Intensification of livestock farming in times of climate change: The challenges of domestic grazing in the drylands of the Argentine Patagonia

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7203/metode.13.21553

Keywords:

Patagonian steppe, functional diversity, biological soil crusts, sheep production, desertification

Abstract

Livestock grazing modifies and even degrades arid ecosystems, which threatens the sustainability of livestock farming itself. It is essential to learn more about the effects of grazing on vegetation and soil to design strategies to avoid desertification, perhaps the most serious problem faced by drylands. In this paper, we evaluate the changes in the functional traits of the plant community and the biological soil crust induced by the intensification of grazing in Patagonian ecosystems. This description, together with changes in diversity, plant composition, and ecosystem functioning, can help us to understand the mechanisms by which the intensification of sheep grazing could degrade arid ecosystems.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biographies

Laura Yahdjian, CONICET (Argentina).

Ecologist specialising in the functioning of herbaceous-dominated ecosystems. She has experience in designing and conducting experiments on drought, nutrients, and grazing in grasslands and arid steppes. She is an independent researcher at the Argentine National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) and the Agricultural Physiology and Ecology Research Institute (IFEVA). She is an associate professor at the Faculty of Agronomy at the University of Buenos Aires (Argentina), where she teaches ecology and biodiversity. She also directs the Master’s Degree Programme in Renewable Terrestrial Natural Resources at the Graduate School at the Faculty of Agronomy at the University of Buenos Aires (EPG-FAUBA).

Lucas J. Carboni, CONICET (Argentina).

Graduate in Environmental Sciences from the University of Buenos Aires (Argentina). He is currently pursuing a PhD at the Graduate School at the Faculty of Agronomy at the University of Buenos Aires (EPG-FAUBA) with a doctoral scholarship from the UBA, and works at the Agricultural Physiology and Ecology Research Institute (IFEVA). He is also teaching assistant at the Department of Quantitative Methods and Information Systems at the Faculty at Agronomy of the UBA.

Sergio Velasco Ayuso, CONICET (Argentina).

Researcher at the Argentine National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), in the Centre for Marine and Atmospheric Research (CIMA), CONICET, and UBA (Argentina). Prior to that, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Agricultural Physiology and Ecology Research Institute (IFEVA). He is a specialist in biological soil crusts and microbial communities in general. He obtained his PhD in Biological Sciences at the Autonomous University of Madrid (Spain).

Gaston R. Oñatibia, CONICET (Argentina).

Researcher at the Argentine National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) and the Agricultural Physiology and Ecology Research Institute (IFEVA) and professor of Ecology at the Faculty of Agronomy at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA, Argentina). He obtained his degree in Agricultural Engineering, a Master’s Degree in Natural Resources, and a PhD in Agricultural Sciences from the University of Buenos Aires. For the last ten years he has been working on the ecology of domestic grazing management and plant-herbivore interactions. He is currently studying how dryland ecosystems respond to changes in climate and land use.

References

Austin, A. T., & Sala, O. E. (2002). Carbon and nitrogen dynamics across a natural precipitation gradient in Patagonia, Argentina. Journal of Vegetation Science, 13(3), 351–360. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1654-1103.2002.tb02059.x

Carboni, L. (2019). La intensificación del pastoreo produce efectos diferenciales en la cobertura y composición vegetal en un gradiente regional de aridez. [Undergraduate dissertation in Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Agronomy, University of Buenos Aires]. Argentina.

Censo Nacional Agropecuario. (2018). Resultados preliminares, ganadería. Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos – INDEC.

Cesa, A., & Paruelo, J. M. (2011). Changes in vegetation structure induced by domestic grazing in Patagonia (Southern Argentina). Journal of Arid Environments, 75(11), 1129–1135. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaridenv.2011.04.003

Flombaum, P., Yahdjian, L., & Sala, O. E. (2017). Global-change drivers on ecosystem functioning modulated by natural variability and saturating responses. Global Change Biology, 23(2), 503–511. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.13441

