133 research outputs found
Complex Rangeland Systems: Integrated Social-Ecological Approaches to Silvopastoralism
No full textCrossing disciplinary boundaries, particularly between social and ecological sciences, challenges those seeking to contribute to solving complex and multidimensional environmental problems on rangelands. In this Special Issue we present a set of 13 papers that to varying degrees attempt to integrate, or bring together, diverse approaches across disciplines to understand silvopastoral systems. The papers are about rangelands in numerous countries and regions, including Spain, Estonia, Greece, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, Romania, the United States, Latin America, and Sweden. Silvopastoral systems provide ecosystem goods and services important to communities, cultures, and society. Management deliberately exploits the diversity fostered by rangeland systems that mix woody species with a well-developed herbaceous understory, offering a greater diversity of products, species, vegetation structural characteristics, and habitat components than either grassland or forest. Biodiversity often peaks at the intermediate levels of tree and shrub cover characteristic of silvopastoral systems. We introduce the papers grouped by four overarching topics: 1) typologies and scales, 2) social-ecological interactions, 3) integrated management, and 4) multiple knowledge systems. Unfortunately, silvopastoral systems often run afoul of ongoing intensification and simplification trends in agricultural production that reduce their economic and ecological resilience. Privately owned systems, the most common in this issue, are subject to the need for owner income. Finding ways to support the benefits of these systems for the public is difficult, as management traditions must be conserved as well as the land. We hope this issue illustrates the value of multifunctional systems and offers insights into how they work.The Rangeland Ecology & Management archives are made available by the Society for Range Management and the University of Arizona Libraries. Contact [email protected] for further information
Incorporating measures of grassland productivity into efficiency estimates for livestock grazing on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau in China
No full textIncorporating an ecological variable for the productive capacity of the grassland into the production function is a new step toward conducting technical efficiency analysis for livestock grazing. This variable is generated using remotely sensed net primary productivity (NPP) data and available grassland area, and entitled as grassland total NPP capacity. With the one-step approach of using a multi-output, multi-input stochastic input-oriented distance function based on field survey data combined with NPP data, we estimated the technical efficiency of livestock grazing on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau using two measurements related to ecological performance, an environmental performance indicator and environmental efficiency. The average technical efficiency is estimated to be 0.837 when considering grassland total NPP capacity, implying that livestock grazing inputs can be decreased by 16.3% without any reduction in outputs. The average environmental performance indicator is estimated to be 0.013, representing the effects in association with NPP per unit grassland. Environmental efficiency is about 0.123, meaning there might be overuse of grassland total NPP capacity in livestock grazing, in terms of overuse of grassland size or overuse of NPP per unit grassland. Understanding relationship between technical efficiency and ecological performance would be helpful for balancing local economic development and environmental protection
Technical efficiency and the impact of grassland use right leasing on livestock grazing on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau
No full textThis paper reviews changes in grassland property rights and measures the efficiency of livestock grazing on China’s Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, where there is an extensive nomadic grazing system. A cross sectional data set from a field survey of 197 livestock grazing households is used to develop a stochastic translog distance function and technical inefficiency model; variables for livestock intensity and property rights are incorporated. The overall average technical efficiency of the extensive livestock grazing is estimated to be 0.62, lower than the value of 0.67 found for households who rent-in grassland. The results indicate that renting-in grassland improves the technical efficiency of livestock grazing significantly. Both household size and livestock intensity have an effect on technical efficiency, especially the dummy variable of whether the summer pasture is near the winter pasture. This may indicate that grassland fragmentation would be not ideal for extensive livestock production on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau
Collaborative agroforestry to mitigate wildfires in Extremadura, Spain: land manager motivations and perceptions of outcomes, benefits, and policy needs
No full textWildfires are increasing in severity, and magnitude in the Mediterranean Basin in recent years, reaching a yearly average of 450 000 ha over the last decade. Drivers include climate change, land-use change, and land abandonment. Wildfire mitigation requires landscape-level action as impact to each parcel is affected by the conditions of the others. We conducted a case study of a regional-level initiative that develops community efforts to mitigate wildfires through silvo-pastoral agroforestry systems, using an integrated landscape management approach. This approach involves collaboration among stakeholders to achieve multiple objectives. In order to derive insights into its potential, we asked participating land managers: (1) What motivates their participation?, (2) How do they perceive initiative outcomes?, and as urban outmigrants with non-traditional goals are increasing in rural areas, (3) Do responses differ between rural and neo-rural participants? Our results show that managers feel highly affected by wildfires and are strongly motivated to reduce wildfire risk. Land abandonment and inappropriate policy were major concerns. The initiative was seen to have positive outcomes for individual participants as well as the region, and to stimulate community connectedness. We conclude that fit to local contexts, integrated landscape management can be a well-received approach to reducing wildfire risk. Agroforestry systems in Extremadura can act as “productive fuelbreaks” that reduce fire risk over extensive areas, while restoring traditional landscapes. We suggest that programs to reduce wildfire risk can also be used as a leverage point for financing rural revival and provision of multiple ecosystem services. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10457-022-00771-6.
