while human population increased exponentially from 3.3% p.a. in 1988 to 3.4% p.a. in the same period. Wildlife migratory routes declined from nine in 1964 to five in 2000, out of which three were seriously threatened with blockage by the extensive cultivation. Recurrent droughts and diseases have contributed to the declining livestock economy over the years due to livestock loss and the unpredictable and erratic rainfall has limited their recovery. To reverse the on-going trends in land use, proper land-use plans should be instituted in parallel with community-based wildlife ventures to maintain long-term ecosystem vi...

Nairobi National Park (NNP) is unable to incorporate the spatial and temporal dynamics of many migratory mammals that rely on the area as a dry season refuge because of its small size. During the wet season, wildlife must be able to migrate to the south into the Kitengela dispersal area. This area is privately owned and rapidly undergoing land-use change, which affects the structure and function of the dispersal corridors, jeopardising the ecological sustainability of the park. Private landholders in Kitengela incur most of the costs of keeping the dispersal areas open, but do not receive any compensation or revenue from benefits derived from tourism in the park. Here we present an analysis of the willingness-to-pay (WTP) for Nairobi and Kitengela residents for a new land management scheme in the dispersal area, in which local pastoralists leave their land open to wildlife and, by not engaging in fencing, land subdivision or poaching activities, receive monetary compensation for the incremental costs deri...

Natality and recruitment govern animal population dynamics, but their responses to fluctuating resources, competition, predation, shifting habitat conditions, density feedback and diseases are poorly understood. To understand the influences of climatic and land use changes on population dynamics, we monitored monthly changes in births and juvenile recruitment in seven ungulate species for 15 years (1989-2003) in the Masai Mara Reserve of Kenya. Recruitment rates declined for all species but giraffe, likely due to habitat alteration and increasing vulnerability of animals associated with recurrent severe droughts, rising temperatures, unprecedentedly strong and prolonged El Nio-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) episodes, expansion of settlements, cultivation and human population growth in pastoral ranches adjoining the reserve. Birth rate showed strong and humped relationships with moving averages of monthly rainfall, whereas recruitment responded strongly to cumulative past rainfall. Increasing livestock incursions into the reserve depressed recruitment rate for quarter-grown topi. Expansion of pastoral settlements depressed birth rate in impala, zebra and giraffe. Frequent ENSO-related droughts caused progressive habitat desiccation and hence nutritional shortfalls for ungulates. The responses to climatic, land use and resource influences did not reflect body size, migratory or resident lifestyle, dietary guild, digestive physiology or degree of synchrony of breeding of the ungulate species.

Sustaining wildlife and pastoral communities in savannas worldwide depends on understanding how landscapes provide for their needs. The composite effects of multiple forces shape herbivore distribution in savannas. We propose a model describing the distribution of animal density along two resource utilization gradients. The model estimates where animals are most abundant in relation to water and pastoral settlements and how strongly they respond to these gradients, as indicated by the location of peak densities in landscape space and degree of attraction of animals to these locations. We use the model to show that distances to water and settlements interactively influence the distribution of wild herbivore and livestock densities in a semiarid protected and pastoral African savanna. The herbivores were distributed along distance from water and settlement gradients according to four distinct patterns, suggesting the preponderance of constrained foraging. The impact of distance to water and settlement on herbivore distribution was modified by land use type and temporal variation in rainfall, and also varied among different species of wildlife and between wildlife and livestock. Wild herbivores peaked in density farther from settlements than from water and were much more strongly attracted to their points of maximum density in the pastoral than in the protected land. The point of maximum density was farther removed from settlements in the protected than in the pastoral landscape where the wild herbivores were compressed into smaller suitable habitats. The interaction between distances from settlement and water produced discernible spatial segregation among species in terms of the locations of their points of maximum density, presumably to minimize interspecific competition for forage and water. Settlements exerted relatively stronger influence on livestock distribution than water, resulting in densities that declined exponentially away from settlements at all distances from water.

Knowledge is poor of how fertilization affects birds in grasslands. We investigated the impact on birds of abandoned pastoral settlements that historically received very high levels of livestock dung. A total of 28 abandoned settlements and 74 landscape controls – in Koyake Group Ranch and Maasai Mara National Reserve in Kenya – were surveyed for birds during the wet and/or dry season. Our results showed that bird species richness and total abundance increased within 200 m of abandoned pastoral settlements, particularly during the dry season when foraging resources on the savanna are limited. The high concentrations of nutrients inside abandoned settlements favoured the abundance of Diptera and Coleoptera, as shown by invertebrate surveys performed during the dry season on a subset of 32 sites. Both total numbers and dry biomass of these two invertebrate orders were higher on abandoned settlements in comparison with the surrounding landscape. We conclude that higher fertilization levels cause a temporal and spatial redistribution of birds on the savanna. Livestock fertilization and bird abundance are probably linked through an increase in abundance of invertebrate food upon which birds feed in an opportunistic fashion.

