Search Results (1,200)

Traditional grazing maintains essential ecosystem services, yet this activity is rapidly disappearing across Europe. Understanding the geobotanical features of traditionally grazed areas is critical for predicting biodiversity shifts driven by pastoral decline. This study provides a geobotanical characterisation of traditional sheep farms in north-western Spain. We integrated bioclimatic, phytosociological, and biogeographical approaches with spatial autocorrelation analyses, including global Moran’s I, Local Indicators of Spatial Association (LISA), and join-count tests, to assess spatial patterns in vegetation richness and plant community organisation. The results indicate that 28.22% of the studied farms were located in the Castilian Duero sector, 93.45% within the supramediterranean thermotype, and 75.46% within the subhumid ombrotype. A high diversity of vegetation was recorded, with 111 plant communities identified. These include several priority habitats of community interest within the European Union, notably belonging to the phytosociological classes Molinio-Arrhenatheretea, Festuco-Brometea, and Poetea bulbosae. This spatial approach characterises the vegetation mosaics within a fixed buffer around the holdings, although it does not directly measure actual forage use. As a key scientific novelty, this work provides, for the first time, a macro-regional and quantitatively validated integration that explicitly links broad environmental filters with localized pastoral vegetation mosaics. By providing a statistically robust diagnosis of landscape aggregation and segregation, this geobotanical characterisation serves as a fundamental tool for land managers and shepherds, contributing directly to the conservation and sustainable management of endangered traditional pastoral landscapes under changing environmental conditions. Full article

Pasture ecosystems are a key component of livestock production in arid and semi-arid regions, where forage availability and nutritive value are often associated with animal performance under grazing conditions. This study aimed to provide an exploratory assessment of pasture productivity, forage nutritive value, and beef cattle productivity across contrasting natural–climatic settings in Kazakhstan. The study was conducted under commercial production conditions on five farms representing different grazing environments during the 2024–2025 grazing seasons. Because each zone was represented by a single farm, the study should be interpreted as an observational assessment of farm-level patterns rather than as a fully replicated experimental comparison. Pasture productivity and forage chemical composition, including crude protein, fiber, and dry matter content, varied among farms and seasons. Average daily gain ranged from 316.7 to 900 g day⁻¹ depending on the study site and year of observation. Exploratory statistical analyses indicated variability among the studied systems; however, pairwise comparisons did not reveal statistically significant differences in animal productivity among farms (p > 0.05). Correlation analyses revealed moderate positive associations between average daily gain, crude protein content, and pasture yield, although these relationships were not statistically significant after adjustment for multiple comparisons. Similarly, linear models incorporating forage nutritive value indicators and study site did not identify statistically significant predictors of animal productivity within the current dataset. Overall, the results describe patterns of variation in pasture characteristics and animal productivity observed under extensive grazing conditions in continental environments. Given the observational design and limited replication at the farm level, the findings should be interpreted cautiously and regarded as preliminary. The study provides baseline information for future investigations of pasture–livestock interactions in arid and semi-arid grazing environments. Full article

Grazing lands are foundational for the United States (US) livestock industry. In Arkansas, pastures are essential for rotational grazing and dairy operations. Climate change is an increasing concern in agriculture due to anthropogenic activities promoting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, partly due to nutrient recycling that occurs from animal manure additions. The objective of this study was to quantify and evaluate the potential effects of grazing method (i.e., enhanced grazed (EG) and minimally grazed (MG))on carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄), and nitrous oxide (N₂O) fluxes, season-long emissions, and global warming potential (GWP) over two consecutive growing seasons (i.e., 2024 and 2025) in the Ozark Highlands region of northwest Arkansas. In 2024, averaged over time, the CO₂ flux from the EG (880 mg m⁻² h⁻¹) was greater (p ≤ 0.05) than from the MG (687 mg m⁻² h⁻¹) treatment. Averaged across grazing treatment, season-long CO₂ emissions and GWP were at least 1.8 times greater (p ≤ 0.05) in 2025 than 2024, while season-long CH₄ emissions were 4.6 times greater (p ≤ 0.05) in 2024 than 2025. Averaged across year, season-long N₂O emissions were greater (p ≤ 0.05) from the EG (1.6 kg ha⁻¹) than from the MG (0.38 kg ha⁻¹) treatment. Two-year-cumulative, season-long CH₄ and N₂O emissions and GWP from only CH₄ and N₂O were greater (p ≤ 0.05) in the EG compared to the MG treatment. Considering the large land area devoted to various agricultural grazing operations throughout the US, understanding the magnitude of GHG emissions from different grazing strategies will contribute to improving GHG mitigation efforts in managed grazing lands. Full article

