Long-Term Effects of Cattle Ranching on Soil Nitrogen and Phosphorus Balances in a Savanna Ecosystem

Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Cattle Enclosures in Semi-Arid Sub-Saharan Africa: The Case of a Rangeland in South-Central Kenya

“…As long as livestock densities are relatively low and pastoralists are migrating with their animals across vast areas, grasslands can cope with this nutrient loss, as it resembles the migration of wild herbivores that have dominated landscape nutrient transfer for millennia (Macharia et al, 2012;Marshall et al, 2018). However, recent developments, such as conflict-related restriction of migration routes (Kaimba et al, 2011), reduced access to traditional grazing grounds due to land-use change and grassland conversion (Tyrrell et al, 2022;Wafula et al, 2022), increasing frequency and severity of droughts (Descheemaeker et al, 2016), and increasing sedentarization and urbanization of pastoralists (Hauck and Rubenstein, 2017) are leading to locally increased livestock densities (Augustine, 2003;Edwards et al, 2022). Reduced pastoralist mobility leads to longer boma use times (Lamprey and Reid, 2004), with larger quantities of manure accumulating in the bomas, and higher grazing pressure and nutrient removal from the surrounding grassland.…”

Effect of land use on carbon-, nitrogen- and silica soil stocks in the South African bushveld

“…This is an important topic for researchers interested in comparing nutrient dynamics between different land use types. On the other side livestock has been shown to reduce nutrient contents of savannah pastures up to 10% for P and 6% for N (Edwards et al, 2022). In these grazed systems, nutrient redistribution may cause a shift in soil heterogeneity because animal excretion can increase the nutrient concentration locally (le Roux et al, 2020).…”