Livestock are a global resource of significant benefits to society in the form of food, income, nutrients, employment, insurance, traction, clothing and others. In the process of providing these benefits, livestock can use a significant amount of land, nutrients, feed, water and other resources and generate 18% of anthropogenic global greenhouse gases. The total demand for livestock products might almost double by 2050, mostly in the developing world owing to increases in population density, urbanization and increased incomes. Multiple existing trade-offs and competing demands for natural resources will intensify, but reducing livestock product demand in places and capitalizing on the positive aspects of livestock systems such as the potential for sustainable intensification of mixed systems, the potential of ecosystems services payments in rangeland systems and well-regulated industrial livestock production might help achieve the goals of balancing livestock production, livelihoods and environmental protection.

Animal population dynamics can be driven by changing climatic forcing, shifting habitat conditions, trophic interactions and anthropogenic influences. To understand these influences, we analyzed trends in populations of seven ungulate species counted during 15 years (1989-2003) of monthly monitoring using vehicle ground counts in the Maasai Mara National Reserve, Kenya. Abundance of six species declined markedly and persistently throughout the reserve during this period. The declines were contemporaneous with progressive habitat deterioration due to changing land use in pastoral ranches bordering the reserve, habitat desiccation due to rising temperatures, recurrent severe droughts and an exceptional ENSO flood in 1997-1998. The effect of progressive habitat deterioration was accentuated by illicit harvest, competition with livestock and elevated predation. After factoring out the influence of rainfall, ungulate populations declined more markedly in sections of the reserve experiencing greater livestock incursions and poaching. The declines were significantly correlated with increasing number of settlements and people in the pastoral ranches for five species. Heightened predation following a crash in the buffalo Syncerus caffer population during a severe drought in 1993 had little support as the primary cause of the declines.

We detail the impact of abandoned traditional settlements (or bomas) on plant and nutrient succession in the Amboseli ecosystem, southern Kenya, over the course of a century. Plant and soil data were sampled on and around abandoned settlements. The term, ‘onsite’, refers to the area within the perimeter fence, ‘offsite’ to the area up to 200 m beyond the fence. Herbaceous standing biomass onsite increased in the course of succession to peak at twice offsite levels within two decades. Biomass remained elevated for six decades then dropped to the background levels at the limit of sampling distance. Plant species richness onsite increased rapidly in the course of succession, then stabilized on older bomas. Species composition changed throughout succession, with pioneer herbs and grasses giving way to boma-edge species and woody vegetation later in succession. Soil nutrients, including carbon, nitrogen, magnesium and phosphorus, were highly elevated on abandoned settlements. The various nutrients declined at different rates during the course of plant succession. Potassium, phosphorus and magnesium levels remained at twice offsite levels for over a century, creating islands of high fertility and high plant biomass in the savanna landscape. We conclude that the perturbation caused by shifting nomadic settlements creates localized nutrient and plant diversity hotspots in savanna ecosystems that remain distinct from the surrounding savanna for decades, possibly centuries.

Fragmentation of the ecosystems of the earth into spatially isolated units has emerged as a primary component of global change. Often, fragmentation results from actions that are intended to enhance human livelihoods and well-being; however, there are often costs to ecosystems and human economies that are not considered. We describe the three general categories of processes causing fragmentation of rangelands worldwide: dissection, decoupling, and compression. We show that access to heterogeneity of landscapes is an important attribute of grazing ecosystems worldwide, and that fragmentation of these systems, even when it proceeds in the absence of habitat loss, can limit options of people and animals, options that are particularly important in temporally heterogeneous environments. We discuss the consequences of fragmentation for people, livestock, wildlife, and landscapes and describe potential adaptations that can mitigate its harmful outcomes. We close by reviewing policy options that promote re-aggregation of landscapes and adaptation to fragmentation.