Accelerometer sensors and artificial intelligence (AI) are reshaping automated behavior monitoring in precision livestock management, yet their joint deployment on extensive rangelands is constrained by energy and bandwidth budgets. Low-Power Long-Range Wide-Area Network (LoRaWAN) collars address these constraints by compressing the raw tri-axial signal on the device into a single scalar per reporting interval, the Motion Index (MI). This onboard compression preserves enough signal to separate active behaviors but discards the per-axis and frequency content that fine-grained classification typically relies on. On a dataset of 9222 labeled observations from 24 cows across four breeds, MI distinguishes walking from grazing reliably but fails to separate ruminating from resting; both correspond to a stationary animal and yield near-zero, statistically indistinguishable distributions. Earlier MI-only models reached only about 65% four-class accuracy, and ruminating was commonly merged into resting. We show that much of this loss can be recovered by treating the MI stream as a time series. Session-aware lag features, rolling statistics, and an autoregressive previous-behavior feature lift four-class macro-F1 from 0.647 to 0.94, with per-class F1 of 0.95 for ruminating and 0.92 for resting (and at least 0.92 for every behavior). In autonomous deployment the previous behavior must be predicted rather than observed; for this setting we add a Viterbi sequence-decoding step that combines the classifier’s per-step outputs with a learned behavior-transition model, recovering a substantial part of the ruminating signal from the activity stream alone while keeping walking and grazing reliable. The gain is consistent across seven classifiers and four genetically distinct breeds, indicating that it is driven by the features rather than by a specific model. Full article

Alpine shrub meadows on the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau are key warm-season pastures that support pastoral production and ecosystem stability in fragile high-elevation regions. Due to low temperatures, short growing seasons, and slow vegetation recovery, these pastures are highly sensitive to inappropriate grazing management. However, the effects of different grazing–rest time configurations on plant community composition and leaf functional traits in alpine shrub meadows remain insufficiently understood. In this study, we evaluated five grazing treatments in an alpine shrub meadow in Sunan County, central–eastern Qilian Mountains: 10 days grazing–20 days rest (T1), 15 days grazing–15 days rest (T2), 20 days grazing–10 days rest (T3), continuous grazing (CG), and grazing exclusion (CK). In the third year of treatment implementation, we measured the community diversity, species importance values, and leaf functional traits of four dominant species: Elymus nutans, Carex tibetikobresia, Oxytropis kansuensis, and Bistorta vivipara. T1 and T2 significantly increased species richness, Shannon–Wiener diversity, and Simpson diversity compared with CG and CK. NMDS and PERMANOVA further showed significant differences in overall community composition among grazing treatments. Grazing generally reduced the leaf length, leaf width, and leaf area, whereas T2 showed relatively stronger leaf recovery among grazing treatments. Specific leaf area, specific leaf weight, and leaf length–width ratio showed higher variability and calculated plasticity than leaf thickness and leaf dry matter content, suggesting that resource-acquisition and morphological traits were more responsive to grazing than conservative structural traits. The coefficient of variation of leaf traits was positively associated with the plasticity index, although this association should be interpreted cautiously because both indices were calculated from the same underlying trait dataset. Overall, under the conditions of this three-year, single-site experiment and a target moderate grazing intensity, the 15-day grazing–15-day rest regime performed best among the tested treatments. This regime may provide a practical reference for rotational grazing management in similar warm-season alpine shrub meadows, but its broader applicability requires further validation across different grassland types, grazing intensities, climatic conditions, and longer monitoring periods. Full article

Although the green belt around Greater Lomé (GBGL) is a vital ecological buffer, it is currently facing significant degradation. This decline appears to be associated with a combination of various socioeconomic uses by the local community and formal operations of established businesses. Grounded in the cultural materialism framework, this study aims to contribute to a better understanding of the dynamics of the socioeconomic uses of the green belt around Greater Lomé in a context of degradation and investigates the dynamics of these socioeconomic uses and their environmental impacts through a multidisciplinary methodology. This approach combines anthropological analysis based on field observation, 53 semi-structured interviews and 5 focus groups, a quantitative questionnaire survey (n = 384) and an analysis of land use and land cover (LULC) dynamics derived from Landsat imagery (2003–2023). The results reveal six main types of socioeconomic uses of the GBGL (notably land transactions, agriculture, breeding and grazing, exploitation of wood energy, timber and utility wood, sand mining, and waste disposal), which lead to complex social dynamics ranging from conflicts to alliances among stakeholders. The LULC dynamics analysis indicates a staggering 468.26% expansion in built-up areas over the last 20 years, at the expense of swamp vegetation/gallery forest (−76.79%), tree-and-shrub savanna (−53.47%) and plantations (−49.43). This study provides a scientific basis supporting the urgent necessity to establish the GBGL as a legally protected entity and argues in favour of an inclusive management model that is designed to reconcile the socioeconomic survival needs of local populations with sustainable preservation of essential ecosystem services. Full article

