A Paradigm Shift: Using Grazing as a Means to Achieve Ecological and Agricultural Objectives Annotated Bibliography Achieving Ecological & Agricultural Objectives Stephen L. Thomforde 2013 1 | P a g e Introduction: A Paradigm Shift: Using Grazing as a Means to Achieve Ecological and Agricultural Objectives Over the past half century, modern agriculture has become a preeminent adversary to variety of special interests, including environmental, food health, soci-economic, and animal welfare groups. Recently though, grazing livestock has emerged as a way to maintain agricultural production while satisfying a variety of objectives associated with these interest groups. This paper is focused on the environmental impacts of grazing livestock, and in particular, on topics that include: biological diversity, nutrient regulation, carbon sequestration, and water quality. The thesis I explore assumes grazing is a critical process to maintain ecosystem integrity in grassland-savanna ecosystems, and removing grazing, or processes that mimic grazing such as haying, sets in motion a cascade of feedbacks that cause these highly functional ecosystems to rapidly transition into dysfunctional ecosystems. This research reviews scholarly articles on the evolution, history, ecology, strategies and environmental impacts of grazing. This analysis allows us to describe grazing as an important process to grassland savanna integrity with beneficial impacts on biodiversity, nutrient regulation, water quality, and numerous additional ecological attributes. We suggest land managers embrace grazing or hay making as a viable cost efficient means to achieve numerous ecological objectives, while breaking barriers between agriculture and environmental interest groups. In so doing we unify ecology and agriculture, to the mutual benefit of one another through grazing. Obstacles to unifying agricultural and environmental groups involves antagonistic perceptions by both communities: environmentalist view grazing domestic animals as incompatible to their objectives and agriculture producers view grazing as non-profitable. These perceptions are reinforced by historic mismanagement of grazing animals often resulting in overgrazing, and by agro-economic models based on high-input gross production instead of net returns. Old perceptions die hard, but advancements in ecological theory and research, renewed interests in local foodsheds, and the increasing socio-ecological costs associated petroleum based high-input agriculture have allowed once opposing forces, farmers and environmentalist, to unite in ways that benefit the farm, the land and our communities. The research reviewed is categorized: 1) evolution and ecology of grazing ecosystems, 2) grazing impacts on biodiversity, 3) grazing impacts on general ecological attributes such as nutrient regulation and water quality and, 4) grazing and environmental policy. Synopsis of Articles: If we sum the acreage of plant communities that exhibit a strong graminoid component, including tropical and temperate grassland-savannas, semi-arid grass-shrublands, coastal plains, chaparral, tundra, parklands, and alpine meadows, we find that grassland savanna systems historically covered 55-60% of the terrestrial planet. The names of these grasslands are as ancient as their human civilizations and include such places as the Africana Serengeti & Veld, the Eurasian Steppes and Heathlands, the South American Pampas, Cerrado, and Llanos, the 2 | P a g e Southern Mediterranean Dehesa, and the North American Great Plains, Palouse, Prairies, Savannas, Groves, and Openings. These grassland-savanna ecosystems, especially true savanna, represent the most functional- productive terrestrial ecosystems ever to exist. Grassland-savannas grazing ecosystems emerge after the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction 65 million years ago (mya), when flowering plants and mammals refill the void once occupied by dinosaurs and non-flowering plants. Over the next several million years, flowering plants and herbivores coevolve in a grand symbiosis where vegetation and organism become mutually dependent upon one another. By the end of the Eocene 34 mya, major linages of grassland savanna plants and herbivores had emerged and by the early Miocene, 25 mya, the African, South and North American, and Eurasian continents were dominated by grassland savanna biotic communities composed of diverse plant guilds feeding diverse grazing guilds feeding diverse carnivore guilds. mammals, including horses, cervids, camels, beaver, apes, and other herbivores which in turn hunted by a diverse group of mammal carnivores. Through this grand evolving symbiosis of plants feeding animals, energy and matter flows became increasingly regulated through a set of