On the Ground • This case study demonstrates the importance of adaptive management to the resilience of a ranch. • With a combination of strategic livestock and grazing management, especially adjusting the stocking rate to variability in forage production, we were able to increase the grazing capacity and the profitability of the ranch, even during drought. • The major concern during the drought should not be the productivity or profitability of the ranch, but rather the integrity of the plant communities and the herd in order to re-establish the production cycle following the severe drought. • Managing flexible grazing management programs with proper monitoring of weather, forage standing crop, cattle condition, and markets to make informed and timely decisions largely determines the resilience and profitability of the operation.

On the Ground • By managing for more even animal distribution, ranch managers can increase the amount of forage accessible to livestock and raise their effective grazing capacity. • Smaller paddocks and higher stocking density improve the distribution of grazing in each paddock. • A landscape of many, smaller paddocks will spread grazing pressure more evenly than one of fewer, larger paddocks.

On the Ground • Landscapes are complex creative systems that are endlessly emerging, transforming, and vanishing as a result of ever-changing relationships among organisms and environments— soil, plants, herbivores, and human beings. In the process, all organisms are actively participating in creating environments; they aren’t merely adapting to them. • Researchers and managers attempt to understand and manage creative relationships among soil, plants, herbivores, and human beings, but we have become increasingly separated from one another in our endeavors. When we work in partnerships, we can better learn about biophysical processes and participate in managing as landscapes continually create. • To do so, researchers must combine their reductionist thinking and intent to develop “best management practices” with new approaches that consider creative systems. In turn, managers must come to appreciate the value of “reductionist” research for understanding processes and developing principles that apply generally across time and space. • The challenges we face in addressing “critical issues” have little to do with the issues and much to do with crossing the divides that polarize and isolate us. The irony is that working together to transcend the boundaries we create is addressing the “really big Issue.”

On the Ground • We consider the trade-offs among “good” ecosystem services and “bad” ecosystem disservices attributable to past and current ranchland management and how such trade-offs depend on analysis at the scale of the ranch, the region, or the Earth. • We focus on trade-offs in ecosystem services at one working ranch—Buck Island Ranch, location of the MacArthur Agro-ecology Research Center, lying in the headwaters of Florida’s Everglades— and managed for 25 years as a full-scale cow– calf operation by Archbold Biological Station, one of the world’s preeminent ecological research centers. • The synthesis of how this ranch functions as an ecosystem (species, habitats, nutrient dynamics, hydrology, etc.) is set in the context of financial realities and economic viability. • We develop a conceptual model to visualize trade-offs among ecosystem services and disservices, and provide insight into what it takes to be sustainable ecologically and economically.

On the Ground • As with much of the eastern United States, the native plant communities present in Florida when European settlers arrived have been converted to cropland, pastureland, and industrial forest production. • Increasingly, both public and private entities have been making efforts to restore some of the converted acreage to a semblance of the original plant community for reasons of water quality, wildlife habitat, and aesthetics. • The lack of a commercial source of seed for Florida ecotypes of native grasses is one of the main costs associated with current revegetation efforts. • A long-term program, by the USDA, NRCS, Brooksville Plant Materials Center and various cooperating public and private institutions, has fostered the development of a commercial, native grass-seed industry in the state.