Rangelands of Central Asia

The 11 papers in this document address issues and needs in the development and stewardship of Central Asia rangelands, and identify directions for future work. With its vast rangelands and numerous pastoral populations, Central Asia is a region of increasing importance to rangeland scientists, managers, and pastoral development specialists. Five of the papers address rangeland issues in Mongolia, three papers specifically address studies in China, two papers address Kazakhstan, and one paper addresses the use of satellite images for natural resource planning across Central Asia. These papers comprise the proceedings from a general technical conference at the 2004 Annual Meeting of the Society for Range Management, held at Salt Lake City, Utah, January 24-30, 2004. As the 2004 SRM Conference theme was "Rangelands in Transition," these papers focus on an area of the world that has experienced dramatic socio-economic changes in 20th Century associated with adoption of communism and command economies and the subsequent collapse of the command economies and the recent transition to a free market economies. The changes in land use and land tenure policies that accompanied these shifts in socio economic regimes have had dramatic impacts on the region's rangelands and the people who use them.