Dehesas as high nature value farming systems: a social-ecological synthesis of drivers, pressures, state, impacts, and responses
No full textDehesas and montados are Mediterranean agroforestry systems characterized by scattered oak trees with an understory grazed extensively by livestock and, in some cases, periodically cropped. A long history of traditional management practices has created an open woodland widely recognized for rich biodiversity and multiple ecosystem services. Concerns about challenges to their long-term viability have motivated many disparate scientific studies in recent decades. We provide a synthesis of this growing body of international literature, focusing on the links between land use and management practices, biodiversity, and policy, from a "high nature value farming systems" perspective. The present review comprises 128 empirical studies carried out in Spain and Portugal. Conservation trends were assessed according to categories adapted from the DPSIR (Drivers - Pressures - State - Impacts - Responses) framework. Socio-cultural factors, economic dynamics, and agricultural policies were found to be key drivers of change, resulting in intensification of livestock production and land use simplification, among other effects. Insufficient tree regeneration and a broad range of other factors were identified as pressures that have often negative impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services, moving the system away from its archetypical ecological state. A variety of management and policy responses were suggested, ranging from specific conservation techniques to landscape-level initiatives. Ecosystem components and management practices were typically studied separately, and mainly from an ecological science perspective, while inter- and transdisciplinary approaches including examination of the role of people were less common. This points to a need to move from single-topic to landscape-level approaches with a broader integration of different disciplines and perspectives
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Attentive Maintenance of Patterns at Different Scales creates Sustainable, Resilient Rangelands: A Case Study of Complex Pastoral Ecosystems in Southeast Amdo, Tibet in Western China
No full textThe Tibetan nomad science of sustainable ecological management is made legible in Western ecological terms by translating its customary practice through the lens of systems science. This creates a framework for collaborative learning about ecology and society across cultures. Tibetan ecological management supports the self-organization of complex adaptive social-ecological systems at ever-larger scales, resulting in sustainable social networks and resilient food systems. In the process, nomads operate using a principle termed herein as “attentive maintenance”—balancing their conceptions of ’dul ba (e.g. taming natural things into cooperative engagement) and rgod po (e.g. the innate characteristics, which should not be lost, of natural things)—to respond to ecological, social, and sentimental cues to action using different practiced types of resource management. Informed by hierarchy theory and panarchy, this study models the Tibetan nomad system of social-ecological management and then points out some critical aspects that are at risk within it. Using the model and interview data, the study traces the causes and cross-scale effects of losing those aspects of resource management and shows the mechanisms by which those losses can additionally reduce system adaptability, sustainability, and resilience.Two model schema are proposed for modeling coupled social-ecological systems: one of “attentive maintenance models” and one of “panarchical models.” A complete attentive maintenance model illustrates an adaptable pattern of management for a single ecological resource and, importantly, reveals which aspects of the pattern possess sufficient redundancy and which are vulnerable for being singular. A panarchical model shows how management patterns of different ecological resources all contribute in different ways to the sustainability and resilience of the system as a whole. Attentive maintenance models and panarchical models, when used in tandem, are suited to describing hierarchies of complex adaptive social-ecological systems (e.g. sustainable food systems). These include—as demonstrated in this dissertation—pastoral systems in non-equilibrial environments. Attentive maintenance models and panarchical models function on the assumption that the basic robust units of pastoral dynamics are statistical patterns of social-ecological interaction that are reflected, and can be detected, in human actions and speech. In some cases, attentive maintenance models and panarchical models derived from interview data can be assembled faster than models of vegetation community structure change, which might require more