Seasonal variability in feed availability in Mediterranean dairy sheep systems can compromise animal performance and welfare, highlighting the need for reliable, high-frequency monitoring tools. Live weight (LW) is a key indicator of nutritional status, but conventional measurements are labour-intensive and poorly suited to dynamic conditions. Walk-over-weighing (WoW) systems integrated with electronic identification (EID) enable automated, continuous, individual-level LW monitoring. This study assessed the sensitivity of a WoW system to detect nutritionally driven LW changes in Sarda dairy ewes under indoor and grazing conditions. Two experiments were conducted: an indoor short-term nutritional challenge involving 24 non-lactating ewes and a grazing trial with contrasting pasture access times involving 48 lactating ewes. In both experiments, the WoW system detected consistent LW differences between nutritional treatments (p < 0.001), capturing both short-term responses and sustained LW dynamics. Differences were approximately 5%, indicating that the WoW system was sensitive to nutritionally induced LW variation under the experimental conditions of the present study, before marked changes in body condition score (BCS) became detectable. These results demonstrate that WoW systems can reliably capture LW trajectories in response to nutritional variation. However, LW responses should be interpreted cautiously, as short-term variation may also reflect gut fill and hydration dynamics, and intake information was not fully available at the individual level because some feed intake components were measured at the group level or estimated indirectly. Integrating automated LW data with production and management information may support group-level nutritional decisions and early detection of animals deviating from expected LW trajectories in precision dairy sheep systems. Full article

A key principle of the United States Roundtable for Sustainable Beef framework is striving for continuous improvement in grazing management operations, which includes a goal of having 385 million acres covered by written grazing management plans by 2050. However, the adoption of written grazing management plans (GMPs) is lagging behind expectations. The objectives of this analysis are to examine indicators of the adoption of GMPs and grazing patterns. Additionally, we examine the economic benefits associated with the adoption of GMPs and intensive grazing patterns. A National Grazing Management Survey was conducted during the summer of 2024, distributed electronically to cow-calf producers through cooperation with state membership associations. Producers were asked about operational demographics and grazing management. Respondents were provided definitions for the GMP hierarchy (no GMP, mental GMP, written GMP, written GMP with annual evaluation) and grazing patterns (continuous, rotational, adaptive multi-paddock). Respondents were also asked to rank GMP objectives, categorized as “economic” or “environmental”, in order of importance. Binary logit models were employed to examine the indicators of adoption of written GMPs and intensive grazing patterns. Findings indicate that producers utilizing intensive grazing patterns are more likely to adopt a written GMP, and producers with larger herd sizes are more likely to prioritize economic objectives. Results also indicate that producers who adopt a written GMP are more likely to earn positive returns over off-farm feed costs than those who do not adopt a GMP, providing evidence of the potential economic benefits associated with GMPs. Full article

Efficient grazing management is critical for optimising animal growth and carcass quality in dairy beef systems; however, the combined effects of turnout date to spring pasture and post-grazing sward height have not been well quantified. This study evaluated the effects of spring turnout date (early vs. late) and post-grazing sward height (3.5 vs. 5.5 cm) on steer performance, intake, and carcass attributes, over three production cycles in a dairy calf-to-beef system. A total of 188 dairy and dairy × beef steers (initial body weight approximately 250–285 kg) were used across three experiments, conducted in a pasture-based calf-to-beef system. Animals grazed for ~200 days followed by ~100 days of indoor finishing. Early turnout improved average daily gain during early- and mid-season (p < 0.05 to p < 0.001), but differences had disappeared by housing, with no effect on carcass traits (p > 0.05). Grazing swards to 5.5 cm increased average daily gain at pasture (p < 0.01) and housing weight in the three experiments (p < 0.01). Animals grazed to 3.5 cm at pasture subsequently had a higher indoor finishing average daily gain (p < 0.05). Grazing to a stubble height of 5.5 cm improved (p < 0.001) daily gain at pasture but reduced finishing daily gain (p < 0.001). Carcass weight per day of age and were unaffected by either factor (p > 0.05), and no significant turnout × post-grazing sward height interactions were detected for any measured variables (p > 0.05). These findings indicate that maintaining a higher post-grazing sward height provides improved animal performance, while early turnout offers short-term gains, supporting grazing strategies that prioritise sward height management for sustained performance. Full article

