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With ever intensifying land use, land degradation is becoming an increasingly important issue around the world, especially in China. This paper evaluates the extent and underlying causes of rangeland degradation on the Qinghai‐Tibet Plateau in China through a comprehensive review of the literature. Diverse forms and differing intensities of rangeland degradation have been reported in several regions of the Plateau. Rangeland degradation is particularly severe in South Qinghai, North Tibet and the Qaidam Basin. Anthropogenic activities, especially changing land use practices, are identified as the primary force driving rangeland degradation. Dissimilar to climate change‐induced degradation, such anthropogenic degradation is a rather short‐term process altering the abiotic properties of the underlying soil. On the basis of these findings, we assessed the prospects of rehabilitating degraded rangeland to productive uses. Different measures are proposed to rehabilitate rangelands that have been degraded by different mechanisms. Reduction in grazing intensity is prescribed to rehabilitate reversibly degraded rangelands. Targeted human intervention in the forms of selective planting of grasses and artificial seeding, in conjunction with ecological and biological control of the plateau rodent population, is recommended to rehabilitate ‘irreversibly’ degraded rangelands. Our studies suggest it is very difficult or even impossible to rehabilitate new assemblage of species which appear as a result of climate change. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Connectivity describes the efficiency of material transfer between geomorphic system components such as hillslopes and rivers or longitudinal segments within a river network. Representations of geomorphic systems as networks should recognize that the compartments, links, and nodes exhibit connectivity at differing scales. The historical underpinnings of connectivity in geomorphology involve management of geomorphic systems and observations linking surface processes to landform dynamics. Current work in geomorphic connectivity emphasizes hydrological, sediment, or landscape connectivity. Signatures of connectivity can be detected using diverse indicators that vary from contemporary processes to stratigraphic records or a spatial metric such as sediment yield that encompasses geomorphic processes operating over diverse time and space scales. One approach to measuring connectivity is to determine the fundamental temporal and spatial scales for the phenomenon of interest and to make measurements at a sufficiently large multiple of the fundamental scales to capture reliably a representative sample. Another approach seeks to characterize how connectivity varies with scale, by applying the same metric over a wide range of scales or using statistical measures that characterize the frequency distributions of connectivity across scales. Identifying and measuring connectivity is useful in basic and applied geomorphic research and we explore the implications of connectivity for river management. Common themes and ideas that merit further research include; increased understanding of the importance of capturing landscape heterogeneity and connectivity patterns; the potential to use graph and network theory metrics in analyzing connectivity; the need to understand which metrics best represent the physical system and its connectivity pathways, and to apply these metrics to the validation of numerical models; and the need to recognize the importance of low levels of connectivity in some situations. We emphasize the value in evaluating boundaries between components of geomorphic systems as transition zones and examining the fluxes across them to understand landscape functioning. © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Geographic concerns for spatial relationships lie at the heart of geomorphic applications in environmental management. The way in which landscape compartments fit together in a catchment influences the operation of biophysical fluxes, and hence the ways in which disturbance responses are mediated over time. These relationships reflect the connectivity of the landscape. A nested hierarchical framework that emphasizes differing forms of (dis)connectivity in catchments is proposed. This field‐based geomorphic tool can be used to ground the application of modelling techniques in analysis of catchment‐scale biophysical fluxes.

In this paper we discuss the use of system dynamics as a methodology with which to address dynamically complex problems in water resources management. Problems in regional planning and river basin management, urban water management, flooding and irrigation exhibit important short-term and long-term effects, and are often contentious issues with high potential for conflict. We argue that system dynamics combined with stakeholder involvement provides an appropriate methodology to address these issues effectively. We trace the theoretical and practical evolution of system dynamics in these areas over the past 50 years. From this review of the literature and selected case studies we identify and discuss a number of best practices and common pitfalls in applications of system dynamics simulation.

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