RT Journal Article
T1 Effects of grazing intensity on plant richness and diversity: a meta-analysis
A1 Herrero De Jáuregui, Cristina
A1 Oesterheld, Martin
AB Most of our knowledge of the effect of grazing on grassland structure is based on grazed–ungrazed contrasts. The effects of grazing in the most common scenario, where grazing intensity varies from low to high grazing intensity, are less known. The objectives of this paper were to 1) quantify the effect of stocking rates on species richness and diversity of grasslands world-wide, and 2) evaluate the response under different environmental and experimental conditions. We conducted a meta-analysis of experiments with at least two levels of controlled stocking rates and evaluated their effect on species richness and diversity. The results showed that the response of richness and diversity to either reducing or increasing stocking rate from a moderate level mostly fell within the range  25% or  5 species. Mean response of species richness and diversity to increasing stocking rate from moderate to high levels was negative. Mean response to lowering stocking rate from moderate levels was not different from zero. However, overall, species richness significantly decreased as stocking rate increased. The response of richness and diversity to stocking rate was not related to mean precipitation, productivity or aridity. However, the most negative responses of richness to stocking rate were larger in arid, low productivity systems than in subhumid and humid systems. The effects of grazing on richness and diversity found in this review were smaller than the effects on species composition shown by the literature. Thus, grazing drastically changes species composition, but the net change of species and diversity is much smaller.
PB Wiley
SN 0030-1299, ESSN: 1600-0706
YR 2018
FD 2018
LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/18536
UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/18536
LA eng
NO Universidad Complutense de Madrid
NO Universidad de Buenos Aires
NO Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Tecnológica y Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (Argentina)
DS Docta Complutense
RD 18 abr 2025