The carbon budget of newly established temperate grassland depends on management intensity

Ammann, Christof; Fléchard, Chris; Leifeld, Jens; Neftel, A.; Fuhrer, Jürg

doi:10.1016/j.agee.2006.12.002

Cited by 272 publications

(230 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…Independently of the characteristics of the soil and location, the extent of C storage may depend of the management of grassland, application of N fertilizer (Ammann et al, 2007) and grazing pressure . Storage of C is higher under extensive management and low grazing pressures providing that soil nutrients are not limiting (Soussana et al, 2010).…”

Section: The Multifunctional Roles Of Grasslandsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The importance of grasslands for animal production and other functions: a review on management and methodological progress in the tropics

Boval

Dixon

2012

Animal

159

100

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The global importance of grasslands is indicated by their extent; they comprise some 26% of total land area and 80% of agriculturally productive land. The majority of grasslands are located in tropical developing countries where they are particularly important to the livelihoods of some one billion poor peoples. Grasslands clearly provide the feed base for grazing livestock and thus numerous high-quality foods, but such livestock also provide products such as fertilizer, transport, traction, fibre and leather. In addition, grasslands provide important services and roles including as water catchments, biodiversity reserves, for cultural and recreational needs, and potentially a carbon sink to alleviate greenhouse gas emissions. Inevitably, such functions may conflict with management for production of livestock products. Much of the increasing global demand for meat and milk, particularly from developing countries, will have to be supplied from grassland ecosystems, and this will provide difficult challenges. Increased production of meat and milk generally requires increased intake of metabolizable energy, and thus increased voluntary intake and/or digestibility of diets selected by grazing animals. These will require more widespread and effective application of improved management. Strategies to improve productivity include fertilizer application, grazing management, greater use of crop by-products, legumes and supplements and manipulation of stocking rate and herbage allowance. However, it is often difficult to predict the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of such strategies, particularly in tropical developing country production systems. Evaluation and on-going adjustment of grazing systems require appropriate and reliable assessment criteria, but these are often lacking. A number of emerging technologies may contribute to timely low-cost acquisition of quantitative information to better understand the soil–pasture–animal interactions and animal management in grassland systems. Development of remote imaging of vegetation, global positioning technology, improved diet markers, near IR spectroscopy and modelling provide improved tools for knowledge-based decisions on the productivity constraints of grazing animals. Individual electronic identification of animals offers opportunities for precision management on an individual animal basis for improved productivity. Improved outcomes in the form of livestock products, services and/or other outcomes from grasslands should be possible, but clearly a diversity of solutions are needed for the vast range of environments and social circumstances of global grasslands.

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Section: The Multifunctional Roles Of Grasslandsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The importance of grasslands for animal production and other functions: a review on management and methodological progress in the tropics

Boval

Dixon

2012

Animal

159

100

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“…Greater GPP may lead to greater soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks, but for pasture, the transfer of atmospheric C to the SOC pool is largely dependent on grazing and irrigation management decisions (Ammann et al, 2007;Merbold et al, 2014). For some pastures, gains in GPP were offset by ecosystem respiration (ER) and C export (Ammann et al, 2007;Kelliher et al, 2012), so that a net loss of C and a negative net ecosystem carbon balance (NECB) resulted. For others, C inputs exceeded losses, leading to a positive NECB (Ammann et al, 2007;Merbold et al, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For some pastures, gains in GPP were offset by ecosystem respiration (ER) and C export (Ammann et al, 2007;Kelliher et al, 2012), so that a net loss of C and a negative net ecosystem carbon balance (NECB) resulted. For others, C inputs exceeded losses, leading to a positive NECB (Ammann et al, 2007;Merbold et al, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Carbon budgets for an irrigated intensively grazed dairy pasture and an unirrigated winter-grazed pasture

