The LTAR Grazing Land Common Experiment at the Central Plains Experimental Range: Collaborative adaptive rangeland management.

Autor: Augustine DJ; USDA-ARS, Rangeland Resources and Systems Research Unit, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA., Derner JD; USDA-ARS, Rangeland Resources and Systems Research Unit, Cheyenne, Wyoming, USA., Porensky LM; USDA-ARS, Rangeland Resources and Systems Research Unit, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA., Hoover DL; USDA-ARS, Rangeland Resources and Systems Research Unit, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA., Ritten JP; AgNext, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA., Kearney SP; USDA-ARS, Rangeland Resources and Systems Research Unit, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA., Ma L; USDA-ARS, Rangeland Resources and Systems Research Unit, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA., Peck D; USDA-ARS, Northern Plains Climate Hub, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA., Wilmer H; USDA-ARS, Range Sheep Production Efficiency Research Unit, Dubois, Idaho, USA.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Journal of environmental quality [J Environ Qual] 2024 Nov-Dec; Vol. 53 (6), pp. 904-912. Date of Electronic Publication: 2024 Jul 22.
DOI: 10.1002/jeq2.20599
Abstrakt: Semiarid rangelands throughout the western Great Plains support livestock production and many other ecosystem services. The degree to which adaptive multi-paddock (AMP) grazing management approaches can help achieve desired ecosystem services remains unclear. At the Central Plains Experimental Range in northeastern Colorado, a management-science partnership with a diverse stakeholder group is comparing collaborative adaptive rangeland management (CARM), designed to incorporate AMP principles, to traditional rangeland management (TRM), consisting of season-long grazing during the growing season. Each treatment was implemented on a set of 10, 130-ha pastures paired by soils, topography, and plant communities to evaluate how CARM affects vegetation (composition and production), livestock production (steer weight gain), and wildlife habitat (vegetation structure for grassland birds). For the first 5 years of the experiment, CARM cattle were managed as a single herd using AMP grazing with planned year-long rest in 20% of the pastures. Relative to TRM, CARM enhanced heterogeneity in vegetation structure across the landscape, benefiting two grassland bird species. However, this came at the cost of 12%-16% lower steer weight gains in CARM versus TRM and declining populations of a third bird species of conservation concern in both treatments. Here we discuss how increased understanding of ecological and social processes during the experiment's first 5 years led to changes in the CARM treatment and management objectives during the next 5 years. We also discuss how innovations in remote sensing, environmental sensors, ecosystem modeling, social learning, and economic analyses are being integrated into and supported by the CARM experiment.
(© 2024 The Author(s). Journal of Environmental Quality published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America. This article has been contributed to by U.S. Government employees and their work is in the public domain in the USA.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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