Potential of an outranking multi-criteria approach to support the participatory assessment of land management actions.

We evaluated the potential of an outranking Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis approach for assisting in the participatory assessment of dryland management actions implemented in the San Simon watershed, in southeastern Arizona, USA. We compared an outranking-facilitated assessment of actions with a simple and direct (baseline) ranking of the same actions by the participating stakeholders in terms of: 1) internal homogeneity of each assessment approach, (2) similarity of individual assessments between methods, and (3) effects of the use of implicit/explicit assessment criteria. The actions assessed combined various management approaches, including livestock management (rotation, resting), vegetation management (grass seeding, brush control), and hydraulic structures (dams, dykes). The outranking-facilitated assessment discriminated better between actions and reduced the variability of results between individual stakeholders as compared with the direct ranking of actions. In general, the two assessments significantly differed in the relative preference of the five management actions assessed, yet both assessments identified rotational grazing combined with vegetation management (grass seeding and brush control) as the most preferred management action in the study area. The comparative analysis revealed inconsistencies between the use of implicit and explicit assessment criteria. Our findings highlight the opportunities offered by outranking approaches to help capture, structure, and make explicit stakeholder perspectives in the framework of a participatory environmental assessment process, which may facilitate the understanding of the multiple preferences involved. The outranking integration process, which resembles a voting procedure, proved simple and transparent, with potential for contributing to stakeholder engagement and trust in participatory assessment.

Seed enhancement technologies for sustainable dryland restoration: Coating and scarification.

High temperatures, soil salinity, a lack of available water, loose soils with reduced water holding, and low soil fertility are obstacles to restoration efforts in degraded drylands and desert ecosystems. Improved soil physical and chemical properties, seed germination and seedling recruitment, and plant growth are all proposed as outcomes of seed enhancement technologies (SETs). Seed priming, seed coating, and seed scarification are three SETs' methods for promoting seed germination and subsequent plant development under unfavorable environmental conditions. Various subtypes can be further classified within these three broad groups. The goals of this review are to (1) develop a general classification of coating and scarification SETs, (2) facilitate the decision-making process to adopt suitable SETs for arid lands environments, and (3) highlight the benefits of coating and scarification SETs in overcoming biotic and abiotic challenges in ecological restoring degraded dryland. For rehabilitating degraded lands and restoring drylands, it is recommended to 1) optimize SETs that have been used effectively for a long time, particularly those associated with seed physiological enhancement and seed microenvironment, 2) integrate coating and scarification to overcome different biotic and abiotic constraints, and 3) apply SET(s) to a mixture of seeds from various species and sizes. However, more research should be conducted on developing SETs for large-scale use to provide the required seed tonnages for dryland restoration.