Assessment of Range Health Changes in Zagros Semi-Arid Rangelands, Iran (Case Study: Chalghafa- Semirom-Isfahan)
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Abstract:
Rangeland health assessment provides qualitative information on ecosystemattributes. We examined changes in rangeland health in the Zagros semi-arid rangelands ofIran at fixed sites between 2001 and 2011, over the 10-year period. The rangelandfragments significantly declines in the quality of the vegetation, and changes in plantspecies were driven largely by seasonality, and to a lesser extent, amount of rainfall. Threeindices of rangelands health (composition, function and stability) developed using sitebasedvegetation and landscape data. The results indicated that the majority of sites hadintermediate values of the three indices, and few sites had either very low or very highvalues. The indices of composition and function were strongly correlated with thesubjective ratings applied to each site at each measurement period. The results of this studyhighlight the difficulty of detecting change over extensive areas of rangeland, and ofseparating management induced effects from climatic effects in an environment whichexperiences wide spatial and temporal variation in rainfall. Results showed that soil surfaceresistance decrease and water flow pattern degradation were the most important causes inrangeland health decrease. Although, Chalghafa rangelands have enough rain falls tosupport habitation, humans had degraded the landscape. Moderate grazing is the best wayto use the grazing land without severe reduction in abundance and biomass of species.
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Journal title
volume 3 issue 1
pages 31- 43
publication date 2013-05-20
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