Continental‐scale Impacts of Livestock Grazing on Ecosystem Supporting and Regulating Services

Abstract

Grazing by livestock supports millions of people worldwide, particularly in drylands, but has marked negative effects on ecosystem services and functions. In Australia, its effects on ecosystem services have not been fully quantified. We examined the extent to which grazing by livestock influenced supporting (productivity, habitat for organisms and biodiversity) and regulating (carbon cycling and hydrological function) services, using data from published and unpublished studies on livestock grazing from a large number of sites across Australia. Grazing reduced our measure of supporting services by about 20% and regulatory services by 8%. On average, grazing reduced plant productivity by 40%, habitat value by 20%, and biodiversity, hydrological function and carbon sequestration by about 10%. Habitat and productivity showed strong declines with increasing grazing intensity, and carbon showed strong declines at the lowest and highest contrasts. Hydrological function and biodiversity did not decline with increasing grazing intensity. Overall, the results indicate that livestock grazing leads to substantial degradation at a continental scale by reducing ecosystem services associated with habitat provision, biodiversity, and soil and water functions. Management of livestock grazing will be critical if we are to retain functional levels of ecosystem services into the next century. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Grazing pressure interacts with aridity to determine the development and diversity of biological soil crusts in Patagonian rangelands

“…LI and MS present higher chl a contents by surface unit than cyanobacteria-dominated biocrusts (Lan et al, 2012). These regulating services, which provide good habitat conditions for plant seeds to germinate (Ferrenberg et al, 2018), can be reduced at moderate-to-high grazing intensities, as recently reported elsewhere (Eldridge & Delgado-Baquerizo, 2017). The grazing effect on BC and BR increased across the grazing gradient at medium and high aridity sites.…”

Aridity and Overgrazing Have Convergent Effects on Ecosystem Structure and Functioning in Patagonian Rangelands

“…Unlike previous case studies assessing grazing effects (e.g. Aguiar et al, 1996;Cipriotti & Aguiar, 2012), or metaanalyses (Eldridge & Delgado-Baquerizo, 2016), our study includes a large number of field sites scattered over a large area comprising a wide variation in environmental conditions and surveyed using a standardized protocol. Thus, it provides important and novel insights into the effects of grazing on ecosystem structure and functioning, and how climate controls them, at the regional scale.…”

Soil microbial communities drive the resistance of ecosystem multifunctionality to global change in drylands across the globe

“…; Delgado‐Baquerizo et al . ) indexes, as well as response ratios in meta‐analysis (Eldridge & Delgado‐Baquerizo ). Note that our study focuses on the simultaneous responses of multiple functions to global change rather than on the response of single functions that might not be representative of the overall functioning of a particular ecosystem.…”

“…After this, and to evaluate MRGC, we averaged the resistance of the eight functions measured to obtain a standardised index of multifunctionality resistance. Similar approaches have been used to obtain multistability (Dur an et al 2017) and multifunctionality (Maestre et al 2012;Wagg et al 2014;Delgado-Baquerizo et al 2016) indexes, as well as response ratios in meta-analysis (Eldridge & Delgado-Baquerizo 2017). Note that our study focuses on the simultaneous responses of multiple functions to global change rather than on the response of single functions that might not be representative of the overall functioning of a particular ecosystem.…”