Grassland management practices in Chinese steppes impact productivity, diversity and the relationship

Abstract

Grasslands are crucial parts of the terrestrial ecosystem, with an extremely high differentiation of productivity and diversity across spatial scales and land use patterns. The practices employed to manage grassland, such as grazing, haymaking, fertilization or reseeding, can improve the grassland condition. This study focuses on the changes in productivity and diversity and the relationship between them as affected by management practices. Productivity and diversity have unequivocally been altered in response to different management practices. When grazing intensity of a typical steppe increased from 1.5 to 9 sheep per hectare, both productivity and diversity declined. Higher grazing intensity (6 to 9 sheep per hectare) accelerated loss of diversity because of lower productivity. Productivity was significantly improved but diversity was lost by fertilizing. N fertilization also reduced the sensitivity of diversity to productivity. A similar response was found in mown grassland with increased productivity and diversity but their relationship was negatively affected. Mowing also slowed down the decline in diversity as productivity increased. Reseeding purple-flowered alfalfa led to an increased diversity, while yellow-flowered alfalfa increased productivity significantly. The negative productivity-diversity relationship was transformed to a positive one by reseeding alfalfa. These results enhance understanding of how productivity, diversity and their relationships change in response to altered grassland management practices, and support an integrated approach for improving both productivity and diversity.

Keywords

diversity / fertilizing / grassland management practice / grazing / mowing / productivity / reseeding

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Acknowledgements

The research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31472137), the National Program on Key Basic Research Project of China (2014CB138805) and China Forage and Grass Research System (CARS-34).

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Yingjun Zhang, Wenjie Lu, Hao Zhang, Jiqiong Zhou, and Yue Shen declare they have no conflicts of interest or financial conflicts to disclose.

This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

The Author(s) 2018. Published by Higher Education Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)