Evaluating the role of alternative grazing strategies on plant production and soil health across a decade timescale

Authors: Schantz, Merilynn; Adhikari, Kabindra; Smith, Douglas; GOODWIN, DOUGLAS - Texas A&M University; TOLLESON, DOUGLAS - Texas A&M University; Harmel, Daren

Submitted to: Meeting Abstract
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 4/23/2024
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary: n/a abstract only

Technical Abstract: Frequent and extreme climate events threaten the ecological integrity of grazing lands across the United States. Producing resilient soil and plant communities that can withstand frequent disturbances reduces the environmental and economic costs associated with responding to these disturbances. A key knowledge gap in our understanding of ecosystem responses to management, however, is how plant and soil nutrient contents change by grazing management treatment and among years of varying precipitation inputs. In the southern Great Plains of central Texas, USA, the USDA-ARS Grassland, Soil, and Water Laboratory have been evaluating the effects of differing grazing land management strategies on soil health and plant production for the past 10 years. For this study, we sought to determine how plant production and soil health differed by precipitation abundance and management treatments of rotational and year-long conventional grazing management strategies in seeded pastures across a decade timescale. We also sought to determine the soil health differences between grazed crop systems that either seed a monoculture for supplemental winter grazing in autumn with aspirational grazed cover crop systems that include multiple species, graze year-round, and implement no-till seeding practices. Our initial results suggest that an adaptively managed rotational grazing system produced higher plant production during drought conditions and lower soil phosphorus during wet years when compared to a conventional year-long grazing system. On grazed crop fields, soil carbon initially increased on aspirational grazed systems following the implementation of no-till systems but leveled out after two years. Soil phosphorus, alternatively, was highest in prevailing, monoculture seeded, grazed crop fields when compared to rotationally and conventionally grazed pastures and was non-significantly higher than the aspirational grazed cover crop treatment. These findings suggest that adaptive grazing strategies can simultaneously improve soil health and produce resilient communities that can withstand frequent and extreme weather and climate disturbances.