Changes in trade-offs of grassland ecosystem services and functions under different grazing intensities

Abstract

Aims The Nei MongolSteppe plays an important role for livestock production, and it has been one of the green ecological shelters for Northern China. Enhancing some ecosystem services (provisioning services) in managing the ecosystems may causes reductions of other services, such as regulating and supporting services. The knowledge on how grazing intensity influence the trade-offs is lacking. MethodsIn order to find out the optimized grazing regimes, we conducted an experiment on a typical steppe in Xinlin Gol with four grazing intensities (no grazing, light grazing, moderate grazing and heavy grazing) in the Nei Mongol Steppe. Important findingsOur results showed that: synergetic, trade-offs and no relationships among different ecosystem services existed in all treatments on the managed steppe system. The trade-offs relationship was found between soil respiration rate and net plant biomass growth, and between biodiversity and net photosynthetic rate. However the synergetic relationships were observed between net plant biomass growth and soil water content, between net plant growth biomass and net photosynthetic rate, and also between grassland evapotranspiration rate and biodiversity. The results indicated soil organic carbon was not related to other ecosystem services and functions. Grazing could weaken the conflicts among the ecosystem services. Moderate grazing intensity maximumize ecosystem services and functions.

Research Progress on Grassland Eco-Assets and Eco-Products and Its Implications for the Enhancement of Ecosystem Service Function of Karst Desertification Control

“…Single-ecosystem and single-service functions: The existing research has increasingly focused on the synergistic relationship between the functional composition of regional single ecosystems, production management practices, and the value transfer and trade-offs of service functions [105,106]. This is a key insight for the maximization of the value of a single ecosystem.…”

The Trade-Offs and Synergistic Relationships between Grassland Ecosystem Functions in the Yellow River Basin

“…With changes in resources and environmental conditions and human utilization, the trade-off and synergy between ecosystem services will undergo mutual conversion. The spatial heterogeneity and time dependence of the trade-off and synergy have been verified by relevant studies [7]. This has promoted research on the interaction between ecosystem functions and trade-off management decision-making.…”

Effect of the presence of plateau pikas on the ecosystem services of alpine meadows

“…Although the provisioning, regulation, support and cultural services of alpine meadows can be estimated by multiple indicators (Egoh et al, 2012;Brown et al, 2014), one or two can be used to verify whether the presence and intensity of plateau pikas influence each ecosystem service. In previous studies, palatable plant biomass for livestock has been used to evaluate the provisioning services (Martínez-Estévez et al, 2013;Wen et al, 2013), soil-water storage and soil organic carbon stock have been used to evaluate the regulating services (Wen et al, 2013;Li and Xie, 2015;Tang et al, 2019), and plant-species richness and soil total nutrient stocks can be used to evaluate the supporting services (Wen et al, 2013). Notably, cultural services are particularly related to the spatial scale, as many are perceived visually over distant views (Norton et al, 2012).…”