On the Ground • Healthy soils are fundamental to sustainable rangelands, but soils function in obscurity. This is reflected in the belowground black-box mentality often attributed to soils. • Transformational changes get the attention of land managers and the public for example, soil erosion associated with the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. This provides benchmarks for the context of importance in maintaining healthy soils for the productive capacity of rangelands. • Benefits of soil health include enhanced soil water-holding capacity and appropriate nutrient cycling, which increases rangelands resilience to weather variability and predicted climate change. • Future directions of usable science for soil health include: 1) characterization of soil health indicators for sensitivity levels that affect transitions/thresholds of state-and-transition models, 2) influences of management practices, predicted climate change, and extreme events, and 3) impact of prescribed fire and wildfires on soil health.

On the Ground • The profession of rangeland ecology and management has been built, to a large extent, on vegetation ecology. • Community ecology has been the source of advances in scientific understanding of rangeland behavior and improving management. • An increased use of the principles of landscape and regional ecology could greatly improve the utility of rangeland science for researchers and managers.

On the Ground • Because humans depend on rangelands for a wide variety of ecosystem goods and services, they have a large stake in research that explores supply and demand for those goods and services. • Scientists and science users who ranked 142 separate rangeland issues chose a socio-economic concern as most pressing: How to help rural communities plan for, adapt to, and recover from impacts of increased social, economic, and ecological variability. • Cross-jurisdictional stewardship is required to address many rangeland problems, so it is important to find ways to encourage and assist collaborative management efforts. • Decision makers and citizens need better ways to sift through the conflicting claims and conclusions available from a growing number of information sources. • Rangeland communities, and the land itself, require a steady supply of individuals who are both willing and able to choose careers in rangeland occupations.