Early-successional vegetation is often a major factor that limits recovery of tropical forest in abandoned pastures by outcompeting seedlings of forest trees. The goal of this study was to compare the effects of aboveand below-ground competition of pasture grasses and shrubs on the growth of tree seedlings in abandoned tropical pasture in Costa Rica. Seedlings of Calophyllum brasiliense were pl...

A questionnaire survey regarding endoparasite control practices in Danish horse herds was carried out in 1995. The participating veterinarians and herd owners were sampled using convenience and purposive sampling. In the analysis of risk factors for development of a high endoparasitic burden (> 200 eggs per gram faeces) 903 horses were sampled and the analysis of the efficiency of a single anth...

In order to quantify real time pasture biomass from SAR image, regression model between ground measurements of biomass and ENVISAT ASAR backscattering coefficient should be built up. An important prerequisite of valid and accurate regression model is accurate grass backscattering coefficient which, however, cannot be obtained when there is speckle. Speckle noise is the best known problem of SAR...

The Cerrado region, with over 50 million hectares of cultivated pasture, provides 55% of Brazilian beef production. Previous investigations have shown that about 70-80% of this pasture is affected by some kind of degradation, leading to low productivity. However, until now, few surveys have been carried out on a regional scale. The aim of the present work is both to assess the fertility and aci...

Escherichia coli is widely considered to not survive for extended periods outside the intestines of warm-blooded animals; however, recent studies demonstrated that E. coli strains maintain populations in soil and water without any known fecal contamination. The objective of this study was to investigate whether the niche partitioning of E. coli occurs between cattle and their pasture. We attemp...

Sulfur (S) is a requisite part of the ruminant diet, but may sometimes be present in excess, leading to decreased animal performance and illness. In this experiment, 96 crossbred yearling steers (321 ± 29 kg BW) were used to determine the effects of dietary S concentration of a supplement fed to cattle on pasture and of the total diet in the finishing period. Steers were blocked by weight and a...

This article investigates the behavioral drivers of pasture creation and associated implications for deforestation in a 22,000 km2 agricultural frontier spanning the base of Mexico‘s southern Yucatán. After developing a theoretical model that highlights the role of social networks and information spillovers with respect to the decision to begin cattle ranching, we use household data to estimate...

To estimate relative risk for exposure to ticks infected with Lyme disease-causing spirochetes in different land-use types along a trail in Germany, we compared tick density and spirochete prevalence on ruminant pasture with that on meadow and fallow land. Risk was significantly lower on pasture than on meadow and fallow land.

Reclaimed mined soils (RMSs) could restore soil quality and ecosystem productivity while sequestering C and off-setting some of C emissions associated with coal utilization. The study was conducted to evaluate the effects of tillage and pasture management on soil physical properties, soil organic carbon (SOC) and microbial biomass carbon (MBC) in RMSs managed for agricultural use in eastern Ohi...