- Climate change: Effects and adaptations, including extreme events, droughts, floods, palaeo-climate comparisons, and ENSO (El Nino, La Nina).
- Bush encroachment: Encroachment of naturally open systems through woody densification, including ecological implications, policy, and mitigation.
- Communal rangelands, land tenure and land transformation: Land ownership, land tenure, sector transformation, communal systems, and policy & ecological implications.
- Conservation and restoration: Conservation of open systems, including biodiversity, landscape, water production, invasive species, protected areas, stewardship programmes, trans-boundary initiatives, and related policy and practitioner experience.
- Feed and nutrition: Fodder, supplements, livestock nutrition, nutrient cycles.
- Fire ecology: The role of fire in open systems, including natural occurrence, management, policy, and best practice.
- Livestock and game management: Management of animals in confined systems, including conventional farms and high-concentration facilities.
- Planted pastures: Soils, nutrients, irrigation, grazing, dairy, pasture systems and pasture measurement. Ecophysiology, plant breeding, forage quality and plant interactions.
- Rangeland ecology and management: Use of natural rangelands, including ecology, carrying capacity, economics, social and policy components.