Increasing flexibility in rangeland management during drought

Abstract

Abstract. Extreme droughts like the recent 2011-2013 drought impacting the central and western UnitedStates present a challenge to sustaining livestock ranching operations and the ecosystem goods and services they produce. Wyoming ranchers manage half of this drought-prone state and are at the forefront of this challenge. We examined Wyoming ranchers' drought management strategies and how ranch characteristics affect drought management flexibility, a key component of resilience, through a mail survey. We find that many survey respondents manage drought in similar ways, by selling livestock and buying feed, highlighting the market risks associated with drought. Ranches that are larger, include yearling livestock, use shorter grazing periods, and/or incorporate alternative on-ranch activities (e.g., hunting) use more drought management practices and thus have greater flexibility. Larger ranches experience fewer drought impacts, highlighting advantages of a larger resource base. Our findings suggest three components of national drought policy that encourages flexibility and thus increases resilience of ranches to drought: (1) encouraging forage-sharing mechanisms; (2) promoting income diversification that is independent of climatic variability; and (3) facilitating a shift to diversified livestock production systems. These measures could increase sustainability of ranching livelihoods and provision of ecosystem services despite predicted increases in intensity and duration of future droughts.

Adaptive Rangeland Decision-Making and Coping with Drought

“…Structural characteristics of the operation have been shown to be key determinants in agricultural decision-making [16,18,26,27,34,35]. These "farm-structure" variables shape the context for decision-making (e.g., ability to access economic resources and inputs) and, therefore, potentially impact individual adoption of innovations and adaptive capacity [16,26,36].…”

“…These "farm-structure" variables shape the context for decision-making (e.g., ability to access economic resources and inputs) and, therefore, potentially impact individual adoption of innovations and adaptive capacity [16,26,36]. The survey collected responses on several variables related to operation structure, including type and class of livestock, land base, enterprise structure, and grazing management (see Table 1).…”

“…Agricultural knowledge networks, social relationships, place-based expertise, and education have been shown to be key pathways for information sharing and goal setting [17,19,20], as well as influence management capacity through increased knowledge and access to management practices, programs, and opportunities [17,[20][21][22][23][24][25]. In turn, goal setting (e.g., valuing future resources), management capacity, and past experience were expected to directly influence individual drought adaptation [12,[26][27][28]. Conceptual model of how individual drought adaptation is potentially linked to key decision-making factors based on pathways expected from the adaptive rangeland decision-making framework from Lubell et al [16].…”

Northwest U.S. Agriculture in a Changing Climate: Collaboratively Defined Research and Extension Priorities

“…This may entail a planned grazing process with high-density, short-duration grazing. This approach would allow for additional forage production during dry periods and would help producers to decide earlier whether they will need to sell animals if feed supply is insufficient (Kachergis et al, 2014). Selecting drought-tolerant feed species may also be an important adaptation strategy to reduce the impact of drought.…”

Milk Production as an Indicator of Drought Vulnerability of Cities Located in the Brazilian Semiarid Region

“…Scarcity or lack of nourishment make the animals lose weight, reducing the quality of the derivatives, and in extreme cases, death, which threatens the whole livestock production chain (Kachergis et al, 2014).…”