Modeling the responses of grassland vegetation coverage to grazing disturbance in an alpine meadow

Fu, Lin-Tao; Bo, Tang; Du, Guozhen; Zheng, Xiaojing

doi:10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2012.08.027

Cited by 15 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…An NDVI value of zero indicates the presence of rock or bare soil and that NIR and R are approximately equal; positive values indicate the presence of vegetation cover and a positive correlation with coverage. An unfavorable effect of overgrazing on grassland is that livestock excessively feed on the branches and leaves of plants, causing the leaf area of plants to continuously decrease and the photosynthetic capacity to decrease, thereby affecting the plant's growth and development and reproductive capacity [65] and reducing vegetation coverage [66][67][68]; this result may affect the vegetation index. The threshold NDVI in this study was within a positive range, indicating that the grazing intensity threshold did not result in exposure of the land and avoided the problem of vegetation damage at lower levels due to overestimation of the threshold.…”

Section: Correlation Between Grazing Intensity and Vegetation Indexmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying Grazing Intensity Using Remote Sensing in Alpine Meadows on Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

Chai

Hou

et al. 2019

Sustainability

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Remote sensing data have been widely used in the study of large-scale vegetation activities, which have important significance in estimating grassland yields, determining grassland carrying capacity, and strengthening the scientific management of grasslands. Remote sensing data are also used for estimating grazing intensity. Unfortunately, the spatial distribution of grazing-induced degradation remains undocumented by field observation, and most previous studies on grazing intensity have been qualitative. In our study, we tried to quantify grazing intensity using remote sensing techniques. To achieve this goal, we conducted field experiments at Gansu Province, China, which included a meadow steppe and a semi-arid region. The correlation between a vegetation index and grazing intensity was simulated, and the results demonstrated that there was a significant negative correlation between NDVI and relative grazing intensity (p < 0.05). The relative grazing intensity increased with a decrease in NDVI, and when the relative grazing intensity reached a certain level, the response of NDVI to relative grazing intensity was no longer sensitive. This study shows that the NDVI model can illustrate the feasibility of using a vegetation index to monitor the grazing intensity of livestock in free-grazing mode. Notably, it is feasible to use the remote sensing vegetation index to obtain the thresholds of livestock grazing intensity.

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Section: Correlation Between Grazing Intensity and Vegetation Indexmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying Grazing Intensity Using Remote Sensing in Alpine Meadows on Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

Chai

Hou

et al. 2019

Sustainability

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“…Generally, disturbed grassland has less biomass than undisturbed grassland (Fu et al, 2012;Qin et al, 2014;Zhang et al, 2016).…”

Section: Mowing Effectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of disturbances on aboveground biomass of alpine meadow in the Yellow River Source Zone, Western China

Yan

Gao

et al. 2022

Ecology and Evolution

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A field experiment quantifies the impacts of two external disturbances (mowing‐simulated grazing and number of pika) on aboveground biomass (AGB) in the Yellow River Source Zone from 2018 to 2020. AGB was estimated from drone images for 27 plots subject to three levels of each disturbance (none, moderate, and severe). The three mowing severities bear a close relationship with AGB and its annual change. The effects of pika disturbance on AGB change were overwhelmed by the significantly different AGB at different mowing severities (−.471 < r < −.368), but can still be identified by inspecting each mowing intensity (−.884 < r < −.626). The impact of severe mowing on AGB loss was more profound than that of severe pika disturbance in heavily disturbed plots, and the joint effects of both severe disturbances had the most impacts on AGB loss. However, pika disturbance made little difference to AGB change in the moderate and non‐mowed plots. Mowing intensity weakens the relationship between pika population and AGB change, but pika disturbance hardly affects the relationship between mowing severity and AGB change. The effects of both disturbances on AGB were further complexified by the change in monthly mean temperature. Results indicate that reducing mowing intensity is more effective than controlling pika population in efforts to achieve sustainable grazing of heavily disturbed grassland.

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“…Lastly, while his scheme tested different values for the initial amount of grass, this paper focuses on keeping most parameters constant for more consistency in the comparisons of productivity between rotational and continuous grazing. Another mathematical model was recently proposed in [11], but their focus is quite different from ours. The model introduced here intends to provide an explanation of the benefits of rotational grazing in a general quantitative way.…”

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confidence: 94%

Effect of rotational grazing on plant and animal production

Chen¹,

Shi²

2017

MBE

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It is a common understanding that rotational cattle grazing provides better yields than continuous grazing, but a quantitative analysis is lacking in agricultural literature. In rotational grazing, cattle periodically move among paddocks in contrast to continuous grazing, in which the cattle graze on a single plot for the entire grazing season. We construct a differential equation model of vegetation grazing on a fixed area to show that production yields and stockpiled forage are greater for rotational grazing than continuous grazing. Our results show that both the number of cattle per acre and stockpiled forage increase for many rotational configurations.

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Modeling the responses of grassland vegetation coverage to grazing disturbance in an alpine meadow

Cited by 15 publications

References 55 publications

Quantifying Grazing Intensity Using Remote Sensing in Alpine Meadows on Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

Quantifying Grazing Intensity Using Remote Sensing in Alpine Meadows on Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

Effects of disturbances on aboveground biomass of alpine meadow in the Yellow River Source Zone, Western China

Effect of rotational grazing on plant and animal production

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