The politics of scale: a history of rangeland science

Rangelands are vast, making up one quarter of the United States and 40% of the Earth's ice-free land. And while contemporary science has revealed a great deal about the environmental impacts associated with intensive livestock production - from greenhouse gas emissions to land and water degradation - far less is known about the historic role science has played in rangeland management and politics.

Steeped in US soil, this history of rangeland science looks to the origins of rangeland ecology in the late 19th-century American West, exploring the larger political and economic forces that - together with scientific study - produced legacies focused on immediate economic success rather than long-term ecological well being.