Legeltetéses cikk a PLOS One-ban

Megjelent a szürkemarha-legeltetés hatásait szikes növényközösségekben vizsgáló eredményeinkből írt cikkünk a PLOS One tudományos folyóiratban. A cikkben a legelés hatásait egy nedvességgradiens mentén vizsgálva kimutattuk, hogy a legeltetés hatása a szárazabb gyepek felől a nedvesebb gyepek felé haladva egyre kifejezettebb, azonban ezeket hatásokat egyre növekvő mértékben befolyásolják az időjárási szélsőségekből adódó fluktuációk.

A cikk a folyóirat honlapjáról mindenki számára szabadon letölthető.

A cikk összefoglalója az alábbiakban olvasható:

Traditional Cattle Grazing in a Mosaic Alkali Landscape: Effects on Grassland Biodiversity along a Moisture Gradient.

Extensively managed pastures are of crucial importance in sustaining biodiversity both in local- and landscape-level. Thus, re-introduction of traditional grazing management is a crucial issue in grassland conservation actions worldwide. Traditional grazing with robust cattle breeds in low stocking rates is considered to be especially useful to mimic natural grazing regimes, but well documented case-studies are surprisingly rare on this topic. Our goal was to evaluate the  effectiveness of traditional Hungarian Grey cattle grazing as a conservation action in a mosaic alkali landscape. We asked the following questions: (i) How does cattle grazing affect species composition and diversity of the grasslands? (ii) What are the effects of grazing on short-lived and perennial  noxious species? (iii) Are there distinct effects of grazing in dry-, mesophilous- and wet grassland types? Vegetation of fenced and grazed plots in a 200-ha sized habitat complex (secondary dry  grasslands and pristine mesophilous- and wet alkali grasslands) was sampled from 2006–2009 in East-Hungary. 

 

We found higher diversity scores in grazed plots compared to fenced ones in  mesophilous- and wet grasslands. Higher cover of noxious species was typical in fenced plots  compared to their grazed counterparts in the last year in every studied grassland type. We found an increasing effect of grazing from the dry- towards the wet grassland types. The year-to-year  differences also followed similar pattern: the site-dependent effects were the lowest in the dry  grassland and an increasing effect was detected along the moisture gradient. We found that extensive Hungarian Grey cattle grazing is an effective tool to suppress noxious species and to create a mosaic  vegetation structure, which enables to maintain high species richness in the landscape. Hungarian Grey cattle can feed in open habitats along long moisture gradient, thus in highly mosaic landscapes this breed can be the most suitable livestock type.