The pasture-type approach for mountain pasture description and management

Abstract

The study of pastoral resources can take different approaches with the main goal of characterizing pasture vegetation and its potential carrying capacity. In recent times, the pasture-type approach has been developed in several Alpine areas -on a regional and on a district scale -starting from sward surveys carried out taking the approach formerly developed by the French pastoral school. The pasture-type approach may play an important role in defining the management of mountain and marginal environments where grazing pressure reduction remarkably affects the agro-ecosystems functions (production, landscape, wildlife, recreation, etc.). This approach is based on the concept of pasture type, which could be defined as a semi-natural vegetation (mainly exploited by grazing animals), rather homogeneous in terms of botanic composition and influenced by environmental factors and agro-pastoral management. This paper presents the pasture-type approach by discussing the results of two large studies carried out in two areas of the south side of the Alps (Piedmont and Veneto). In order to identify pasture types, the vegetation composition was assessed with a point quadrat method. It allowed the computation of speciesspecific contribution, and of sward forage value and carrying capacity, after a multivariate statistical procedure for type classification and ordination. The site conditions (altitude, slope, aspect) and other environmental variables were surveyed. Moreover, to characterize the pasture types from the point of view of the ecological and management factors affecting vegetation composition, the Landolt indicators were used. The results achieved in the two areas were synthesised and organised into reference technical tools with the aim of using the pasture-type approach for pastoral planning. For each study area an identification key to recognize pasture types was drafted, and a handbook containing the technical sheets for pasture type identification, description and management was published. The approach here described enhances the knowledge on mountain pastoral resources, laying the foundations for their conservative management.

Evaluation of wild animals browsing preferences in forage resources

“…the number of the occurrences of that species along the line (Iussig et al, 2015). After that, species relative abundance (SRAi) was calculated for a given species by the following formula (Argenti and Lombardi, 2012): in order to obtain the percentage presence of each species inside the plots (Probo et al, 2013). Table 1.…”

Agronomic methods for mountain grassland habitat restoration for faunistic purposes in a protected area of the northern Apennines (Italy)

“…This was used to estimate the specific contribution (SC), i.e., the relative occurrence of a given species in the sward, including the bare soil (Argenti & Lombardi 2012). The floristic richness of the canopy was estimated as the number (N) of species detected along the transects; • the grazing value (GV), a synthetic parameter to estimate pasture quality based on the botanical and qualitative characteristics of the herbaceous species.…”

Fitting the Stocking Rate with Pastoral Resources to Manage and Preserve Mediterranean Forestlands: A Case Study

“…where SCPi is the Specific Contribution of Presence of the i-th species, that corresponds to the mean coverage value according to the scale of Tüxen and Ellenberg [25]; 0.2 is a multiplier coefficient which maintains PV values between 0 and 100 [30][31][32].…”