Rangelands最新文献

Natural solutions, such as “avoided conversion of grasslands,” offer agricultural land managers a way to mitigate climate change while monetizing climate benefits.

Managers who avoid converting grasslands to other uses, such as row crops, can quantify the amount of stored carbon and sell credits, but high costs of developing carbon credit projects price many landowners out of the carbon market.

Aggregation can create economies of scale, which lower barriers of entry and allow more landowners to participate in the market.

Given the current low prices in the carbon market, aggregation is not a panacea and aggregated projects are not financially viable for many landowners.

As the demand for carbon credits continues to grow, land managers can position themselves to take advantage of carbon market opportunities should prices increase, and projects become financially viable.

The concept of natural water storage has gained traction as an alternative to traditional dams that can potentially mitigate the impacts of changing precipitation patterns by slowing runoff and increasing aquifer recharge. We investigated the barriers and opportunities for two natural water storage practices, flood irrigation and beaver mimicry.

We interviewed 8 amenity and 14 traditional ranchers in the Red Rock Watershed in southwest Montana. We found ranchers predominately rely on reactive, rather than proactive drought strategies. Most amenity ranchers had formal drought plans in place, but none of the traditional ranchers had formal drought plans.

Ranchers perceived the two natural water storage practices differently. While all agreed on the benefits of flood irrigation, they saw the barriers, such as labor issues and loss of efficiency to outweigh the benefits. Many ranchers were skeptical of the benefits beaver mimicry could provide and voiced concerns over the cost, permits, water rights, and operational impacts.

While there are barriers to both strategies, local agencies and actors can work to build trust and practice flexibility when working with ranchers. Ranchers mentioned potential incentives for implementing these strategies, which local agencies can use when working with them.

The combination of stocking rate and marketing date that maximizes average net return per head will not necessarily maximize average net return per hectare.

The combination of stocking rate and marketing date that maximizes average net return per hectare often comes with risk-related tradeoffs, such as a higher risk and magnitude of negative net returns.

The combination of stocking rate and marketing date will have implications (not quantified in this study) for the quantity of standing forage residue, which could be used for fall/winter grazing within the same year or for drought preparedness in the following year.

Restoration practices employed in semiarid sagebrush steppe of the North American Intermountain West are typically based on objectives to restore habitat to mid- to late-seral plant communities.

Incorporating succession management techniques including representation from early seral community species in restoration plans and seed mixtures could bridge the temporal gap between disturbance and stable climax conditions.

Early seral species evolved to establish quickly and occupy disturbed soils, reduce erosion, and provide a food source for wildlife. Additionally, they alter soil chemistry and biology dynamics that favor transition to later seral phases. Many early seral natives reduce exotic weed growth and seed production.

Despite their benefits, early seral species have poor representation in restoration practices largely due to cultural biases.

Continued investigation of early seral natives in restoration practices will better elucidate the benefits of this underused group. Developers of plant materials should focus on developing a broader suite of early seral germplasm sources for Intermountain restoration activities.

Bringing diverse groups together in collaboration to solve complex landscape-scale issues presents opportunities and challenges.

Collaborating at the planning stage of restoration projects can be slow. It takes time to build relationships, and meeting people “where they are at” is often the accomplishment.

Success in collaboration comes from gathering the local knowledge to move forward with implementing projects.

Long-standing collaborative groups often face challenges with keeping stakeholders and partners involved particularly when tracking past projects. Finding continued funding to maintain the projects implemented years earlier takes effort usually on behalf of the convening organization.