Effects of Different Grazing Systems on Aboveground Biomass and Plant Species Dominance in Typical Chinese and Mongolian Steppes

Na, Yintai; Li, Jinxia; Hoshino, Buho; Bao, Saixialt; Qin, Fuying; Purevtseren, Myagmartseren

doi:10.3390/su10124753

Cited by 19 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…Based on SAR data, the HH/VV ratio related well to grassland phenology [136]. In semi-arid regions, the SAVI possibly improves the analysis of the grassland condition and use intensity [145,192] due to larger amounts of soil backscattering. Even though the current grassland condition might be well monitored by these indices, data gaps due to clouds are a problem, as for all optical satellite data products.…”

Section: Assessment Of the Used Remote Sensing Sensors And Indices Ofmentioning

confidence: 98%

Remote Sensing of Grassland Production and Management—A Review

2020

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Grasslands cover one third of the earth’s terrestrial surface and are mainly used for livestock production. The usage type, use intensity and condition of grasslands are often unclear. Remote sensing enables the analysis of grassland production and management on large spatial scales and with high temporal resolution. Despite growing numbers of studies in the field, remote sensing applications in grassland biomes are underrepresented in literature and less streamlined compared to other vegetation types. By reviewing articles within research on satellite-based remote sensing of grassland production traits and management, we describe and evaluate methods and results and reveal spatial and temporal patterns of existing work. In addition, we highlight research gaps and suggest research opportunities. The focus is on managed grasslands and pastures and special emphasize is given to the assessment of studies on grazing intensity and mowing detection based on earth observation data. Grazing and mowing highly influence the production and ecology of grassland and are major grassland management types. In total, 253 research articles were reviewed. The majority of these studies focused on grassland production traits and only 80 articles were about grassland management and use intensity. While the remote sensing-based analysis of grassland production heavily relied on empirical relationships between ground-truth and satellite data or radiation transfer models, the used methods to detect and investigate grassland management differed. In addition, this review identified that studies on grassland production traits with satellite data often lacked including spatial management information into the analyses. Studies focusing on grassland management and use intensity mostly investigated rather small study areas with homogeneous intensity levels among the grassland parcels. Combining grassland production estimations with management information, while accounting for the variability among grasslands, is recommended to facilitate the development of large-scale continuous monitoring and remote sensing grassland products, which have been rare thus far.

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Section: Assessment Of the Used Remote Sensing Sensors And Indices Ofmentioning

confidence: 98%

Remote Sensing of Grassland Production and Management—A Review

2020

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“…There are other factors, including those human-related practices listed in Table 5, which might be similarly important and preferably included in the driving factor analysis. For example, rotating grazing, as a management practice recommended for improving vegetation productivity [46], was not indicated in the variable of grazing intensity and thus not reflected in the explained variance, although grazing rotationally or not could mean a significant difference on the impact of RCU. Moreover, while the included human-related factors, RCU, and their relationships were found to vary among administrative units, the analysis of the driving forces for RCU at the county level may generalize the effect between the selected variables and RCU.…”

Section: Driving Factors For Reduced Carbon Uptake (Rcu)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Taking grazing management as an example, the exclusion or restriction of grazing resulted in a significant improvement in vegetation density in Horqin sandy land located in the southeast of IMAR [45]. Rotational or nomadic grazing also helps reduce the negative impact on grassland vegetation [46]. Thus, fenced grazing (exclusion of grazing) and rotational grazing can be adopted as OGMPs for the S-T-V patches in those study regions.…”

Section: Optimal Grassland Management Practices (Ogmps)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessment of Human-Related Driving Forces for Reduced Carbon Uptake Using Neighborhood Analysis and Geographically Weighted Regression: A Case Study in the Grassland of Inner Mongolia, China

Sha

2020

Applied Sciences

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The ever-rising concentration of atmospheric carbon is viewed as the primary cause for global warming. To discontinue this trend, it is of urgent importance to either cut down human carbon emissions or remove more carbon from the atmosphere. Grassland ecosystems occupy the largest part of the global land area but maintain a relatively low carbon sequestration flux. While numerous studies have confirmed the impacts on grassland vegetation growth from climate changes and human activities, little work has been done to understand the driving forces for a reduced carbon uptake (RCU)—a loss in vegetation carbon sequestration because of inappropriate grassland management. This work focused on assessing RCU in the grassland of Inner Mongolia and understanding the influential patterns of the selected variables (including grazing intensity, road network, population, and vegetation productivity) related to RCU. Neighborhood analysis was proposed to locate optimized grassland management practices from historical data and to map RCU. Ordinary least squares (OLS) and geographically weighted regression (GWR) models were applied to explore the driving forces for RCU. The results indicated that the human-related factors, including stock grazing intensity, population density, and road network were likely to present a spatially varied impact on RCU, which accounted for more than 1/4 of the total carbon sequestration.

