Re-introducing heterogeneity to native North American rangelands is imperative to maintaining grassland biodiversity, and it has been suggested that using a variety of cattle grazing intensities on the landscape could accomplish this. I used generalized linear mixed models to describe the effects of grazing intensity on vegetation structure, plant species diversity and plant communities over four years. I used the Mantel test and non-metric multidimensional scaling to illustrate changes in plant communities with varying grazing intensities and over time. Effects of grazing were cumulative and changed over time, upland and lowland habitats responded differently to grazing intensity, and heterogeneity was maximized at the landscape scale under a variety of grazing intensities. When conservation is the primary goal, a variety of grazing intensities on the landscape can be used to increase heterogeneity, and therefore grassland biodiversity.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:MANITOBA/oai:mspace.lib.umanitoba.ca:1993/21698 |
| Date | 04 July 2013 |
| Creators | Lwiwski, Tonya |
| Contributors | Koper, Nicola (Natural Resources Institute), Ominski, Kim (Animal Science) Otfinowski, Rafael (Parks Canada) |
| Source Sets | University of Manitoba Canada |
| Detected Language | English |
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