Livestock production systems in Africa are experiencing rapid changes in structure and function due to increased demands for livestock products from a more prosperous and ever-increasing human population. Some of these changes could lead to increased emissions of greenhouse gases. This paper explores the magnitudes of changes in production systems as a function of increased population densities and climate change. This paper also quantifies the methane emissions from African cattle, goats and sheep from 2000 to 2030. The study integrates methodologies from different disciplines to derive spatially explicit distributions of methane emissions from domestic ruminants and their changes as livestock production systems evolve. A livestock systems classification framework was used to differentiate pastoral and crop–livestock systems using agro-ecological thresholds based on temperature and length of growing period (hyper-arid, arid, humid and temperate regions), the extent of irrigation and human population densities. Livestock numbers (tropical livestock units, TLU) were estimated from FAO data for each country and production system defined. Projections of livestock populations were derived from analysis of demand shifts in livestock products, and livestock systems changes estimated on the basis of potential climate change and population density change to 2030. For the estimation of diets for ruminants, Africa was split into regions (East, West, Southern, Central and North Africa, and The Horn of Africa) and diets for both the rainy and the dry seasons were estimated from literature reviews for each livestock species in each production system in each region. Feed intake, livestock production and the computation of methane emissions were obtained using a previously validated and widely used mechanistic model of digestion and metabolism in ruminants. Results suggest that (1) Africa produced around 7.8 million tonnes of methane/year in 2000. This figure is likely to increase to 11.1 million tonnes/year by 2030. (2) Methane emissions per tropical livestock unit (TLU, 250 kg bodyweight) can vary from 21 to 40 kg/(TLU year), depending on the production system and the region. (3) The highest emissions per animal come, and will continue to come, from ruminants in mixed crop–livestock systems. (4) The regions producing the highest concentrations of methane, now and in the future, are in general terms, The Horn of Africa, West and East Africa. (5) The average emission factors obtained in this study (31.1 kg/(methane (TLU year))) are in close agreement with the emission factors used by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for African ruminants (32 kg methane per animal per year). (6) The methodology employed in this study permits the disaggregation of methane emissions by country and production system, thus allows us to quantify changes in emissions as climate changes and production systems evolve. The results of the study are compared with those obtained in other studies around the world and its implications are discussed in relation to how systems are likely to evolve in Africa.

A number of studies have begun to show the large impact that pastoralism has on African savanna ecosystems. Here we look at the impact of abandoned settlements on the distribution of the large ungulates of Amboseli, Kenya. Monthly dung counts show that all 9 species studied are attracted by settlements for up to a century after abandonment. Densities increased in the first two decades of vegetation succession, when plant biomass is the highest, then declines steadily to background levels as plant biomass. The pattern of herbivore use varied among species in the course of succession, with grazers dominant in early successional stages and browsers later stages, when shrubs and trees began to replace grasses. The densities of both grazers and browsers correlated positively with herbaceous and woody biomass respectively. We conclude that the additional biomass and higher quality forage produced by heavy dung deposits in livestock settlements are a major factor governing the distribution and movement of large herbivore in the savannas. The abandonment of seasonal migrations and construction of permanent settlements under way in African savannas is likely to restrict wildlife movements and reduce habitat patchiness and species richness of large ungulates.

Understanding long-term climatic variability is basic to wise management and conservation of biodiversity. We analysed temporal variations in the local rainfall, temperature, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index and the hemispheric El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), using the Southern Oscillation Index and how they co varied in the Mara-Serengeti ecosystem of Kenya and Tanzania. Local rainfall showed a striking temporal variability and an evident 5-year quasi-periodicity in the ecosystem. Severe droughts were a recurrent/persistent feature of the ecosystem but extreme floods were relatively infrequent. The timings of droughts and floods coincided with strong episodes in the activities of the ENSO phenomenon. Above-average rainfall often accompanied cold ENSO episodes and below-average rainfall warm ENSO events, contrary to past generalizations suggesting that warm ENSO events are only associated with above-average rainfall whereas cold ENSO events with below-average rainfall in equatorial East Africa. Both minimum and maximum temperatures were below-normal during cold ENSO episodes and above-normal during warm ENSO events. Rising temperatures and declining rainfall throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, with unprecedently prolonged and strong ENSO episodes, engendered progressive habitat desiccation and reduction in vegetation production in the ecosystem. This exacerbated the debilitating effects of adverse weather on local plant and animal communities, resulting in high mortalities of ungulates.

Protected areas throughout the world are key for conserving biodiversity, and land use is key for providing food, fiber, and other ecosystem services essential for human sustenance. As land use change isolates protected areas from their surrounding landscapes, the challenge is to identify management opportunities that maintain ecological function while minimizing restrictions on human land use. Building on the case studies in this Invited Feature and on ecological principles, we identify opportunities for regional land management that maintain both ecological function in protected areas and human land use options, including preserving crucial habitats and migration corridors, and reducing dependence of local human populations on protected area resources. Identification of appropriate and effective manage- ment opportunities depends on clear definitions of: (1) the biodiversity attributes of concern; (2) landscape connections to delineate particular locations with strong ecological interactions between the protected area and its surrounding landscape; and (3) socioeconomic dynamics that determine current and future use of land resources in and around the protected area.