et al. 2016

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Abstract. Intensification of pastoral agriculture is occurring rapidly across New Zealand, including increasing use of irrigation and fertiliser application in some regions. While this enables greater gross primary production (GPP) and livestock grazing intensity, the consequences for the net ecosystem carbon budget (NECB) of the pastures are poorly known. Here, we determined the NECB over one year for an irrigated, fertilised and rotationally grazed dairy pasture and a neighbouring unirrigated, unfertilised, wintergrazed pasture. Primary terms in the NECB calculation were: net ecosystem production (NEP), biomass carbon removed by grazing cows and carbon (C) input from their excreta. Annual NEP was measured using the eddy-covariance method. Carbon removal was estimated with plate-meter measurements calibrated against biomass collections, preand post-grazing. Excreta deposition was calculated from animal feed intake. The intensively managed pasture gained C (NECB = 103 ± 42 g C m −2 yr −1 ) but would have been subject to a non-significant C loss if cattle excreta had not been returned to the pasture. The unirrigated pasture was C-neutral (NECB = −13 ± 23 g C m −2 yr −1 ). While annual GPP of the former was almost twice that of the latter (2679 vs. 1372 g C m −2 yr −1 ), ecosystem respiration differed by only 68 % between the two pastures (2271 vs. 1352 g C m −2 yr −1 ). The ratio of GPP to the total annual water input of the irrigated pasture was 37 % greater than that of the unirrigated pasture, i.e. the former used the water input more efficiently than the latter to produce biomass. The NECB results agree qualitatively with those from many other eddy-covariance studies of grazed grasslands, but they seem to be at odds with long-term carbon-stock studies of other New Zealand pastures.

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“…The selection of time windows was empirical and varying from one month to a full year for forest sites Stoy et al, 2006;Moffat et al, 2007). For grassland, the use of a 5-d moving window to capture the rapid change of the surfaces was reported (Ammann et al, 2007). A short time window of 4 to 15 d was often used to account for seasonal parameter variability (Lasslop et al, 2010).…”

Section: Parameterization For the Light Response Functionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…mean diurnal variation, look-up tables, and non-linear regression) are normally based on monthly or even seasonal time windows. To take into account a rapid LAI change, time windows as short as a few days (Ammann et al, 2007) are needed to capture the rapid change in the CO 2 exchange. This could enlarge the problem that the minimum number of data, which are needed in each time window to apply the statistics, is not reached.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improved data gap-filling schemes for estimation of net ecosystem exchange in typical East-Asian croplands

Zhao

Lüers

2016

Sci. China Earth Sci.

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The estimation of carbon exchange between ecosystems and the atmosphere suffers unavoidable data gaps in eddy-covariance technique, especially for short-living and fast-growing croplands. In this study we developed a modified gap-filling scheme introducing a leaf area index factor as the vegetation status information based on the conventional light response function for two East-Asian cropland sites (rice and potatoes). This scheme's performance is comparable to the conventional time window scheme, but has the advantage when the gaps are large compared to the total length of the time series. To investigate how the time binning approach performs for fast-growing croplands, we tested different widths of the time window, showing that a four-day window for the potato field and an eight-day time window for the rice field perform the best. The insufficiency of the conventional temperature binning approach was explained as well as the influence of vapor pressure deficit. We found that vapor pressure deficit plays a minor role in both the potato and the rice fields under Asian monsoon weather conditions with the exception of the early pre-monsoon growing stage of the potatoes. Consequently, we recommend using the conventional time-window scheme together with our new leaf-light response function to fill data gaps of net ecosystem exchange in fast-growing croplands.

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The carbon budget of newly established temperate grassland depends on management intensity

Cited by 272 publications

References 36 publications

The importance of grasslands for animal production and other functions: a review on management and methodological progress in the tropics

The importance of grasslands for animal production and other functions: a review on management and methodological progress in the tropics

Carbon budgets for an irrigated intensively grazed dairy pasture and an unirrigated winter-grazed pasture

Improved data gap-filling schemes for estimation of net ecosystem exchange in typical East-Asian croplands

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