Estimation of grazing intensity along grazing gradients – the bias of nonlinearity

Manthey, Michael; Peper, Jan

doi:10.1016/j.jaridenv.2010.05.007

Cited by 53 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 23 publications

(24 reference statements)

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“…Unlike Sasaki et al (2008) and Smet and Ward (2006) who observed that grazing-affected parameters respond in a nonlinear manner to distance, we found a strong and positive linearized response to distance. Our results corroborate the findings of Manthey and Peper (2010) who noted that within the first few metres, strong piosphere changes are detectable with strong linearized predictions that effectively describe the piosphere concept (Macchi and Grau 2012) that has similarly been observed in this study. Grazing intensity was observed to gradually decrease away from the piosphere as the herbaceous plant height increased away from the piosphere.…”

Section: Status Of Waterhole and Protected Kraal Piospheressupporting

confidence: 92%

“…While the piosphere zone has been depicted to be devoid of vegetation; this assertion was relatively feasible in the protected kraals piospheres. On the other hand, we observed a gradual pattern with the sacrifice zone having low vegetation but gradually improving outward as has been previously articulated by several authors (Andrew 1988;Tarhouni et al 2010;Manthey and Peper 2010). According to Macchi and Grau (2012), piospheres represent rather paradoxical landscape patterns, where the supply of the key limiting factor in an ecosystem (in the case of this study, water and security in the protected kraals) results in biomass reduction and overall ecosystem degradation.…”

Section: Status Of Waterhole and Protected Kraal Piospheressupporting

confidence: 81%

“…This zone is subsequently followed by a transition zone that shifts nearly homogenously to a grazed zone. This grazed zone merges gradually into undisturbed natural vegetation that is hardly influenced by grazing (Manthey and Peper 2010). While the piosphere zone has been depicted to be devoid of vegetation; this assertion was relatively feasible in the protected kraals piospheres.…”

Section: Status Of Waterhole and Protected Kraal Piospheresmentioning

confidence: 92%

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Piospheric influence on forage species composition and abundance in semi-arid Karamoja sub-region, Uganda

et al. 2015

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Piospheres in semi-arid areas are gradients of animal impacts around watering holes. Few studies have examined the impact dynamics of herbaceous and woody species composition and abundance in relation to piospheres in East Africa. In this study, we identified the trend in piosphere development, assessed piosphere use and change indicators, and identified herbaceous and woody plant structure in relation to piospheres in the Karamoja sub-region, Uganda. Results revealed that piosphere development has been reactionary to drought and/or insecurity events and increased rapidly in the last decade. A diversity of herbaceous and woody plants exists around the piospheres. Use and change indicators revealed high trampling and grazing intensity, high presence of erosion signs and low litter cover. Gradient distance had both positive and negative effects on trampling intensity, percent exposure and plant height, respectively. A negative and positive effect of gradient distance was also observed on different herbaceous and woody forage species leading to the identification of both increaser and decreaser species around the piospheres. Therefore, as concentrated use of the piospheres continues unabated, an outward ripple effect leading to loss and/or increase of undesirable herbaceous and woody species will be felt. This will have an impact on the composition and abundance dynamics of desirable forage species in the sub-region.

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Section: Status Of Waterhole and Protected Kraal Piospheressupporting

confidence: 92%

Section: Status Of Waterhole and Protected Kraal Piospheressupporting

confidence: 81%

Section: Status Of Waterhole and Protected Kraal Piospheresmentioning

confidence: 92%

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Piospheric influence on forage species composition and abundance in semi-arid Karamoja sub-region, Uganda

et al. 2015

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“…Grazing intensity through the distance to the water source was assessed by using the reciprocal value of the distance (1/m) to avoid the slant given by the different grazing area available at different distances (Manthey and Peper, 2010). Then, we performed a meta-analysis to assess the response of functional redundancy and response diversity (proxies of ecosystem resilience) to increasing grazing intensity (Laliberté et al, 2010).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The potential occurrence of structural threshold response was assessed by analyzing changes in total number of species (S), diversity (H 0 ) and composition (1st axis of the DCA), along the gradient of grazing intensity (1/m) (Manthey and Peper, 2010). Also, the occurrence of functional threshold response was determined by analyzing changes in decomposition rate (g day À1 ) along the gradient of grazing intensity.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Disentangling ecosystem responses to livestock grazing in drylands

Chillo

Ojeda

2014

Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment

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Small effects of livestock grazing intensification on diversity, abundance, and composition in a dryland plant community

Jordan

Palmquist

Burke

et al. 2022

Ecological Applications

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Livestock grazing is a globally important land use and has the potential to significantly influence plant community structure and ecosystem function, yet several critical knowledge gaps remain on the direction and magnitude of grazing impacts. Furthermore, much of our understanding of the long‐term effects on plant community composition and structure are based on grazer exclusion experiments, which explicitly avoid characterizing effects along grazing intensity gradients. We sampled big sagebrush plant communities using 68 plots located along grazing intensity gradients to determine how grazing intensity influences multiple aspects of plant community structure over time. This was accomplished by sampling plant communities at different distances from 17 artificial watering sources, using distance from water and cow dung density as proxies for grazing intensity at individual plots. Total vegetation cover and total grass cover were negatively related to grazing intensity, and cover of annual forbs, exotic cover, and exotic richness were positively related to grazing intensity. In contrast, species richness and composition, bunchgrass biomass, shrub density and size, percentage cover of bare ground, litter, and biological soil crusts did not vary along our grazing intensity gradients, in spite of our expectations to the contrary. Our results suggest that the effects of livestock grazing over multiple decades (mean = 46 years) in our sites are relatively small, especially for native perennial species, and that the big sagebrush plant communities we sampled are somewhat resistant to livestock grazing. Collectively, our findings are consistent with existing evidence that indicates the stability of the big sagebrush plant functional type composition under current grazing management regimes.

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Estimation of grazing intensity along grazing gradients – the bias of nonlinearity

Cited by 53 publications

References 23 publications

Piospheric influence on forage species composition and abundance in semi-arid Karamoja sub-region, Uganda

Piospheric influence on forage species composition and abundance in semi-arid Karamoja sub-region, Uganda

Disentangling ecosystem responses to livestock grazing in drylands

Small effects of livestock grazing intensification on diversity, abundance, and composition in a dryland plant community

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