Spatially patchy fire creates landscape-level diversity that in turn stabilizes several rangeland ecosystem services, including forage production and habitat availability. To enhance biodiversity livestock production, efforts are underway to restore regimes rangelands throughout the Great Plains. However, invasive species such as tall fescue Schedonorus arundinaceus syn. Festuca arundinacea, in...

Soil degradation caused by overgrazing is a worldwide problem. The degradation of an overutilized area occurs mainly where animals prefer to spend extra time because of the attractants that are around gateways, water sources, along fences or farm buildings. High grazing pressure decreases plant density which results in changes of the botanical composition of a pasture. The effect that grazing h...

Patch-burn grazing is a management framework designed to promote heterogeneity in grasslands, creating more diverse grassland structure to accommodate the habitat requirements of many grassland species, particularly grassland birds. Published studies on the effects of patch-burn grazing on passerines have been conducted on relatively large (430–980 ha pastures), contiguous grasslands, and only ...

Quantifying botanical composition is important for evaluating the effects of management on legume content and of legume content on pasture yield and quality. The standard for measuring botanical composition is hand separation of clipped samples. An alternative is taking point counts of botanical components on photographs of the pasture. The latter was tested on a rotationally stocked pasture, w...