longitudinal studies. Attentive maintenance models and panarchical models serve a different purpose than the range condition model, state-and-transition models, or even models for adaptive management: as actionable insights, attentive maintenance models and panarchical models reveal the easiest paths to creating more sustainability, resilience, and adaptability within a system.For the nomad system in southeast Amdo, Tibet in western China, attentive maintenance models describe three scales of social-ecological resource management: compositions of herds and flocks, well-being of herds and flocks, and household well-being. Each household contributes to maintaining the patterns involved at each of those scales. Patterns that show up earlier in the list create the necessary conditions for patterns that come later in the list to emerge. Attentive maintenance patterns are reflected in the speech patterns and worldviews of nomads’ spoken languages and dialects—for example, the words tshe thar, bsrung, and g.yang in relationship to managing the composition of herds and flocks–that attune them to relevant ecological, social, and sentimental cues and their appropriate range of responses to perpetuate the patterns of resource management. Attentive maintenance patterns are vulnerable to discourses that emphasize productivity or conservation because they skew them toward more rapid or more slow (but not adaptable) types of management. Relationships formed at each scale of resource management contribute to the resilience context of the system, increasing the odds that defunct patterns of resource management can start up again following disturbance. In southeast Amdo, Tibet in western China, flows of dairy products played a primary role in linking animal husbandry to prominent landscape features and monasteries, and nomads drew on those relationships when they needed help.This research study contributes to discussions about creating social capital, social-ecological networks, resilience, sustainability, and adaptability within ecosystems and social-ecological systems with its case study of how Tibetan nomads accomplished this in one region. It also contributes to Tibetan Studies by clarifying the cultural and ecological utility of rituals involving livestock, travel, and livestock products. It contributes to theoretical ecology and community ecology by demonstrating how statistical regularities emergent from complex interaction patterns in a landscape create and perpetuate multi-level panarchies. It draws on anthropological discussions to contrast the management style it describes—“attentive maintenance”—with that of adaptive management, a preexisting popular framework of ecosystem management. The study advances theories about rangelands and pastoralism by exploring human strategies and cross-scale mechanisms underlying the stability observed—despite abiotic disturbances—in some pastoral societies and ecosystems. It also demonstrates why some extent of land being used in common by different nomad households is necessary for sustaining dairy production and livestock adaptation. Finally, the study informs governance and conservation initiatives by embedding discourses of productivity and conservation into a holistic framework, showing that they help foster adaptability when placed into the triad of productivity, recombination, and conservation. The study demonstrates a new rigorous framework and replicable methodology for developing useful models of coupled social-ecological systems. This can be a resource for pastoralists and other stakeholders as they direct nomad systems’ future adaptations in step with the ongoing changes to their economic and ecological environments
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Effects of Market Approaches to Green Technologies for the Poor: The Case of Improved Cookstoves
No full text"Sustainable" or "green" technologies for the global poor have been proposed as solutions to the difficult problem of how to improve the lives of the world's poorest without contributing to climate change or other environmental catastrophes. While such technologies were once the domain of non-profit and government funded initiatives, theyare now increasingly developed and deployed through market mechanisms. Using improved biomass cookstoves as a representative technology, this dissertation seeks to assess the social and technological effects of this shift to market-based approaches for development and dissemination of sustainable technologies for the poor.Chapter 2 uses a Science and Technology Studies theoretical framework to follow the coproduction of the material form of improved biomass cookstoves and the cookstove movement from the 1960s to the present. The chapter shows that during the 1980s, particular conceptions and articulations of the problem that cookstoves were meant to solve led to a definition of technological "improvement" that included fuel efficiency, consistency of performance, and ability to scale quickly. This particular type of cookstove was much more compatible with mass-production than traditional artisanal production, creating social organizations that could mass-produce cookstoves, which then encouraged commercial approaches in order to recover costs. The move to a market-based approach was in part driven by and in part the cause of a particular kind of technology, demonstrating the mutual coproduction of the social and technological.Chapter 3 takes one market-based tool, intellectual property, and analyses the effect of deploying it in the realm of green technologies for the poor. Using the contrasting cases of UV Waterworks and the Berkeley-Darfur Stove the chapter identifies some of the salient social and technical characteristics that determine whether such effect is positive. The complex social arrangements involved in developing technologies for the poor mean that tools such as intellectual property can be useful but must be compatible with the organizations involved at the level at which the tool is targeted, each of which may have different orientations and incentives. The type of funding at each level, donor versus investor, appears to be a particularly important variable in predicting positive or negative outcomes.Chapter 4 examines one specific environmental policy market mechanism, the carbon market, and its role in stimulating technological change, invention, innovation, and dissemination (Schumpeter, 1942) in biomass cookstoves. It shows that carbon credits are thus far improving diffusion of current cookstoves but failing to stimulate innovation in cookstoves with stronger health and environmental impacts. Additionally, the chapter shows that the carbon market is influencing the selection of cookstoves for dissemination. The characteristics selected for are most compatible with centralized, mass production, which is likely to strengthen the shift towards these approaches
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A DENDROECOLOGY-BASED FIRE HISTORY OF COAST REDWOODS (SEQUOIA SEMPERVIRENS) IN CENTRAL COASTAL CALIFORNIA
No full textThis dissertation focuses on fire history reconstructed from select coast redwood stands in the Santa Cruz Mountains, California based on the fire scar record in specimens collected between 2008 and 2013. The research is one component of a larger multidisciplinary examination of indigenous burning practices in the Central California Coast region (Lightfoot et al. 2013). Research presented herein exhibits concordance with results from related studies, including analyses of soil phytolith content (Evett and Cuthrell 2013), faunal assemblages (Gifford-Gonzalez et al. 2013), and microscopic pollen and charcoal evidence (Cowart and Byrne 2013). Fire history research was conducted in three coastal watersheds in Santa Cruz and San Mateo counties, California using standard dendroecological techniques, as well as a novel statistical approach developed to address undated, floating chronologies.A total of 103 coast redwood samples were collected from 95 sample trees in 19 plots within the study area. The fire return intervals recorded from the dated redwood samples in this study were relatively frequent. Fire information was estimated for three focal management eras: the native and ranching eras (1600-1850), intensive commercial logging (1850-1950), and the modern fire suppression/sustainable harvest era (1950-2013). Results from dated fire scars indicate that fires were less frequent in the native and ranching period (mean FRI 7.6 years; range 1-29) than the intensive logging period (mean FRI 3.1 years; range 1-11), as well as the modern period (mean FRI 4.6 years; range 1-12).However, use of a generalized linear mixed model (GLMM) on undated, floating chronologies indicated that the probability of fire may have been quite high in the earlier period, and that three independent variables were significant predictors in assessing the annual probability of the occurrence of fire in the study area: physiographic zone; position on slope; and linear distance to pre-colonial, native habitation sites. The GLMM also indicates that fire probabilities are not distributed uniformly in study watersheds. Trees located in close proximity to native residential sites had a high probability of being burned than those farther away (42-69% vs. 17-38%). Similarly, top of slope fire were more likely in all watersheds and physiographic zones, though varying in degree.The season of fire occurrence was determined for 85% of the fire scars. Dormant or late season fires accounted for a combined total of 87% of all fires for the entire period of record (1350-2013; 55% dormant, 33% late) - indicating that historic fires most likely took place between approximately mid-August to late March. Early season (approx. April to August) fires