Increased inorganic nitrogen leaching from a mountain grassland ecosystem following grazing removal: a hangover of past intensive land-use?

McGovern, Stephanie; Evans, C. D.; Dennis, Peter; Walmsley, Clive A.; Turner, Alex; McDonald, Morag

doi:10.1007/s10533-014-9952-7

Cited by 17 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 71 publications

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Section: Impacts On N Removal and N Cyclingmentioning

confidence: 82%

“…In upland acid grassland, studies have shown higher nitrate leaching in ungrazed compared with grazed areas McGovern et al, 2014), but varying the grazing intensity did not change N cycling or losses . In long-term grazing exclosures, McGovern et al (2014) observed fundamental shifts in ecosystem properties such as C/N ratios and fungal/bacterial ratios, suggesting that complete grazing removal had led to a transition from grasslands with high N turnover which were N-limited to heathlands with slower N turnover which were N-saturated. By contrast, in dune grassland N leaching was 50% lower in ungrazed than in grazed plots (Hall et al, 2011), despite higher mineralisation rates (Ford et al, Table 1 Nitrogen budget for grasslands under different management regimes, showing the main N loss pathways, and net annual N accumulation (all data as kg N ha −1 yr −1 , unless specified).…”

Section: Impacts On N Removal and N Cyclingmentioning

confidence: 82%

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Can on-site management mitigate nitrogen deposition impacts in non-wooded habitats?

Jones

Rowe

Payne

et al. 2017

Biological Conservation

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Nitrogen (N) deposition is a major cause of plant biodiversity loss, with serious implications for appropriate management of protected sites. Reducing N emissions is the only long-term solution. However, on-site management has the potential to mitigate some of the adverse effects of N deposition. In this paper we review how management activities such as grazing, cutting, burning, hydrological management and soil disturbance measures can mitigate the negative impacts of N across a range of temperate habitats (acid, calcareous and neutral grasslands, sand dunes and other coastal habitats, heathlands, bogs and fens). The review focuses mainly on European habitats, which have a long history of N deposition, and it excludes forested systems. For each management type we distinguish between actions that improve habitat suitability for plant species of conservation importance, and actions that immobilize N or remove it from the system. For grasslands and heathlands we collate data on the quantity of N removal by each management type. Our findings show that while most activities improve habitat suitability, the majority do little to slow or to reduce the amount of N accumulating in soil pools at current deposition rates. Only heavy cutting/mowing with removal in grasslands, high intensity burns in heathlands and sod cutting remove more N than comes in from deposition under typical management cycles. We conclude by discussing some of the unintended consequences of managing specifically for N impacts, which can include damage to non-target species, alteration of soil processes, loss of the seedbank and loss of soil carbon.

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Section: Impacts On N Removal and N Cyclingmentioning

confidence: 82%

Section: Impacts On N Removal and N Cyclingmentioning

confidence: 82%

Can on-site management mitigate nitrogen deposition impacts in non-wooded habitats?

Jones

Rowe

Payne

et al. 2017

Biological Conservation

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“…In winter at some sites there is evidence (not shown) of throughput from nitrogen deposition which cannot be utilised when other factors are limiting (see e.g. McGovern et al (2014)). As expected, DOC concentrations are notably high in drainage from the Migneint peat area in the south of the catchment, and lowest at high elevations where peat is largely absent.…”

Section: Water Qualitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial patterns and environmental constraints on ecosystem services at a catchment scale

Emmett

Cooper

Smart

et al. 2016

Science of The Total Environment

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Improved understanding and prediction of the fundamental environmental controls on ecosystem service supply across the landscape will help to inform decisions made by policy makers and land-water managers. To evaluate this issue for a local catchment case study, we explored metrics and spatial patterns of service supply for water quality regulation, agriculture production, carbon storage, and biodiversity for the Macronutrient Conwy catchment. Methods included using ecosystem models such as LUCI and JULES, integration of national scale field survey datasets, earth observation products and plant trait databases, to produce finely resolved maps of species richness and primary production. Analyses were done with both 1×1km gridded and subcatchment data. A common single gradient characterised catchment scale ecosystem services supply with agricultural production and carbon storage at opposing ends of the gradient as reported for a national-scale assessment. Species diversity was positively related to production due to the below national average productivity levels in the Conwy combined with the unimodal relationship between biodiversity and productivity at the national scale. In contrast to the national scale assessment, a strong reduction in water quality as production increased was observed in these low productive systems. Various soil variables were tested for their predictive power of ecosystem service supply. Soil carbon, nitrogen, their ratio and soil pH all had double the power of rainfall and altitude, each explaining around 45% of variation but soil pH is proposed as a potential metric for ecosystem service supply potential as it is a simple and practical metric which can be carried out in the field with crowd-sourcing technologies now available. The study emphasises the importance of considering multiple ecosystem services together due to the complexity of covariation at local and national scales, and the benefits of exploiting a wide range of metrics for each service to enhance data robustness.

