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Pastoralism is globally significant in social, environmental, and economic terms. However, it experiences crises rooted in misconceptions and poor interdisciplinary understanding, while being largely overlooked in international sustainability forums and agendas. Here, we propose a transdisciplinary research approach to understand pastoralist transitions using (1) social, economic, and environmental dimensions, (2) diverse geographic contexts and scales to capture emerging properties, allowing for cross-system comparisons, and (3) timescales from the distant past to the present. We provide specific guidelines to develop indicators for this approach, within a social-ecological resilience analytical framework to understand change. Distinct systems undergo similar transitions over time, crossing critical thresholds and then either collapsing or recovering. Such an integrated view of multidimensional interactions …