Following the destruction of 95% of meadows during the twentieth century, there is an urgent need to understand what little unspoiled habitat remains in order to plan the management and restoration of existing sites, as well as re-creating future grassland habitats. This book is a much-needed guide to grassland restoration and management. Providing a thorough overview of recent research on grassland restoration and its implications for practical grassland restoration and management, it introduces grassland communities and the wildlife they support, including examples of species of conservation concern, and considers the management of semi-natural grassland habitats with particular emphasis on drier grassland habitats. Chapters cover: - Grassland character and communities - Introduction to grassland wildlife - Managing semi-natural grassland - Grassland restoration - threats and challenges - Opportunities in grassland restoration - Plant material for grassland restoration - Defining success in grassland restoration.A variety of management techniques are examined, including soil amendment, cultivation, harvesting and maintenance in creating suitable conditions for the successful restoration of species-rich grasslands. It is essential reading for conservationists, site owners or managers, practitioners, conservation organizations and students of ecological restoration with an interest in the creation of new grassland habitats, the restoration of semi-natural grassland, as well as the continuing management of semi-natural (unimproved) grassland communities.

Product Description: The grass family is one of the largest and most diverse families in the plant kingdom and is of great economic value. Grasses provide human beings and domestic animals with the main necessities of life, add diversity to the landscape and stability to the ground surface, and also provide ornamental and amenity value...read more

Readers, booksellers and literary judges alike fell in love with Trevor Herriot’s stunning debut book, River in a Dry Land. In his remarkable new work, he draws on 20 years’ experience as an observer of nature to reveal the spirit of the grassland world, and the uniqueness of its birds.    Facing the demise of the very creatures that he has always depended on for his sense of home, Herriot sets out to discover why birds are disappearing and what, if anything, we can do to save them. He takes us out to local pastures where a few prairie songbirds sing and nest, as well as to the open rangeland where doomed populations of burrowing owls and greater sage-grouse cling to survival. In a narrative that is at once profound, intimate and informative, we meet passionate bird researchers and travel in the footsteps of 19th-century botanist John Macoun, the last naturalist to see the Great Plains in its pre-settlement grandeur.     In the spirit of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and Bruce Chatwin’s The Songlines, this arresting book fills the heart with wonder and reveals that any hope for the endangered wildness in North America’s heartland depends on people making the right choices—on farms, in legislatures and in board rooms, and even at the supermarket. Beautifully illustrated with the author’s own drawings, Grass, Sky, Song awakens our senses to the glory of all birds and calls for a renewed bond between culture and nature.

Format Hardcover Subject Literary Collections Publisher Springer Verlag New York LLC

Product Description: Published to wide acclaim, this beautiful meditation on the fate of grassland birds has been praised for its profound wisdom and lyrical grace. Herriot, in a narrative that is at once intimate and informative, argues for the essential nature of these tiny creatures...read more

Product Description: The Great Plains were once characterized by vast expanses of grass, complex interdependence among species, and dynamic annual changes due to weather, waterways, and fire. It is now generally accepted that less than one percent of the original tallgrass prairie remains...read more

Product Description: Grasslands around the world provide most of the world's milk and wool and much of the meat. The growing world population and global warming have put increased pressure on the world's grasslands. Ross Humphreys has played a leading role in the development of grassland science and in this authoritative review discusses how it has evolved over the past sixty years...read more

Product Description: The first comprehensive review of the occurrence and explanation of seed dormancy in grasses is presented in this volume. An understanding of seed dormancy is of considerable significance to world agriculture and the global economy, since grasses are a principal source of food for humankind and play an essential role in stabilizing the land surface of much of the globe...read more

Product Description: Similar in style to the Gardener's Guide series but somehwat larger in format and each covering a slightly broader theme, these books deal with hot topics in today's garden circles. (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: One of the main problems and aims of nature conservation in Europe is to protect semi-open landscapes. The development during the past decades is characterized by an ongoing intensivation of land use on the one hand, and an increasing number of former meadows and pastures lying fallow caused by changing economic conditions on the other hand...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: This book describes how competition between plant species, and succession in plant ecosystems, operate in grasslands and grazed pastures, both natural and sown. It discusses how competition both affects botanical structure, productivity and persistence of pastures and is itself regulated by biological, environmental and management factors, such as grazing animals...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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Product Description: Hay is the oldest and most important conserved fodder, and it can be made with simple equipment, manually or with mechanization. Many small-scale farmers make hay and store crop residues to carry livestock through periods of shortage...read more

Product Description: A collection of edited, key papers from the International Symposium on Grassland Ecophysiology and Grazing Ecology, held in Curituba, Brazil, August 24-26, 1999. Major topics included environmental constraints and plant responses to defoliation, plant and animal interactions, and sustainable grazing management of natural pastures...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: This book assembles in one volume a range of methods used by plant and animal production scientists to study grassland vegetation and animal performance. It replaces a previous volume Measurement of Grassland Vegetation and Animal Production, CAB Bulletin No...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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Product Description: Acridids (grasshoppers and locusts) can range from being rare curiosities to abundant menaces. Some are threatened with extinction and become subjects of intensive conservation efforts, while others are devastating pests and become the objects of massive control programmes...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)