Cargando…
Patterns of livestock activity on heterogeneous subalpine pastures reveal distinct responses to spatial autocorrelation, environment and management
BACKGROUND: In order to understand the impact of grazing livestock on pasture ecosystems, it is essential to quantify pasture use intensity at a fine spatial scale and the factors influencing its distribution. The observation and analysis of animal activity is greatly facilitated by remote tracking...
Autores principales: | , , , |
---|---|
Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2015
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4598957/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26457186 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40462-015-0053-6 |
_version_ | 1782394162130190336 |
---|---|
author | Homburger, Hermel Lüscher, Andreas Scherer-Lorenzen, Michael Schneider, Manuel K. |
author_facet | Homburger, Hermel Lüscher, Andreas Scherer-Lorenzen, Michael Schneider, Manuel K. |
author_sort | Homburger, Hermel |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: In order to understand the impact of grazing livestock on pasture ecosystems, it is essential to quantify pasture use intensity at a fine spatial scale and the factors influencing its distribution. The observation and analysis of animal activity is greatly facilitated by remote tracking technology and new statistical frameworks allowing for rapid inference on spatially correlated data. We used these advances to study activity patterns of GPS-tracked cows in six summer-grazing areas in the Swiss Alps that differed in environmental conditions as well as livestock management. RESULTS: Recorded GPS positions were assigned to the activities of grazing, resting, and walking, and were discretized on a regular grid. Regression models with spatially structured effects were fitted to the spatial activity patterns using Integrated Nested Laplace Approximation. They indicated that terrain slope, forage quality, and stocking rate were the primary factors determining cow activity in the six study areas. Terrain slope significantly reduced livestock activity in five of the six areas and sparse forage availability significantly reduced grazing in all areas. In three areas, grazing pressure imposed by the pasture rotation was observable in the grazing pattern. Insolation, distance to the shed, and distance to water were less important for cow activity. In addition to the main factors identified across all study areas, we found effects operating only in individual areas, which were partly explained by specific environmental and management characteristics. In study areas with few paddocks, environmental variables exerted a stronger control on livestock activity than in areas with a short stocking period per paddock. CONCLUSIONS: The data demonstrated that a strict pasture rotation with short stocking periods is necessary to influence livestock activity, and hence potential effects on ecosystem processes. Without grazing management, livestock activity is primarily determined by the environment. Such insight is indispensable for studying relationships between grazing animals and ecosystem characteristics, and for developing management strategies to optimize ecosystem services. The analysis also highlighted the need for an appropriate statistical treatment of bio-logging data, since various estimates were biased if spatial autocorrelation was ignored. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s40462-015-0053-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4598957 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2015 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-45989572015-10-09 Patterns of livestock activity on heterogeneous subalpine pastures reveal distinct responses to spatial autocorrelation, environment and management Homburger, Hermel Lüscher, Andreas Scherer-Lorenzen, Michael Schneider, Manuel K. Mov Ecol Research BACKGROUND: In order to understand the impact of grazing livestock on pasture ecosystems, it is essential to quantify pasture use intensity at a fine spatial scale and the factors influencing its distribution. The observation and analysis of animal activity is greatly facilitated by remote tracking technology and new statistical frameworks allowing for rapid inference on spatially correlated data. We used these advances to study activity patterns of GPS-tracked cows in six summer-grazing areas in the Swiss Alps that differed in environmental conditions as well as livestock management. RESULTS: Recorded GPS positions were assigned to the activities of grazing, resting, and walking, and were discretized on a regular grid. Regression models with spatially structured effects were fitted to the spatial activity patterns using Integrated Nested Laplace Approximation. They indicated that terrain slope, forage quality, and stocking rate were the primary factors determining cow activity in the six study areas. Terrain slope significantly reduced livestock activity in five of the six areas and sparse forage availability significantly reduced grazing in all areas. In three areas, grazing pressure imposed by the pasture rotation was observable in the grazing pattern. Insolation, distance to the shed, and distance to water were less important for cow activity. In addition to the main factors identified across all study areas, we found effects operating only in individual areas, which were partly explained by specific environmental and management characteristics. In study areas with few paddocks, environmental variables exerted a stronger control on livestock activity than in areas with a short stocking period per paddock. CONCLUSIONS: The data demonstrated that a strict pasture rotation with short stocking periods is necessary to influence livestock activity, and hence potential effects on ecosystem processes. Without grazing management, livestock activity is primarily determined by the environment. Such insight is indispensable for studying relationships between grazing animals and ecosystem characteristics, and for developing management strategies to optimize ecosystem services. The analysis also highlighted the need for an appropriate statistical treatment of bio-logging data, since various estimates were biased if spatial autocorrelation was ignored. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s40462-015-0053-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. BioMed Central 2015-10-08 /pmc/articles/PMC4598957/ /pubmed/26457186 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40462-015-0053-6 Text en © Homburger et al. 2015 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
spellingShingle | Research Homburger, Hermel Lüscher, Andreas Scherer-Lorenzen, Michael Schneider, Manuel K. Patterns of livestock activity on heterogeneous subalpine pastures reveal distinct responses to spatial autocorrelation, environment and management |
title | Patterns of livestock activity on heterogeneous subalpine pastures reveal distinct responses to spatial autocorrelation, environment and management |
title_full | Patterns of livestock activity on heterogeneous subalpine pastures reveal distinct responses to spatial autocorrelation, environment and management |
title_fullStr | Patterns of livestock activity on heterogeneous subalpine pastures reveal distinct responses to spatial autocorrelation, environment and management |
title_full_unstemmed | Patterns of livestock activity on heterogeneous subalpine pastures reveal distinct responses to spatial autocorrelation, environment and management |
title_short | Patterns of livestock activity on heterogeneous subalpine pastures reveal distinct responses to spatial autocorrelation, environment and management |
title_sort | patterns of livestock activity on heterogeneous subalpine pastures reveal distinct responses to spatial autocorrelation, environment and management |
topic | Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4598957/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26457186 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40462-015-0053-6 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT homburgerhermel patternsoflivestockactivityonheterogeneoussubalpinepasturesrevealdistinctresponsestospatialautocorrelationenvironmentandmanagement AT luscherandreas patternsoflivestockactivityonheterogeneoussubalpinepasturesrevealdistinctresponsestospatialautocorrelationenvironmentandmanagement AT schererlorenzenmichael patternsoflivestockactivityonheterogeneoussubalpinepasturesrevealdistinctresponsestospatialautocorrelationenvironmentandmanagement AT schneidermanuelk patternsoflivestockactivityonheterogeneoussubalpinepasturesrevealdistinctresponsestospatialautocorrelationenvironmentandmanagement |