Grassland ecosystems on the Tibetan Plateau play a critical role in the global carbon cycle, however, the quantitative influence of extreme climate events on their carbon sink dynamics remains insufficiently understood. This study focused on the Sanjiangyuan (Three-River-Source) region, a representative alpine pastoral area, employed net ecosystem productivity (NEP) estimation, Theil–Sen trend analysis, the coefficient of variation, the Hurst index, and ridge regression modeling to quantify the spatiotemporal characteristics of grassland carbon source/sink dynamics and the contributions of 13 extreme climate indices during 2000–2024. The results indicate that the regional mean NEP increased at a rate of 1.49 g C m⁻² a⁻¹, where 90.78% of the area functioned as a carbon sink, reflecting relatively weak ecosystem respiration and dominant vegetation carbon absorption. However, Hurst index analysis reveals that 85.68% of regions exhibit an inverse sustainability trend, suggesting a potential shift from carbon sinks to carbon sources in the future. This implies enhanced ecosystem respiration and the possible replacement of carbon sink functions by carbon source functions. The ridge regression analysis demonstrated that the extreme temperature indices, particularly the warm days (TX90p, 38.1% relative contribution), cool nights (TN10p), and warm spell duration (WSDI) indices, were the dominant drivers of NEP variation. These findings provide adaptive management strategies were proposed: in highly variable and inversely persistent regions, regulating grazing intensity, optimizing fencing management, and restoring degraded grasslands should be implemented to mitigate excessive respiration-related carbon emissions and maintain carbon sink stability, a scientific basis for optimizing pastoral agricultural carbon management and ecosystem respiration regulation under intensifying climate extremes on the Tibetan Plateau. Full article

Glycine soja, the ancestor of cultivated soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.], is an important genetic resource for soybean improvement and a National Grade II Key Protected Wild Annual Plant in China. Understanding its intra- and interspecific interactions in natural communities is critical for effective conservation, yet these dynamics remain poorly characterized in field settings. This study aims to characterize these interactions within herbaceous communities, providing insights to optimize the management of G. soja populations and conservation reserves. We surveyed twenty natural G. soja communities and revealed the following: (1) G. soja exhibited stronger intraspecific than interspecific competition. Spatial patterning among morphotypes and their proportional displacement provided direct evidence of intraspecific interactions within G. soja populations. (2) The annual associated plant group exhibited coexistence mechanisms similar to G. soja, characterized by stronger intragroup competition relative to the perennial group, which conversely displayed stronger intergroup competition. (3) A significant negative correlation existed between perennials and annuals. Perennials posed a greater threat to G. soja than annuals via distinct threat mechanisms: while annuals suppressed G. soja primarily through proportional dominance in species number, perennials reduced G. soja density by leveraging G. soja’s tendency toward stronger intraspecific competition. (4) G. soja exhibited intraspecific niche differentiation among morphotypes defined by functional traits (leaf shape, leaf size, and plant height), where morphological similarity correlated with niche overlap. Extreme morphotypes followed a bimodal pattern, with intermediate forms acting as ecological buffers, thereby enhancing adaptation to heterogeneous environments. This study yields important implications for effective in situ conservation, requiring the mediation of the trade-off between intra- and interspecific competition. Optimal strategies should either maintain moderately open communities accessible to humans and grazing animals, thereby allowing residual associated plants to mitigate excessive intraspecific competition in G. soja while reducing intense interspecific competition, or employ artificial interventions in closed nature reserves to prevent excessive intra- and interspecific competitive exclusion of G. soja. Full article

Mediterranean phryganic ecosystems have been shaped for centuries by recurrent herbivory, yet the long-term ecological consequences of grazing cessation remain insufficiently resolved, particularly in protected island landscapes where conservation management often assumes that exclusion promotes recovery. In these drylands, the removal of grazing redirect assembly processes through shifts in dominance, heterogeneity, and functional strategy expression. Here, we use more than three decades-long grazing discontinuity within the Petrified Forest of Lesvos, an insular Mediterranean geopark, to examine how long-term herbivore exclusion reorganizes plant communities across taxonomic and functional dimensions. By integrating floristic inventories, multivariate community analysis, mixed-effects modeling, indicator species analysis, and community-weighted trait approaches, we reconstruct the ecological signature of grazing release in phryganic ecosystems. Long-term exclusion was associated with a broader species pool and a greater representation of protected taxa, while ungrazed communities exhibited lower Shannon and Simpson diversity, greater compositional dispersion, and a marked shift in dominance structure linked to the expansion of Sarcopoterium spinosum. Community differentiation was accompanied by directional reorganization of functional trait structure, with ungrazed plots characterized by taller vegetation and increased leaf and inflorescence length, indicating release from recurrent biomass removal and a transition toward more structurally expansive strategies. These results show that grazing exclusion does not simply enhance biodiversity, but reorganizes Mediterranean plant communities into an alternative ecological state shaped by altered competitive hierarchies, shrub-mediated filtering, and relaxed herbivory. In disturbance-structured island ecosystems, therefore, the ecological outcomes of protection depend not only on whether grazing is removed, but on how strongly community organization has historically depended on its continued presence. Full article

