Grassland covers about a quarter of Earth's terrestrial surface--about the same as forests or cultivated land. Environmental and agricultural scientists analyze the current understanding of grassland processes and how the resources can be exploited by people without endangering the grassland community. They cover productivity and using grassland resources, grasslands as regulating biogeochemical cycles and environmental fluxes in the hydrosphere and atmosphere, grasslands as regulating biodiversity dynamics, grasslands a components of sustainable farming systems, and grasslands as components of landscape ecology and agricultural systems at the regional level. Distributed in the US by Stylus Publishing. Annotation ©2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)