accounted for 13% of fires. In the 1600-1850 period, combined dormant and late season fires accounted for 91% of fires (64% and 27%, respectively), with 9% of fires occurring in the early season. During the intensive logging period (1850-1950) combined dormant and late season fires accounted for 85% of fires, and 15% in the early season. In the modern era (1950-2013), dormant and late season fires still account for the majority of fires (86%), but with a marked shift into the drier late season (mid-August - September), which now account for 43% of fires. Early season fires represent 14% of fires in this period.Though this study faced significant challenges (i.e. low sample density for earlier period specimens, large study area, experimental use of a GLMM), these data reveal interesting and potentially useful patterns of historic fire occurrence in the Santa Cruz Mountains, especially with respect to human influence over coastal fire regimes. All sources of information indicate that coastal Santa Cruz Mountains experienced far more ignitions than would be expected under a lightning-driven fire regime (roughly 4 strikes per century), and that human activity is strongly linked to fire frequency in throughout observable time periods. There is ample opportunity to improve on this data with future work in efforts to inform and refine modern approaches to resource management in this region
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Ecological Genetics of Stipa pulchra in Environmental Restoration
No full textEcological restoration has become a large enterprise driven by regulatory policies and by public and private initiatives. Regulatory agencies and ecologists call for use of propagules that are adapted to project sites, compatible with other species, and genetically diverse. This project uses a native California grass, Stipa pulchra, to ask whether the cost-management practice of collecting seeds from dense stands of target species can have unintended selective effects on species used in restoration. Absolute cover, standing biomass, species composition, and S. pulchra density and culm count were recorded on plots in three central California sites. S. pulchra seeds from these plots were sown in pots allocated to two watering groups and three temporal blocks. Pot-study plants grown from seed collected from plots with greater absolute cover and S. pulchra density had significantly higher basal diameters, tiller counts, and root: shoot ratios. Plants derived from less-competitive plots reproduced earlier and gave rise to more culms. These results indicate that distribution of S. pulchra genoypes in the field may reflect a competition: colonization pattern, with more fecund S. pulchra plants inhabiting less-competitive patches than those occupied by their more-competitive conspecifics. Other aspects of pot-study plant growth appeared to reflect background vegetation of the field plots. Although plants grown from seeds collected at the three sites were significantly different, there was no evidence that ecological distance reflected geographic distance. Plants receiving more water had relatively greater above-ground growth and lower root: shoot ratios. Statistical interactions of blocking and watering treatments with site may reflect plant adaptation to climate and soil at the various sites. Implications of these results apply to environmental restoration and extend to ecological research, where nonrandomly collected propagules are often used to represent genetic characteristics of entire populations
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Grazing and soil carbon: A social-ecological analysis of adaptive-multi paddock grazing on California rangelands
No full textRangelands are landscapes of uncertainty. Their management as “extensive” yet expansive agricultural landscapes is challenged by high temporal and spatial variability alongside unprecedented climatic, economic, and cultural uncertainties, including reliance on annual grasses with highly seasonal and variable NPP, increasingly common and worsening drought conditions, policy change and impacts, and a growing anti-cattle sentiment among some groups. Cattle overgrazing, along with intensification, has contributed to the significant loss of soil organic carbon (SOC) on rangelands, turning one of the most important terrestrial carbon sinks into a source of CO2. While well managed grazing could help to sequester SOC and aid in climate change mitigation, the impact of grazing on rangeland SOC on, including how to measure SOC change with such high spatial heterogeneity, is understudied and poorly understood. Further, ultimately climate change mitigation relies on widespread adoption by ranchers, who are situated within complex social-ecological systems and must be responsive not only to ecological uncertainties (such as drought), but also to social and economic uncertainties