Grazing lands and rangelands are increasingly recognized as an important alternative to other developed land uses for sustaining ecological communities in Florida, the rest of the southeastern United States, and other regions. It is important to understand factors that in uence ecological communities on private grazing lands, especially in areas with abundant wetlands, which are often sensitiv...

Infiltration rate and sediment production were assessed in oak, bunchgrass and sodgrass vegetation types in moderate continuous (MCG), heavy continuous (HCG), and intensive rotation (shortduration, SDG) grazing systems and in a livestock exclosure (LEX). Infiltration rate was related to the total organic cover and bulk density characteristics of the site (RJ = 36). The amount of cover was more ...

The main objective of this study was to determine to what extent grazing pressure and timing modulate the seasonal progression of herbage quality in hilly Mediterranean grassland systems. The study was conducted during six consecutive years between 2003 and 2008 at the Karei Deshe experimental farm, in eastern Galilee, Israel, dominated by rich hemicryptophytic grassland. Treatments included tw...

semi-steppe rangelands are a complex, highly dynamic and often multi-layered mosaic of grassland, shrubland, and intermediate communities. a few recent studies have explicitly or implicitly developed synthetic hypotheses about how interactive effects of human made disturbances initiate dynamic changes in plant community composition to cause a shifting mosaic of vegetation pattern across the lan...

Understanding the importance of grassland management is crucial for predicting effects on forage production, pasture and ecosystem stability. Studies about impact in temperate humid environments soil, erosion aboveground biomass properties are lacking. This study investigates effect different managements—no grazing, moderate grazing heavy grazing—on soil properties, hydrological responses herba...

BACKGROUND Methane (CH(4)) uptake by steppe soils is affected by a range of specific factors and is a complex process. Increased stocking rate promotes steppe degradation, with unclear consequences for gas exchanges. To assess the effects of grazing management on CH(4) uptake in desert steppes, we investigated soil-atmosphere CH(4) exchange during the winter-spring transition period. METHODOL...

We investigated the effects of overgrazing on the foraging behavior of livestock on a Mongolian steppe, by quantifying some behaviors of cattle, sheep and goats foraging in a lightly and a heavily grazed area in summer and winter. All animal species showed higher walking velocity and tended to show higher step/bite ratio when they foraged in the heavily grazed area than in the lightly grazed ar...

The relationship between the soil seed bank at the onset of the growing season and the structure of the ensuing vegetation under grazing was investigated in an eastern Mediterranean grassland. Species responses to two contrasting cattle grazing regimes were studied through plant trait analyses. Traits included plant size, phenology, seed size and germination fraction. Changes in species composi...

Grazing stimulates root and forage mass of perennial pastures, but few studies have addressed the effects grazing on annual pastures which are often grown in short periods within integrated crop–livestock systems (ICLS). In these N fertilization is a common practice to increase mass, its morphology unclear. field experiment, we evaluated how intensities (ungrazed, moderate, heavy grazing) rates...