Assessing the Effects of Grassland Management on Forage Production and Environmental Quality to Identify Paths to Ecological Intensification in Mountain Grasslands

Abstract

Ecological intensification in grasslands can be regarded as a process for increasing forage production while maintaining high levels of ecosystem functions and biodiversity. In the mountain Vercors massif, where dairy cattle farming is the main component of agriculture, how to achieve forage autonomy at farm level while sustaining environmental quality for tourism and local dairy products has recently stimulated local debate. As specific management is one of the main drivers of ecosystem functioning, we assessed the response of forage production and environmental quality at grassland scale across a wide range of management practices. We aimed to determine which components of management can be harnessed to better match forage production and environmental quality. We sampled the vegetation of 51 grasslands stratified across 13 grassland types. We assessed each grassland for agronomic and environmental properties, measuring forage production, forage quality, and indices based on the abundance of particular plant species such as timing flexibility, apiarian potential, and aromatic plants. Our results revealed an expected trade-off between forage production and environmental quality, notably by stressing the contrasts between sown and permanent grasslands. However, strong within-type variability in both production and environmental quality as well as in flexibility of timing of use suggests possible ways to improve this trade-off at grassland and farm scales. As achieving forage autonomy relies on increasing both forage production and grassland resilience, our results highlight the critical role of the ratio between sown and permanent grasslands as a major path for ecological intensification in mountain grasslands.

Trends and approaches in the analysis of ecosystem services provided by grazing systems: A review

“…“Landscape” and “fire” were considered as particular cases, as these can have different meanings (e.g., scale of investigation or management tools). The main reasons for the exclusion for the rest of the papers (e.g., Bai et al., ; Loucougaray et al., ; Zeng, Wu, & Zhang, ) were the lack of adoption of the MA approach or for only mentioning the term “ecosystem service” in the text (e.g., in the Introduction or Abstract). Table summarizes these review categories according to the numbers of papers for each ES extracted by the strings, the numbers of papers eligible for the analysis, and the attribution of these papers to each ES.…”

“…"Landscape" and "fire" were considered as particular cases, as these can have different meanings (e.g., scale of investigation or management tools). The main reasons for the exclusion for the rest of the papers (e.g., Bai et al, 2012;Loucougaray et al, 2015;Zeng, Wu, & Zhang, 2015) were the lack of adoption of the MA approach or for only mentioning the term "ecosystem service" in the text (e.g., in the Introduction or Abstract). PP was analysed in more than 70% of the papers dealing with FP (e.g., Koniak, Noy-Meir, & Perevolotsky, 2011) or LD (e.g., Giese et al, 2013), HS was analysed in 100% of the papers dealing with NH (e.g., Fontana et al, 2014), CR was analysed in about 70% of the papers dealing with FP (e.g., Ford et al, 2012) and in 60% of the papers dealing with WQ (e.g., Roche, O'Geen, Latimer, & Eastburn, 2014) or with WF (e.g., Fisher et al, 2011) (Figure 3).…”

Trade-offs in High Mountain Conservation

“…These models have, for instance, been widely used to assess wildlife and timber production in mountain forest regions (Nalle et al 2004) (Fig. 2.3b), and to assess the relationship between forage production and the abundance of particular plant species that denote environmental quality in mountain grasslands (Loucougaray et al 2015). Another case is the trade-off between the financial income produced by the introduction of non-native fish to lakes and streams and the environmental costs (Ventura et al 2017); in this case, the focal entity corresponds to the whole watershed ecosystem.…”

“…The contribution of natural systems favouring such activity can also be estimated by various indirect methods for evaluating preferences (Grêt-Regamey et al 2008), or from indicators of aesthetic value, (f.e. changes in the colour diversity of grasslands, Loucougaray et al 2015). Nevertheless, the current state of uncertainty about the quantification of ecosystem services is particularly marked in high mountain regions (Grêt-Regamey et al 2008).…”

Reconciling Environment and Production in Managed Ecosystems: Is Ecological Intensification a Solution?

“…It contains innovative scientific research focusing on the following topics related to EI: (1) the relationships between specific practices and key functional ecological components or biodiversity (Kershaw et al 2015); (2) the efficiency of practices according to EI principles (Lemaire et al 2015;Levain et al 2015;Mattioli et al 2015;Petit et al 2015;Podadera et al 2015); and (3) the analysis of trade-offs and synergies between production and biodiversity conservation (Lafond et al 2015;Loucougaray et al 2015;Magda et al 2015;Marusak et al 2015;Mathias et al 2015;Tittler et al 2015).…”