such as changing social norms, declining profitability, and precarious land access. My dissertation research combined optimizing analytical measurement of SOC on rangelands, an ecological assessment of the impact of different forms of grazing management on SOC, and a social science approach to understand both the factors driving adoption of grazing management practices for SOC sequestration as well as the barriers and challenges ranchers face. The first chapter of my dissertation examined the challenges of measuring SOC on heterogeneous agricultural landscapes. Using soil samples from California crop and rangelands, I analyzed how spatial heterogeneity, analytical variability, compositing, and statistical analyses affects the power, reliability, and validity of SOC measurements. I demonstrate that (1) spatial heterogeneity is a primary driver of uncertainty; (2) dry combustion analyzers have relatively low uncertainty, although inorganic C can increase error; (3) Student’s t-test and its relatives can be unreliable for drawing inferences about changes in SOC stocks; and (4) in heterogeneous agricultural landscapes, common sample sizes of 10–30 cores cannot reliably detect the modest changes in SOC that a few years of common management interventions are expected to produce. Results highlight the challenges of measuring small SOC changes on highly heterogeneous rangelands. Lastly, I recommend several improvements that will be necessary for reliably monitoring SOC, especially for research and C markets, including using a priori spatial information to determine necessary sample sizes, minimizing compositing, and using non-parametric statistical tests in scenarios where t-tests may be unreliable. Chapters 2 and 3 of my dissertation focused on adaptive multi-paddock (AMP) grazing, which is a form of short-duration, high intensity grazing that centers principles such as adaptive management, animal rotations and incorporating pasture rest. AMP ranchers are often associated with Holistic Management (HM), which is a decision making framework and training program that teaches ranchers AMP grazing practices alongside principles such as systems based thinking for managing complexity, ecological monitoring, and maximizing flexibility and adaptability. Both AMP grazing and HM have been the subject of much research interest, but studies have been conducted in ecological and social science disciplinary silos. In Chapter 2, I investigated the impact of AMP grazing on SOC stocks, SOC stabilization in four functionally distinct soil organic matter fractions, and plant community composition across northern California rangelands. My results demonstrate that, compared to conventionally (CONV) grazed ranches, three of four AMP grazed ranches contain significantly greater SOC in surface soils, and two of four contain significantly greater SOC stocks down to 100cm. The greater SOC on AMP grazed ranches was contained in the MAOM fraction, which is the most persistent form of SOC, with implications for climate change mitigation. Plant community composition varied by site – some AMP grazed ranches had greater composition of perennial vs annual grasses and overall less bare ground, but these findings were not universal. Lastly, in Chapter 3, I conducted semi-structured interviews with AMP and CONV ranchers to understand how AMP grazing relates to ranchers’ mental models, including decision making processes, motivations, barriers, and how the combination of AMP-HM helps these ranchers respond to increasing challenges and uncertainties. Our findings suggest that AMP-HM shifts ranchers' approaches towards ones that involve more ‘holistic,’ systems based thinking, in two ways: 1) through its emphasis on monitoring combined with increased interaction with their land and animals, which changes the ways ranchers see and understand their management, and 2) by increasing ranchers’ agency to operationalize these new mental models through its decision making framework and trainings. Together, these two facets culminate in a common suite of strategies used by AMP-HM ranchers, which they view as key to ranching profitably and sustainably in the face of climatic, economic, and cultural challenges. Altogether, this dissertation highlights the measurement needs for monitoring, and the grazing management opportunities, for increasing SOC on California rangelands. The social-ecological approach taken in this research also illuminates ranchers’ experiences with AMP grazing management and SOC sequestration, which will help improve will world applicability of this research. Importantly, results of this work demonstrate the opportunity for sequestering and stabilizing SOC through AMP grazing management on California rangelands – which could bolster climate change mitigation efforts and improve ranchers’ ability to sustain future uncertainties
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