In ruminants, methane (CH4) is a by-product of digestion and contributes significantly to the greenhouse gas emissions attributed to agriculture. Grazed grass is a relatively cheap and nutritious feed but herbage species and nutritional quality vary between pastures, with management, land type and season all potentially impacting on animal performance and CH4 production. The objective of this s...

Land-use intensification has contrasting effects on different ecosystem services, often leading to land-use conflicts. While multiple studies have demonstrated how landscape-scale strategies can minimise the trade-off between agricultural production and biodiversity conservation, little is known about which maximise landscape-level supply of services (landscape multifunctionality), a common goa...

species diversity is an index for sustainability of rangeland ecosystems. we studied the effect of environmental factors (soil properties and aspects) on plant species diversity in zagros mountainous rangelands (vegetation type: festuca ovina-astragalus parrowianus) in the west of hamadan in march–july 2009. for this purpose, four aspects were defined in the study area. vegetation types were st...

The precise and rapid estimation of grassland biomass is an important scientific issue in grassland ecosystem research. In this study, based on a field survey of 1205 sites together with biomass data of the Xilingol grassland for the years 2005–2012 and the ―accumulated‖ MODIS productivity starting from the beginning of growing season, we built regression models to estimate the aboveground biom...

Conversion of native vegetation into farmed grassland in the Lake Taupo catchment commenced in the late 1950s. The lake’s iconic value is being threatened by the slow decline in lake water quality that has become apparent since the 1970s. This decline is due to increased nitrogen (N) leaching from the catchment, with 95% of the ‘manageable’ leached N estimated to be sourced from livestock farms...

large scale land use/cover changes and habitat fragmentation is a major factor in the distribution and functioning of ecosystems. for analysis the relationship between land use changes and their impacts on biodiversity, land cover and land use information is needed at different scales. the main goal of this study was to quantify the land use/ cover changes in arasbaran biosphere reserve, northw...

This study evaluated effects of farming practice scenarios aiming to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and subsequent alternative land use on environmental impacts of a beef cattle production system using the life cycle assessment approach. The baseline scenario includes a standard cow-calf herd with finishing heifers based on grazing, and a standard bull-fattening herd using a diet mainly ...

For several decades, many grassland bird species have been declining in abundance throughout the Midwest and Great Plains regions of the United States, possibly due to loss of natural grassland habitat and increasing urbanization. I used 20 years of data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey to identify increasing, decreasing, and stable populations of 36 grassland-nesting bird species. ...