All publications and documents

This paper describes how a new cloud-based Land-Potential Knowledge System (LandPKS; www.landpotential. org; figure 1) will allow land potential to be defined explicitly and dynamically for unique and constantly changing soil and climate conditions and to be updated based on new evidence about the success or failure of new management systems on different soils. The knowledge engine (figure 2),…

Water scarcity has largely driven the adaptations of organisms to survive dryland conditions. As a result, there are many animal and plant species and habitats found only in drylands: some semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas are among the most biodiverse regions in the world. Despite the value of such biomes, protected areas in drylands are not representative of all the dryland subtypes. For…

Recently, the development and humanitarian relief communities have directed attention to building resilience of pastoral communities to droughts and other shocks. While resilience thinking has much to offer, using resilience as a framework for investing in disaster risk reduction and development faces numerous challenges. Development implies that people are actively changing, which poses the…

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…