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“…The impacts of livestock grazing on the ecosystems were associated in previous studies with canopy cover, the response of the dominant plant species to grazing, different grazing regimes, and site history (Chen et al, 2014;Gan et al, 2012;K'Otuto et al, 2013;Kairis et al, 2015;Lecain et al, 2000;Räsänen et al, 2017;Tagesson et al, 2015;Talore et al, 2016;Wagle et al, 2019;Yan et al, 2017). In a study conducted in Chinese and Mongolian steppes, Na et al (2018) showed that continuous grazing leads to reduction in aboveground biomass (AGB). Ma et al (2019) found a strong correlation between grazing intensity and vegetation indexes (AGB and NDVI).…”

Section: Impacts Of Lenient Temporary Vs Continuous Heavy Livestock Grazingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multi-year CO<sub>2</sub> budgets in South African semi-arid Karoo ecosystems under different grazing intensities

Rybchak¹,

Toit

Delorme³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Abstract. Climatic and land management factors, such as water availability and grazing intensity, play an important role in seasonal and annual variability of the ecosystem–atmosphere exchange of CO2 in semi-arid ecosystems. However, the semi-arid South African ecosystems have been poorly studied. Four years of measurements (November 2015–October 2019) were collected and analysed from two eddy covariance towers near Middelburg in the Karoo, Eastern Cape, South Africa. We studied the impact of grazing intensity on the CO2 exchange by comparing seasonal and interannual CO2 fluxes for two sites with almost identical climatic conditions but different intensity of current and historical livestock grazing. The first site represents lenient grazing (LG) and the vegetation comprises a diverse balance of dwarf shrubs and grasses, while the second site has been degraded through heavy grazing (HG) in the past but then rested for the past 10 years and mainly consists of unpalatable grasses and ephemeral species. Over the observation period, we found that the LG site was a considerable carbon source (82.11 g C m−2), while the HG site was a slight carbon sink (−36.43 g C m−2). The annual carbon budgets ranged from −90 ± 51 g C m−2 yr−1 to 84 ± 43 g C m−2 yr−1 for the LG site and from −92 ± 66 g C m−2 yr−1 to 59 ± 46 g C m−2 yr−1 for the heavily grazed site over the four years of eddy covariance measurements. The significant variation in carbon sequestration rates between the last two years of measurement was explained by water availability (25 % of the precipitation deficit in 2019 compared to the long-term mean precipitation). This indicates that studied ecosystems can quickly switch from a considerable carbon sink to a considerable carbon source ecosystem. Our study shows that the CO2 dynamics in the Karoo are largely driven by water availability and the current and historical effects of livestock grazing intensity on aboveground biomass (AGB). The higher carbon uptake at the HG site indicates that resting period after overgrazing, together with the transition to unpalatable drought-tolerant grass species, creates conditions that are favourable for carbon sequestration in the Karoo ecosystems, but unproductive as Dorper sheep pasture. Furthermore, we observed a slight decrease in carbon uptake peaks at the HG site in response to resuming continuous grazing (July 2017).

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Effects of Different Grazing Systems on Aboveground Biomass and Plant Species Dominance in Typical Chinese and Mongolian Steppes

Cited by 19 publications

References 35 publications

Remote Sensing of Grassland Production and Management—A Review

Remote Sensing of Grassland Production and Management—A Review

Assessment of Human-Related Driving Forces for Reduced Carbon Uptake Using Neighborhood Analysis and Geographically Weighted Regression: A Case Study in the Grassland of Inner Mongolia, China

Multi-year CO<sub>2</sub> budgets in South African semi-arid Karoo ecosystems under different grazing intensities

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Effects of Different Grazing Systems on Aboveground Biomass and Plant Species Dominance in Typical Chinese and Mongolian Steppes

Cited by 19 publications

References 35 publications

Remote Sensing of Grassland Production and Management—A Review

Remote Sensing of Grassland Production and Management—A Review

Assessment of Human-Related Driving Forces for Reduced Carbon Uptake Using Neighborhood Analysis and Geographically Weighted Regression: A Case Study in the Grassland of Inner Mongolia, China

Multi-year CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; budgets in South African semi-arid Karoo ecosystems under different grazing intensities

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Multi-year CO<sub>2</sub> budgets in South African semi-arid Karoo ecosystems under different grazing intensities