BACKGROUND With world food demand expected to double by 2050, identifying farming systems that benefit both agricultural production and biodiversity is a fundamentally important challenge for the 21(st) century, but this has to be achieved in a sustainable way. Livestock grazing management directly influences both economic outputs and biodiversity on upland farms while contributing to potential...

The effects of livestock grazing on selected riparian and stream attributes, water chemistry, and algal biomass were investigated over a two-year period using livestock enclosures and by completing stream surveys in the Cypress Hills grassland plateau, Alberta, Canada. Livestock enclosure experiments, partially replicated in three streams, comprised four treatments: (1) early season livestock g...

In semi-arid ecosystems, vegetation is heterogeneously distributed, with plant species often associating in patches. These associations between species are not constant, but depend on the particular response of each species to environmental factors. Here, we investigated how plant species associations change in response to livestock grazing in a semi-arid ecosystem, Cabo de Gata-Níjar Natural P...

Grazing bifurcations in impact oscillators characterize the transition in asymptotic dynamics between impacting and non-impacting motions. Several different grazing bifurcation scenarios under variations of a single system parameter have been previously documented in the literature. In the present paper, the transition between two characteristically different co-dimension-one grazing bifurcatio...

Grazing, Goods and Girth: Determinants and Effects Using the 2006-07 American Time Use Survey and its Eating and Health Module, I show that over half of adult Americans report grazing (secondary eating/drinking) on a typical day, with grazing time almost equaling primary eating/drinking time. An economic model predicts that higher wage rates (price of time) will lead to substitution of grazing ...

Small mammals play important roles in many ecosystems, and understanding their response to disturbances such as cattle grazing is fundamental for developing sustainable land use strategies. However, how small mammals respond to cattle grazing remains controversial. A potential cause is that most of previous studies adopt rather simple experimental designs based solely on the presence/absence of...

The effects of grazing and nutrients on epiphyte biomass in seagrass beds have received much attention, yet less is known about effects on other metrics of epiphyte growth dynamics, such as epiphyte productivity and biomass turnover rates. To help address this gap, we present here a number of mesocosm experiments in which we manipulate grazer presence and nutrient concentrations under initially...

The effects of grazing rest on rangelands are different in different climates and knowledge of these effects is necessary to apply correct management. For this purpose, this study was carried out on the percent vegetation cover (PVC) and forage production (FP) of range species at the Nir Range Research Station in Yazd province as a model of steppe rangelands of Iran. In the study area, differen...

Livestock grazing practices in rangelands are being recognized as management tool for environmental protection and increased livestock productivity. Continuous grazing has been largely reported to reduce pasture productivity and increase environmental degradation. Rotational grazing is an alternative to continuous grazing and is considered to reduce negative environmental effects and provide qu...

A study was conducted to determine foraging efficiency of cattle, mule deer, and elk in response to previous grazing by elk and cattle. Four enclosures, in previously logged mixed conifer (Abies grandis) rangelands were chosen, and within each enclosure, three 0.75 ha pastures were either: 1) ungrazed, 2) grazed by cattle, or 3) grazed by elk in mid-June and mid-July to remove approximately 40%...