The effects of grazing on soil organic carbon (SOC) dynamics, particularly in the tropics, are still poorly understood. Plant compensation to grazing, whereby plants maintain leaf area (C input capacity) despite consumption (C removal) by grazers, has been demonstrated in tropical grasslands but its influence on SOC is largely unexplored. Here, the effect of grazing on plant leaf area index (LA...

This work aimed to assess the impact of timing of herbage allocation and fasting on patterns of ingestive behavior, herbage intake, ruminal fermentation, nutrient flow to the duodenum, and site and extent of digestion. Treatments were daily herbage allocation in the afternoon (1500 h, AHA), morning (0800 h, MHA), AHA after 20 h of fasting (AHAF), and MHA after 20 h of fasting (MHAF). Four rumin...

Livestock grazing plays an integral role in the grass-dominated ecosystems of the Sierra Nevada. Grazing has been asserted to influence such key ecological characteristics as water quality, net primary productivity, nutrient cycling, plant and animal diversity, wildlife habitat availability, and oak regeneration (Belsky and others 1999, Kauffmann and Krueger 1984). Although there are many repor...

Defining historic grazing pressures and rangeland management is vital if early landscape threshold crossing and long–term trajectories of landscape change are to be properly understood. In this paper we use a new environmental simulation model, Búmodel, to assess two contrasting historical grazing landscapes in Mývatnssveit Iceland for two key periods—the colonization period (ca. Landnám, A.D. ...

root morphological and distribution responses of signal grass (brachiaria decumbens) to long-term cattle grazing were examined in a tropical pasture in malaysia. the treatments were no grazing by cattle and grazing at a moderate stocking density (2.7 animal unit/ha) under rotational grazing for 33 years. the method consists of taking soil core using a soil corer to a depth of 30 cm and extracti...

Understanding the plant-pest interaction under warming with grazing conditions is critical to predict the response of alpine meadow to future climate change. We investigated the effects of experimental warming and grazing on the interaction between plants and the grassland caterpillar Gynaephora menyuanensis in an alpine meadow on the Tibetan Plateau in 2010 and 2011. Our results showed that gr...

The aim of the present study was to investigate the potential benefits of grazing lactating ewes and their lambs on chicory (Cichorium intybus). Fifty-six certified organic twin-rearing ewes were either drenched with an anthelmintic or not, within 2 days after parturition and were grazed upon either grass/clover or chicory pastures. Around 12 weeks after parturition a subset of 12 lambs per tre...

JEM © The Rockefeller University Press $30.00 Vol. 205, No. 4, April 14, 2008 967-979 www.jem.org/cgi/doi/ 967 10.1084/jem.20072051 Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic disease aff ecting the peripheral joints in which abnormalities in the synovium precipitate a destructive process that often leads to cartilage and bone erosion. The autoimmune nature of this disease has been defi ned, in part...

Multiparous beef cows were managed to achieve marginal (BCS = 4.7 ± 0.07; n = 106) or good (BCS = 6.6 ± 0.06; n = 121) body condition (BC) to determine the influence of forage environment on BW and BC changes, intramuscular fat percentage (IMF), rump fat (RF), and serum hormones during 2 yr. Cows within each BC were randomly assigned to graze either common bermudagrass (CB; n = 3 pastures/yr) o...

Effects of mowing and grazing on a Leymus chinensis grassland in the Songnen plain of northeastern China were studied using eight replicates of four grazing and mowing treatments. Canopy cover and biomass of the dominant species (L. chinensis) were lower, and cover of the halophyte Suaeda corniculata higher, on grazed than ungrazed; ungrazed plots showed a response to mowing, but not grazing; s...