Gaitán, J. J., Bran, D. E., Oliva, G. E., Aguiar, M. R., Buono, G. G., Ferrante, D., Nakamatsu, V., Ciari, G., Salomone, J. M., Massara, V., García Martínez, F., & Maestre, F. T. (2018). Aridity and overgrazing have convergent effects on ecosystem structure and functioning in Patagonian rangelands. Land Degradation & Development, 29(2), 210–218. https://doi.org/10.1002/ldr.2694

Huang, J., Yu, H., Guan, X., Wang, G., & Guo, R. (2016). Accelerated dryland expansion under climate change. Nature Climate Change, 6, 166–171. https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2837

Le Houérou, H. N. (1996). Climate change, drought and desertification. Journal of Arid Environments, 34(2), 133–185. https://doi.org/10.1006
/jare.1996.0099

León, R. J. C., Bran, D., Collantes, M., Paruelo, J. M., & Soriano, A. (1998). Grandes unidades de vegetación de la Patagonia extra andina. Ecología Austral, 8(2), 125–144.

Maestre, F. T., Quero, J. L., Gotelli, N. J., Escudero, A., Ochoa, V., Delgado-Baquerizo, M., García-Gómez, M., Bowker, M. A., Soliveres, S., Escolar, C., García-Palacios, P., Berdugo, M., Valencia, E., Gozalo, B., Gallardo, A., Aguilera, L., Arredondo, T., Blones, J., Boeken, B., … Zaady, E. (2012). Plant species richness and ecosystem multifunctionality in global drylands. Science, 335(6065), 214–218. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1215442

Oñatibia, G. R. (2021). Grazing management and provision of ecosystem services in Patagonian arid rangelands. In P. L. Peri, G. Martínez Pastur, & L. Nahuelhual (Eds.), Ecosystem services in Patagonia (pp. 47–74). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69166-0_3

Oñatibia, G. R., Amengual, G., Boyero, L., & Aguiar, M. R. (2020). Aridity exacerbates grazing‐induced rangeland degradation: A population approach for dominant grasses. Journal of Applied Ecology, 57(10), 1999–2009. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.13704

Oyarzabal, M., Clavijo, J., Oakley, L., Biganzoli, F., Tognetti, P., Barberis, I., Maturo, H. M., Aragón, R., Campanello, P. I., Prado, D., Oesterheld, M., & León, R. J. C. (2018). Unidades de vegetación de la Argentina. Ecología Austral, 28(1), 40–63. https://doi.org/10.25260/EA.18.28.1.0.399

Velasco Ayuso, S., Oñatibia, G. R., Maestre, F. T., & Yahdjian, L. (2020). Grazing pressure interacts with aridity to determine the development and diversity of biological soil crusts in Patagonian rangelands. Land Degradation and Development, 31(4), 488–499. https://doi.org/10.1002/ldr.3465

Yahdjian, L., & Sala, O. E. (2008). Climate change impacts on South American Rangelands. Rangelands, 30(3), 34–39. https://doi.org/10.2111/1551-501X(2008)30[34:CCIOSA]2.0.CO;2

Yahdjian, L., Sala, O. E., & Havstad, K. M. (2015). Rangeland ecosystem services: Shifting focus from supply to reconciling supply and demand. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 13(1), 44–51. https://doi.org/10.1890/140156

Downloads

Published

2023-02-23

How to Cite

Yahdjian, L., Carboni, L. J., Velasco Ayuso, S., & Oñatibia, G. R. (2023). Intensification of livestock farming in times of climate change: The challenges of domestic grazing in the drylands of the Argentine Patagonia. Metode Science Studies Journal, (13), 25–31. https://doi.org/10.7203/metode.13.21553
Metrics
Views/Downloads
  • Abstract
    1751
  • PDF
    656

Issue

Science. The genesis of ideas (vol. 13, 2023)

Section

Drylands. Opportunities, challenges, and threats

License

Copyright (c) 2023 CC BY SA

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

All the documents in the OJS platform are open access and property of their respective authors.

Authors publishing in the journal agree to the following terms:

  1. Authors keep the rights and guarantee Metode Science Studies Journal the right to be the first publication of the document, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of authorship and publication in the journal.
  2. Authors are allowed and encouraged to spread their work through electronic means using personal or institutional websites (institutional open archives, personal websites or professional and academic networks profiles) once the text has been published.

Metrics

Similar Articles

<< < 

You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.