Browsing by Author "Huntsinger, Lynn"

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Chinas Grassland Contract Policy and its Impacts on Herder Ability to Benefit in Inner Mongolia: Tragic Feedbacks
(2011) Li, Wenjun; Huntsinger, Lynn
"Northern Chinas grasslands have been losing productivity since the 1980s, when a policy known as the 'grassland contracting policy' allocated commonly used grazing lands to individual herder households. Examined here is the connection between implementation of the grassland contracting policy and the loss of grassland production using the analytic concepts of ability to benefit and community failure. A gacha (village) of the Sunite Left Banner of the Xilingol League in Inner Mongolia is used as a case study to compare herder ability to benefit from rangeland resources during adverse climate events before and after policy implementation. Social-ecological resilience, access to social and ecological assets, and institutions supporting crisis relief have been affected. We find that the privatization of grassland use rights has weakened pastoralist ability to benefit from rangelands by weakening or dismantling what are identified as the rights-, structure-, and relations-based abilities that enabled pastoralists to cope with nonequilibrium conditions. This has led to a community failure that engenders feedbacks of increased impoverishment and environmental deterioration. The inflexible boundaries of quasi-private household property rights have caused the pastoral system to lose capacity to respond to drought and weather events through the flexibility of 'otor' and other forms of herd movement, increasing vulnerability to environmental change."
Ecosystem Services are Social-Ecological Services in a Traditional Pastoral System: the Case of California’s Mediterranean Rangelands
(2014) Huntsinger, Lynn; Oviedo, José L.
"When attempting to value ecosystem services and support their production, two critical aspects may be neglected. The term 'ecosystem services' implies that they are a function of natural processes; yet, human interaction with the environment may be key to the production of many. This can contribute to a misconception that ecosystem service production depends on, or is enhanced by, the coercion or removal of human industry. Second, in programs designed to encourage ecosystem service production and maintenance, too often the inter-relationship of such services with social and ecological processes and drivers at multiple scales is ignored. Thinking of such services as 'social-ecological services' can reinforce the importance of human culture, perspectives, and economies to the production of ecosystem services. Using a social-ecological systems perspective, we explore the integral role of human activity and decisions at pasture, ranch, and landscape scales. Just as it does for understanding ecosystems, a hierarchical, multiscaled framework facilitates exploring the complexity of social-ecological systems as producers of ecosystem services, to develop approaches for the conservation of such services. Using California’s Mediterranean rangelands as a study area, we suggest that using a multiscaled approach that considers the importance of the differing drivers and processes at each scale and the interactions among scales, and that incorporates social-ecological systems concepts, may help avoid mistakes caused by narrow assumptions about 'natural' systems, and a lack of understanding of the need for integrated, multiscaled conservation programs."
Fish and Cows: Commons in Common?
(1992) Macinko, Seth; Huntsinger, Lynn
"American fisheries and grazing lands share a history of common use. This paper explores the origins and evolution of resource management policies and associated institutional structures designed to allocate and manage the use of these resources. The physical and historical conditions that characterize each system will be compared. Explored also are the ecological and sociological implications of current trends in policy and management, and contemporary policy debates, particularly as they exacerbate or mitigate inequities in resource allocation."
The Role of Rangelands in Diversified Farming Systems: Innovations, Obstacles, and Opportunities in the USA
(2012) Sayre, Nathan F.; Carlisle, Liz; Huntsinger, Lynn; Fisher, Gareth; Shattuck, Annie
"Discussions of diversified farming systems (DFS) rarely mention rangelands: the grasslands, shrublands, and savannas that make up roughly one-third of Earth’s ice-free terrestrial area, including some 312 million ha of the United States. Although ranching has been criticized by environmentalists for decades, it is probably the most ecologically sustainable segment of the U.S. meat industry, and it exemplifies many of the defining characteristics of DFS: it relies on the functional diversity of natural ecological processes of plant and animal (re)production at multiple scales, based on ecosystem services generated and regenerated on site rather than imported, often nonrenewable, inputs. Rangelands also provide other ecosystem services, including watershed, wildlife habitat, recreation, and tourism. Even where non-native or invasive plants have encroached on or replaced native species, rangelands retain unusually high levels of plant diversity compared with croplands or plantation forests. Innovations in management, marketing, incentives, and easement programs that augment ranch income, creative land tenure arrangements, and collaborations among ranchers all support diversification. Some obstacles include rapid landownership turnover, lack of accessible U.S. Department of Agriculture certified processing facilities, tenure uncertainty, fragmentation of rangelands, and low and variable income, especially relative to land costs. Taking advantage of rancher knowledge and stewardship, and aligning incentives with production of diverse goods and services, will support the sustainability of ranching and its associated public benefits. The creation of positive feedbacks between economic and ecological diversity should be the ultimate goal."