Plant community functional shifts in response to livestock grazing in intermountain depressional wetlands in British Columbia, Canada

Jones, W. Marc.; Fraser, Lauchlan H.; Curtis, P. Jefferson

doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2010.10.005

Cited by 45 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…Using various grazing exclusion trials in grasslands in southeastern Australia, Mavromihalis et al () recorded an overall loss of plant species richness coupled with an increase in herbage mass with complete exclusion of sheep but found little consistent changes in native species composition with other seasonal grazing exclusion treatments. A study of depressional wetlands in British Columbia, Canada, found differential responses of the plant community to grazing intensity depending on the type of wetland with a general increase in annual forbs and decrease in perennial herbaceous species with increasing intensity (Jones et al ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Loss of biodiversity and hydrologic function in seasonal wetlands persists over 10 years of livestock grazing removal

Marty

2015

Restoration Ecology

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Ecological restoration provides a means to increase biodiversity in ecosystems degraded by natural and human-induced changes. In some systems, disturbances such as grazing can be key factors in the successful restoration of biodiversity and ecological function, but few studies have addressed this experimentally, especially over long time periods and at landscape scales. In this study, we excluded livestock grazing from plots within a grassland landscape containing vernal pools in the Central Valley of California for 10 years and compared vernal pool hydrology and plant community composition with areas grazed under an historic regime. In all 10 years, the relative cover of native plant species remained between 5 and 20% higher in the grazed versus ungrazed plots. This effect was particularly prominent on the pool edges, though evidence of invasion into the pool basins was evident later in the study. Native species richness was lower in the ungrazed plots with 10-20% fewer native species found in ungrazed versus grazed plots in all years except the first year of treatment. Ungrazed pools held water for a shorter period of time than pools grazed under an historic regime. By the ninth year of the study, ungrazed pools took up to 2 weeks longer to fill and dried down 1-2 weeks sooner at the end of the rainy season compared to grazed pools. The results of this study confirm that livestock grazing plays a key role in maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem function in vernal pools.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Loss of biodiversity and hydrologic function in seasonal wetlands persists over 10 years of livestock grazing removal

Marty

2015

Restoration Ecology

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“…Trampling by livestock selects for annuals, forbs and short species (e.g. Jones, Fraser & Curtis ), has negative effects on tall palatable species (Boughton et al . ; Jones, Fraser & Curtis ) and can lead to shrub invasion (Middleton ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interactive effects of pasture management intensity, release from grazing and prescribed fire on forty subtropical wetland plant assemblages

Boughton¹,

Quintana‐Ascencio

Bohlen

et al. 2015

Journal of Applied Ecology

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Summary Pasture management intensity, livestock grazing and prescribed fire are three widespread agricultural practices that affect small, isolated wetlands, but few studies have investigated their individual and interactive effects. Pasture management intensity refers to the degree of human alteration of grassland, ranging from intensively managed pastures planted with introduced forage, fertilizer/lime additions and artificial drainage to semi‐natural pastures with mixed native and non‐native vegetation, no fertilizer/lime additions and little or no artificial drainage. We examined individual and interactive effects of these three agricultural practices on individual, isolated wetlands using a replicated, full‐factorial experiment on 40 entire wetlands in south Florida, USA. Wetlands were embedded in two pasture management intensities: intensively managed and semi‐natural. After three years of treatment initiation, vegetation of wetlands released from grazing and unburned embedded in semi‐natural pastures had significantly lower evenness and coefficient of conservatism scores compared to wetlands released from grazing and burned, grazed unburned wetlands and grazed burned wetlands in the same pasture management intensity. For wetlands embedded in intensively managed pastures, evenness and coefficient of conservatism scores did not differ among treatments. Release from grazing increased abundance of the native, weedy herb, Eupatorium capillifolium. Grazing interacted with prescribed fire to affect shrub abundance and non‐native richness; relative abundance of shrubs and non‐native richness were greater in wetlands released from grazing and burned and did not differ among burn treatments in grazed wetlands. Interactive effects, especially three‐way interactions, were uncommon and not as important as differences between the two pasture management intensities. Synthesis and applications. Vegetation diversity and floristic quality of wetlands embedded in intensively managed pastures resisted common restoration management techniques such as release from grazing and prescribed fire, at least in the short term. In contrast, removing all top‐down disturbances from wetlands embedded in semi‐natural grasslands can negatively affect vegetation species diversity and floristic quality. Future studies should examine how intensity and seasonality of grazing and prescribed fire affect wetland vegetation, and track long‐term responses to evaluate lag effects.

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“…The subalpine vegetation metrics negatively influenced by grazing disturbance in our study have often been shown to be affected in other, more intensively grazed, environments [53], [67]–[69]. Effects on bare ground and litter are sufficiently established that these characteristics have been used as proxies for grazing intensity and/or as manipulated variables used in experimental assessments of grazing pressure [52], [53], [70].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 64%

“…Effects on bare ground and litter are sufficiently established that these characteristics have been used as proxies for grazing intensity and/or as manipulated variables used in experimental assessments of grazing pressure [52], [53], [70]. Litter removal can cause shifts in soil moisture [70] which could, along with direct pressure from trampling, mediate some of the observed increases in soil strength (in the form of compaction) on our sites.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

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Effects of a Long-Term Disturbance on Arthropods and Vegetation in Subalpine Wetlands: Manifestations of Pack Stock Grazing in Early versus Mid-Season

2013

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Conclusions regarding disturbance effects in high elevation or high latitude ecosystems based solely on infrequent, long-term sampling may be misleading, because the long winters may erase severe, short-term impacts at the height of the abbreviated growing season. We separated a) long-term effects of pack stock grazing, manifested in early season prior to stock arrival, from b) additional pack stock grazing effects that might become apparent during annual stock grazing, by use of paired grazed and control wet meadows that we sampled at the beginning and end of subalpine growing seasons. Control meadows had been closed to grazing for at least two decades, and meadow pairs were distributed across Sequoia National Park, California, USA. The study was thus effectively a landscape-scale, long-term manipulation of wetland grazing. We sampled arthropods at these remote sites and collected data on associated vegetation structure. Litter cover and depth, percent bare ground, and soil strength had negative responses to grazing. In contrast, fauna showed little response to grazing, and there were overall negative effects for only three arthropod families. Mid-season and long-term results were generally congruent, and the only indications of lower faunal diversity on mid-season grazed wetlands were trends of lower abundance across morphospecies and lower diversity for canopy fauna across assemblage metrics. Treatment x Season interactions almost absent. Thus impacts on vegetation structure only minimally cascaded into the arthropod assemblage and were not greatly intensified during the annual growing season. Differences between years, which were likely a response to divergent snowfall patterns, were more important than differences between early and mid-season. Reliance on either vegetation or faunal metrics exclusively would have yielded different conclusions; using both flora and fauna served to provide a more integrative view of ecosystem response.

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Plant community functional shifts in response to livestock grazing in intermountain depressional wetlands in British Columbia, Canada

Cited by 45 publications

References 51 publications

Loss of biodiversity and hydrologic function in seasonal wetlands persists over 10 years of livestock grazing removal

Loss of biodiversity and hydrologic function in seasonal wetlands persists over 10 years of livestock grazing removal

Interactive effects of pasture management intensity, release from grazing and prescribed fire on forty subtropical wetland plant assemblages

Effects of a Long-Term Disturbance on Arthropods and Vegetation in Subalpine Wetlands: Manifestations of Pack Stock Grazing in Early versus Mid-Season

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