Improving management practices in grasslands used especially for animal grazing can enhance the capacity of soils as carbon sinks, and help countries reach their climate goals, according to this new report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Soils contribute to the achievement of the UN …
Vegetation restoration has been conducted in the Chinese Loess Plateau (CLP) since the 1950s, and large areas of farmland have been converted to forest and grassland, which largely results in SOC change. However, there has been little comparative research on SOC sequestration and distribution between secondary forest and restored grassland. …
PANJIM: The Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) has taken up a program to save vultures from getting extinct. Under this program, 30 young vultures will be ready to fly by year 2014. Dr Asad Rehmani, a senior member of National Board for Willdlife and Director of Bombay Natural History …
The Guassa area of Menz in the Central Highlands of Ethiopia is an Afro-alpine ecological community with an indigenous resource management system. The local community harvest different resources including collecting grass and firewood from the Guassa area. Cattle and other livestock are also grazed in the Guassa area, especially during …
Changes in land use/land cover are a major driver of biodiversity change in the Mediterranean region. Understanding how animal populations respond to these landscape changes often requires using landscape mosaics as the unit of investigation, but few previous studies have measured both response and explanatory variables at the land mosaic …
Natural forages play an important role in the livestock based rural economy in developing countries like India. In this paper an attempt has been made to divide whole of India into four major natural silvipastoral cover that will help in forage resource planning and execution of various programmes for sustainable …
The present study was conducted in established plantations of Eucalyptus tereticornis in Dr. Y. S. Parmar University of Horticulture and Forestry, Nauni (Solan), Himachal Pradesh.
In the Neotropics the predominant pathway to intensify productivity is generally thought to be to convert grasslands to sown pastures, mostly in monoculture. This article examines how above-ground net primary productivity (ANPP) in semi-natural grasslands and sown pastures in Central America respond to rainfall by: (i) assessing the relationships between …
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 …
There is a direct link between unabated mining and the floods which devastated the North Karnataka region in 2009, said environmentalist and High Court Lok Adalat member Y N Yellappa Reddy. Speaking with mediapersons here on Friday, he said mining activities in the Western Ghats region - the main source …
The nature and scale of pre-Columbian land use and the consequences of the 1492 “Columbian Encounter” (CE) on Amazonia are among the more debated topics in New World archaeology and paleoecology. However, pre-Columbian human impact in Amazonian savannas remains poorly understood. Most paleoecological studies have been conducted in neotropical forest …
The Tibetan Plateau is an essential area to study the potential feedback effects of soils to climate change due to the rapid rise in its air temperature in the past several decades and the large amounts of soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks, particularly in the permafrost. Yet it is one …
‘Secrets of Wild India', a three-part series highlighting the diversity of Indian wildlife, recently won the ‘Best Television Series' award at the International Wildlife Film Festival held at Montana in the U.S.A. The series had to compete with films from across the globe at the prestigious festival. ‘Secrets of Wild …
SHILLONG: Endorsing the State government official team’s clean chit to four giant cement factories operating in Jaintia Hills district, Meghalaya Deputy Chief Minister Bindo Lanong attributed unscientific coal mining as a major cause of pollution of streams and rivers in Khleihriat sub division. It is an irrefutable fact that unscientific …
Union Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan has overruled a key wildlife committee to approve the construction of a major hydel power project on the Lohit river in Arunachal Pradesh. The State government had reportedly argued that the 1,750 MW Demwe Lower Hydro Electric project was needed to counter Chinese plans to …
Ahmedabad: The pastoralist communities of Banni, through their respective gram panchayats, have opposed the move of the state forest department to ban pastoral rights of the community staying in the areas. At least 15 of the 19 gram panchayats have passed a resolution against the state government and have sent …
AJMER: The forest department has on its hands the task of finding the number of remaining Great Indian Bustard (GIB), the state bird, to chalk out a conservation plan for them. The census will be carried out on February 14 to know the area and number of birds in Ajmer, …
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 …
Concern over decline of Rajasthan's State bird population The critically-endangered grassland species, the Great Indian Bustard, will be counted in the desert terrain of Rajasthan in the second week of February. Rajasthan, specially its desert region, accounts for maximum population of the bird which is globally threatened and listed in …