Sustainable cow–calf production requires balancing animal performance, economic returns, and environmental impacts under highly variable forage conditions. This study presents a conceptual model, CattleSat, whose decision-support framework integrates satellite-derived forage biomass with mechanistic ruminant nutrition models to simulate the effects of herd size and stocking strategies on animal performance, greenhouse gas emissions, and economic outcomes. A case study simulation using data from a Texas grazing system was conducted to demonstrate the application and behavior of the model under variable herd sizes. Results showed that increasing herd size reduced forage allowance, leading to decreased cow dry matter intake and, consequently, individual animal performance, particularly milk yield and weaning weight, while total calf production exhibited a curvilinear response. Economic outcomes followed similar patterns, with total net return increasing but net return per cow declining as herd size increased. Based on the assumptions and parameterization adopted in this simulation, a critical transition point was identified where system-level profitability and individual efficiency were balanced. Additionally, carbon emission intensity increased at higher stocking rates, indicating reduced environmental efficiency. Overall, forage dynamics were relevant drivers of system variability. These findings highlight the importance of adaptive, data-driven stocking strategies and demonstrate the potential of integrating remote sensing with mechanistic models to improve the sustainability of grazing systems. Future studies and model improvements should be incorporated to expand the applicability of the framework across diverse grazing systems. Full article

Spatial and temporal heterogeneity in pasture quantity and nutritive value remains a major constraint to efficient nutritional management in grazing-ruminant systems. This critical narrative review was based on targeted searches of peer-reviewed literature on pasture heterogeneity, forage quality assessment, grazing management, animal monitoring, and data integration in grazing-ruminant systems, with emphasis on both recent studies and conceptually foundational work. Precision technologies have emerged as complementary tools that can improve the characterization of pasture resources, animal responses, and grazing dynamics, but their value depends on whether they support nutritionally relevant decisions under field conditions. This review examines current precision approaches, such as portable near-infrared spectroscopy, proximal and remote sensing, geospatial tools, animal-mounted sensors, and grazing-control technologies, and their capacity to improve decisions related to supplementation, stocking rate, grazing rotation, and pasture allocation. Across technologies, performance and applicability vary substantially with observational scale, calibration requirements, and validation context. This review also highlights persistent constraints, including calibration robustness, transferability across systems, field validation, interoperability, economic feasibility, and barriers to routine adoption. Precision tools can improve pasture-based nutritional management, but their practical contribution depends on how effectively they are validated, integrated, and translated into decision-support logic under commercial grazing conditions. Full article

Enteric methane emissions (EMEs) from grazing dairy systems in tropical regions remain poorly quantified, increasing uncertainty in national greenhouse gas inventories. This study aimed to quantify EMEs using electronic spirometry masks (ESMs) in dairy cows in the Colombian high tropics during two precipitation seasons in two adjacent milk production management systems. Six cows of a high-milk-yield management system (HMYMS; >30 L/d) and six cows of a low-milk-yield management system (LMYMS; <15 L/d) grazing kikuyu grass (Cenchrus clandestinus) and supplemented with concentrate feed were monitored by EMEs, exhaled air volume, feed intake, milk yield and composition. Data were analyzed in a 2 × 2 factorial arrangement (season × production system). Season affected kikuyu chemical composition (p < 0.05) but not dry matter intake (DMI), milk production, quality, nor EMEs (p > 0.05). However, the absence of seasonal effects on these variables may be due to the sample size. Although HMY cows had a higher DMI (kg DM/d; p < 0.01) and EME (g/d, L/d; p < 0.05), they exhibited a lower methane intensity (both, L/L milk yield and L/kg fat-corrected milk) and gross energy intake lost as methane (p < 0.05). Positive correlations were found between EMEs and total dry matter intake (r = 0.638) and milk production (r = 0.726). The observed methane yield was comparable to previous studies for tropical kikuyu-based systems but lower than reports from temperate regions, suggesting seasonal-driven kikuyu quality does not translate into EME changes in high tropic regions. Animal productivity level was a key driver of EME magnitude and efficiency. Full article