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“…Grazers may help thwart shrub growth and many studies have found that they can increase plant diversity through mechanisms such as creating heterogeneity in the environment, reducing plant competition, and spreading seeds (Collins, Knapp, Briggs, Blair, & Steinauer, ; Lwiwski, ; Milchunas et al., ; Milchunas, Sala, & Lauenroth, ; Pavlü, Hejcman, Pavlü, & Gaisler, ). However, the effect of grazing can differ widely in different ecosystems and environmental conditions, for example depending on soil moisture and fertility, grazing intensity and breed, and the local evolutionary history of grazing (Bakker, Ritchie, Olff, Milchunas, & Knops, ; Liu et al., ; McGovern et al., ; Milchunas et al., ; Socher et al., ). Coastal grasslands tend to have sandy and nutrient‐poor soil (Neill et al., ), which may be problematic because reviews suggest the effects of grazing on plant species richness are more likely to be negative in nutrient‐poor or dry grasslands than on more fertile soils (Cingolani, Noy‐Meir, & Díaz, ; Kohyani, Bossuyt, Bonte, & Hoffmann, ; Milchunas & Lauenroth, ; Proulx & Mazumder, ; Stewart & Pullin, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interactions between cattle grazing, plant diversity, and soil nitrogen in a northeastern U.S. coastal grassland

Kinnebrew

Champlin

Neill

2019

Applied Vegetation Science

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Questions Can cattle grazing help maintain plant diversity in coastal grasslands? What is the relationship between soil extractable nitrogen and plant diversity in sandy and infertile soils? How does cattle grazing affect soil extractable nitrogen and how might this indirectly impact plant diversity via the N–plant diversity relationship? Location Grazed coastal grasslands on Naushon Island, off of Cape Cod, MA, USA. Methods We surveyed summer vegetation from 2014 to 2017 and analyzed soils for extractable nitrogen (N) in two grazed grasslands on Naushon Island. We also set up cattle enclosures and exclosures to manipulate grazing pressure and test how cattle grazing influenced plant diversity (species richness and Shannon's diversity) and extractable NH4+ and NO3−. In the enclosure experiment, cattle were enclosed for up to a week in the mid‐summer of 2014, 2015, and 2016. For the exclosure experiment, we excluded cattle from areas from 2014 to 2017. Results In both the enclosure and exclosure experiments, higher grazing pressure corresponded to less negative change of plant species richness and Shannon's diversity from 2014 to 2017. Total extractable N had a weak positive correlation with plant diversity, but increasing extractable NO3− correlated with decreasing species richness (p = 0.001) and Shannon's diversity (p = 0.009). Neither the cattle enclosures nor exclosures were related to soil extractable N. Conclusions Cattle grazing may help prevent or slow losses of plant diversity that are occurring in many coastal grasslands, including Naushon Island. This effect does not seem to be regulated by cattle deposition of N in the soil or the N–plant diversity relationship. Our results of the N–plant diversity relationship differ from the mainstream understanding, perhaps due to Naushon's sandy and infertile soils.

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Increased inorganic nitrogen leaching from a mountain grassland ecosystem following grazing removal: a hangover of past intensive land-use?

Cited by 17 publications

References 71 publications

Can on-site management mitigate nitrogen deposition impacts in non-wooded habitats?

Can on-site management mitigate nitrogen deposition impacts in non-wooded habitats?

Spatial patterns and environmental constraints on ecosystem services at a catchment scale

Interactions between cattle grazing, plant diversity, and soil nitrogen in a northeastern U.S. coastal grassland

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