Understanding the plant-pest interaction under warming with grazing conditions is critical to predict the response of alpine meadow to future climate change. We investigated the effects of experimental warming and grazing on the interaction between plants and the grassland caterpillar Gynaephora menyuanensis in an alpine meadow on the Tibetan Plateau in 2010 and 2011. Our results showed that gr...

The simulation of the productivity and stability of grazing systems requires to relate herbage consumption, vegetation state and sward growth by functional relationships (Hodgson and Illius,1996). Sward growth is frequently simulated from light intercepted by leaf area and photosynthesis or light use efficiency (Johnson and Parsons, 1985; Hutching and Gordon, 2001). Some recent approaches on gr...

Historical depletion of agricultural soils must be remedied to maintain their long-term food production function, including in intensive vineyards traditionally kept without plant cover limit resource competition. This paper reports on the impact five contrasting soil management regimes indicators quality such as organic carbon, nitrogen and indices. We exposed sandy loam Rendzic Leptosol under...

A feeding station is the area of forage a grazing animal can reach without moving its forefeet. Grazing behavior can be divided into residence within feeding stations (with bites as benefits) and movement between feeding stations (with steps as costs). However, relatively little information has been reported on how grazing animals modify their feeding station behavior seasonally and interannual...

Due to economic, environmental and animal-welfare constraints, it is envisaged that in the future a larger proportion of the milk produced in temperate regions will be produced from grazed pasture. However, with the selection of modern higher-production dairy cows, increased emphasis on product quality and issues associated with nitrogen leaching, soil compaction, greenhouse-gas emissions and a...

In biodiversity experiments based on seeded experimental communities, species richness and species composition exert a strong influence on canopy structure and can lead to an improved use of aboveground resources. In this study, we want to explore whether these findings are applicable to agriculturally managed permanent grassland. Vertical layered profiles of biomass, leaf area (LA) and light i...

Abstract Aims The aim of the study was to investigate N biogeochemistry four neighboring, high mountain plant communities and identify main factors which drive variability among them. We hypothesized that vegetation types differ in terms transformations, spatial differentiation dominant growth form can reflect an existence several N-environments along elevational gradient. Methods Plant soil ch...