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Purpose -China has embarked on a major concerted strategy to arrest grassland degradation and livelihood problems in the western pastoral region. The paper aims to provide a framework through which this strategy can be understood and refined into the future. Design/methodology/approach -The paper is based on a typology of grassland policiestechnical, administrative, and management -and a discussion of the emphasis that China has and should place on each policy category. Data are drawn from policy documents and interview material collected through extensive fieldwork in large tracts of China's western pastoral region. Findings -China has appropriately pursued "top-down" technical and administrative policies to address major and immediate degradation-livelihoods problems. However, longer term solutions to the problems require the strengthening of management structures from the "bottom-up", especially amongst herders themselves and other economic factors. Practical implications -The paper proposes a series of concrete recommendations that may be considered as China refines its grasslands strategy into the future. The emphasis in the paper on the relationships between multi-dimensional policies is of particular value in addressing multi-dimensional grasslands-livelihood problems. Originality/value -Despite the magnitude and implications of China's recent grasslands strategy, there is a dearth of English language studies on the subject, which this paper aims to fill. The paper includes numerous micro-level insights gained from extensive fieldwork in the western pastoral region that are not evident in more macro-level studies.

Pecan is a major crop in the lower Rio Grande Valley (LRGV), New Mexico. Currently, about 11,000 ha of pecan orchards at various stages of growth are consuming about 40% of irrigation water in the area. Pecan evapotranspiration (ET) varies with age, canopy cover, soil type and method of water management. There is a need for better quantification of pecan ET for the purpose of water rights adjudication, watershed management and agronomical practices. This paper describes a process where remote sensing information from Landsat-5 and Landsat-7 were combined with ground level measurements to estimate pecan ET and field scale actual crop coefficient (K c ) for the LRGV. The results showed that annual pecan water use for 279 fields ranged from 498 to 1,259 mm with an average water use of 1,054 mm. For fields with NDVI [ 0.6 (normalized difference vegetation index), which represented mature orchards (total of 232 fields), the annual water use ranged from 771 to 1,259 mm with an average water use of 1,077 mm. The results from remote sensing model compared reasonably well with ground level ET values determined by an eddy covariance system in a mature pecan orchard with an average error of 4% and the standard error of estimate (SEE) ranging from 0.91 to 1.06 mm/day. A small fraction (5%) of the pecan fields were within the range of maximum ET and K c .

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