biotic controls, in other words, organisms regulated nutrient flows to the mutual benefit of the entire biota. Stronger biotic regulation on energy flow equates to higher ecosystem function and production (E-FP). This is not coincidental but is rather the result of intra-species evolution, DNA linking across organisms in time and space, evolving the entire towards greater ecosystem fitness. It began 2.7 billion years ago, when ancient chloroplasts capture and regulate the flow of sunlight, radically transforming inorganic carbon into biochemical energy, glucose. Herbivory provides a mechanism to transform the energy into a higher trophic state, placing another set of bio-controls over energy and nutrient flow, thus increasing E-FP. Likewise, carnivory provides yet another transformation, more control, and greater E-FP. Longer food chains evolve, increasing order by exporting chaos (entropy) back to space. By passing energy to higher tropic levels, major nutrient cycles come under strong biotic regulation over the essential nutrients, including nitrogen, phosphorus and carbon cycles. By the time humans show up, 250, 000, years ago, grassland-savannas and grazing animals dominate the terrestrial planet. At the beginning of the Antropocence The dominate plant communities were composed of edible angiosperms feeding herbivores a variety of products including; nectar, pollen, ediasomes, seeds, berries, nuts, forage, and tubers. In return, the herbivores performed services that benefited the plants, such as pollination, seed dispersal, and reduction of overgrowth to help the edible plants maintain community membership. Plant communities evolved to tolerate, embrace, and eventually becoming obligate to grazing, and later fire and grazing. Humans soon learn to manage grassland savannas in order to maximize pasture potentials. Fire is employed to promote edibility and expand the range. With grazing these ecosystems provision high quality food and fiber, stabilize soils, regulate nutrients, purify water, increase biological diversity, and sequester carbon. Without grazing these ecosystems no longer function properly and therefore do not provision any of the afore mentioned services, and in fact, without grazing, these ecosystems can actually accelerate soil 3 | P a g e erosion, carbon export to the atmosphere, nutrient slough, pollute waters, and supply no food or fiber to any living organism except maybe low quality fungi and bacteria. The transition from functional to dysfunctional ecosystems due to the lack of grazing is a global phenomenon and marks a devolution of highly complex terrestrial ecosystems, anywhere land had been grazed for millions of years before Homo sapiens, and more recently by Homo sapiens who managed the landscape through fire to increase grazing. It has been said, the true disturbance mediated by fire is when fire was removed from the ecosystem and the plant community spins out of control. The same is true for grazing, and sense grazing preceded fire as the primary constraint on plant community configuration by several million years, the loss of grazing is far more perilous to ecosystem integrity than the loss of fire. Therefore, restoring the land to its most recent most functional configuration requires the restoration of both grazing and fire. by land no-longer grazed, includes our cherished conservation reserves and parks, where we prohibit grazing, but continue to fight an unsustainable battle to maintain a semblance of some native vegetation. The story which unfolds from the literature review shows us how we can enhance our conservation efforts through grazing, and other biomass harvest processes including haymaking. In this scenario, we increase ecosystem integrity through agricultural production, while providing high quality food and fiber and jobs that accompany the local foodshed value added emerging markets. The following text summarizes 84 peer reviewed articles concerning the ecological benefits of grazing livestock. The articles are divided into five sections that include: 1) Evolution of Grazing Ecosystems, 2) Grazing Impacts on Biodiversity, 3) Environmental Impacts of Grazing, 4) Management for Ecological and Agricultural Objectives, 5) Policy, Programs, and Research Needs. 4 | P a g e Evolution of Grazing Ecosystems 1) Rise of the Grassland Biome, Central North-America Axelrod, D. (1985). Botanical Review, 51(2), 163-201. Summary: The author uses paleoecological evidence to explain the rise of the grassland biome in North America. Evidence includes paleo-pollen analysis, plant and animal fossils, current ranges for a variety of plant species, and disjunctive plant populations. Evidence indicates glasslands first emerged in the western portion of the North American continent, along the rain shadow