Determination of Forage Productivity, Carrying Capacity and Palatability of Browse Vegetation in Arid Rangelands of Cholistan Desert (Pakistan)

Abstract

The browse vegetation in Cholistan rangelands of Pakistan have been on decline due to climatic extremes, overgrazing and anthropogenic pressure. Study area is hot arid desert where vegetation grow after rainfall but over grazing, extreme weather, and local comunity pressure for fire wood, timber, and harvesting of plants for varius purposes causing the decline of browse species. Therefore, a study was carried to investigate forage productivity, carrying capacity and palatability of browses. Multiple surveys were conducted from 2011-2012 at twenty range stands and 25 browse species belonging to 12 families were identified. Results revealed that browse productivity was high (8029.1 kg/ha) in wet season as compared to dry season (5422.9 kg/ha), correspondingly carrying capacity was high during wet season (16 ha/AU/Y) than dry season (24 ha/AU/Y). Moreover, during dry season, mostly stands were observed to be overgrazed while in wet season maximum stands were moderately grazed. High carrying capacity and good grazing status of stands in wet season was due to better forage production. Based on palatability classification, 22 species were found to have palatability to varying degree and 3 species were nonpalatable. In palatable species, leaves of 14 species; shoot/stem of 13 species, flower of 4 species, and fruit of 3 species were grazed by livestock, whereas cattle were observed to graze on 7 species; goat and sheep like 10 species each while camel prefer 20 species. The findings of this study indicate that overall the browse productivity of Cholistan rangelands was low and vary according to seasonal rainfall. Therefore, protection, suitable stocking rate and planned grazing is vital to conserve browses ultimately for sustainability of Cholistan rangelands.

Vegetation analysis of non-tidal swampland in South Sumatra, Indonesia and its carrying capacity for Pampangan buffalo pasture

“…This result is higher than those conducted in Canada (Omokanye et al 2018) and in Timor Tengah Selatan District (Se'u et al 2015) stating that the average fresh production of pasture in Gowa District in the wet season was 5,350 kg ha -1 year -1 and in the dry season was 1,390 kg ha -1 year -1 (Rinduwati et al 2016). But the results of this study were lower than the study by Abdullah et al (2017) in Pakistan who reported that forage production was 8,029.1 kg ha -1 year -1 in the wet season and 5,422.9 kg ha -1 year -1 in the dry season. The forage production of pasture in Sabana Timur Barat on the average ranged from 0.61 to 4.33 tons ha -1 year -1 (Manu 2013).…”

“…These results were higher than in grassland in South Central Timor District with only 0.24-0.63 AU ha -1 year -1 (Seu et al 2015), in natural pastures of Gowa District with 0.88 AU ha -1 year -1 (Rinduwati et al 2016), in pasture in Poso District with 0.63 AU ha -1 year -1 (Damry 2009;Daru et al 2014), in Kelei and Didiri villages of Poso Districts with 0.96 and 1.12 AU ha -1 year -1 (Karti et al 2015), However, these results were lower than the study conducted by Muhajirin et al (2017) stating that the carrying capacity of Padang Mengatas BPTU was 5 AU ha -1 year -1 in the wet season and 3.18 AU ha -1 year -1 in the dry season. Even, Abdullah et al (2017) reported very high carrying capacity of forage in Pakistan with 24 AU ha -1 year -1 and 16 AU ha -1 year -1 in the wet and dry seasons, respectively.…”

“…Based on the number of species encountered (15 species), it can be said that the natural pasture in Gowa District is quite good. Other studies show high diversity of forage species: 33 species in Sota village in Merauke, consisting of 61% grass, 3% legume and other plants 36% (Praptiwi et al 2017); 22 forage species in Pakistan (Abdullah et al 2017), 40 forage species consisting of 82-87% forage grass, 1% legume and forage consumable by livestock, and 12-17% those not edible by livestock in West Papua (Yoku et al 2015). In Tobelo Sub-district, forage pasture consisted of 58.33% grass, 25% legume, and 16.67% other forage (Matulessy and Kastanja 2013; Eoh 2014).…”

Dynamics of forage and land cover changes in Teltele rangeland Southern, Ethiopia. Using geospatial and field survey data

“…According to our results, mainly from 1995-2000 and 2015-2019, vulnerability to climate change (rainfall and temperature) of rangeland has signi cantly in uenced changes in land cover. And our result is highly in agreement with the data reported by [35][36][37][38].…”

“…Rainfall is the main determinant factor for forage production in all land use type [36,37]. When we have seen the amount of forage in different land use/cover types, the grasslands had the highest average amount of forage biomass of 2,092.3 kg/ha followed by wetland with 1,231 kg/ha, forest with 1,191.3 kg/ha, shrub land with 180kg/ha, agricultural land with 139.5 kg/ha and bare land with 58.1 kg/ha (Fig.…”