Török Péter, Valkó Orsolya, Deák Balázs, Kelemen András, Tóthmérész Béla
MTA-DE Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Research Group, Debrecen, Hungary.
Department of Ecology, University of Debrecen, Debrecen, Hungary.
PLoS One. 2014 May 8;9(5):e97095. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0097095. eCollection 2014.
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.
粗放管理的牧场对于维持当地和景观层面的生物多样性至关重要。因此，重新引入传统放牧管理是全球草地保护行动中的关键问题。以低载畜率用健壮牛种进行传统放牧被认为对模拟自然放牧模式特别有用，但关于这一主题的详尽案例研究却出奇地少。我们的目标是评估匈牙利灰牛传统放牧作为马赛克碱化景观保护行动的有效性。我们提出了以下问题：（i）牛放牧如何影响草地的物种组成和多样性？（ii）放牧对短期和多年生有害物种有哪些影响？（iii）在干旱、中生和湿润草地类型中放牧是否有明显不同的影响？2006年至2009年期间，在匈牙利东部对一个面积为200公顷的栖息地复合体（次生干旱草地以及原始中生和湿润碱化草地）中围栏和放牧地块的植被进行了采样。我们发现，在中生和湿润草地中，与围栏地块相比，放牧地块的多样性得分更高。在每种研究的草地类型中，围栏地块中有害物种的覆盖率在最后一年通常高于其放牧对应的地块。我们发现从干旱草地类型到湿润草地类型，放牧的影响在增加。年际差异也呈现类似模式：依赖地点的影响在干旱草地中最低，并且沿着湿度梯度检测到影响在增加。我们发现，匈牙利灰牛的粗放放牧是抑制有害物种和创造马赛克植被结构的有效工具，这有助于在景观中维持高物种丰富度。匈牙利灰牛可以沿着长湿度梯度在开阔栖息地觅食，因此在高度镶嵌的景观中，这种牛种可能是最合适的牲畜类型。
