Story Abstract and Additional Information

Chapter 14: Grasslands

Restoring the Range: The Key to Recovering the World's Grasslands May Be a Surprising One

Story Abstract and Additional Information

This chapter explores the fact that grasslands are a critical resource, offering many important ecosystem services as well as being used for grazing of livestock and even production of biomass for biofuel energy. Grasslands are found all over the world but are currently endangered by overuse and a changing climate. “Desertification” caused by overgrazing is the most common problem facing grasslands, but innovative practices in managing livestock can help protect the world’s grasslands.

Here are some of the key points in the story for this chapter:

Why are grasslands important?

·  Grasslands are biomes that receive enough rainfall to support grass and herbaceous plants, but not enough to support forests. They may also be found in regions where rainfall is plentiful but larger plants are kept in check by periodic fires or herds of grazing herbivores. The Great Plains—which lies between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains and stretches from the south of Texas into Canada—is temperate grassland. These grasslands, known as prairies, contain many species of plants, have thick soils, and have a truly seasonal climate with cold winters and hot summers. Watch this video to learn more about temperate grasslands: http://videos.howstuffworks.com/discovery/28110-assignment-discovery-temperate-grassland-biomes-video.htm.

·  Though we might most often think of grasslands in terms of their human uses (pasture and farmland, for example), they provide extremely important ecosystem services, such as nutrient cycling, soil formation and protection, carbon sequestration, protection of surface waters, and provision of habitat for both year-round and seasonal wildlife. Across the Great Plains, rangeland (land that humans use to graze livestock) is drying out and ranchers are growing desperate. In some places, the degradation is so bad that prairie grasslands are becoming deserts—a process known as desertification. The amplified speed and scope of desertification during the 1930s led to what became known as the Great Dust Bowl: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/dustbowl-mass-exodus-plains/.

How is soil formed and how does land use affect it?

·  Soil formation is a slow process that requires the weathering of rock and decomposition of organic material. Under the best conditions, it takes one year to generate just a millimeter of the precious brown gold in which our food grows. Native prairie grasses have deep roots (up to 16 feet long) that allow them to access deep water supplies and to weather droughts. The roots also hold the soil in place much better than shallow-rooted annual crops like wheat. Read more from Auburn University in Alabama about the benefits of grassland agriculture: http://www.aces.edu/dept/forages/miscellaneous/ForageEnvironment03.htm.

·  Most major cereal crops, including wheat, rye, barley, and millet, were originally derived, thousands of years ago, from grassland seedbeds. So far, grassland degradation has cost humans roughly 12% of global grain production, not to mention $23 billion per year in global GDP (gross domestic product). All told, the food supply of more than one billion people is threatened. The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) predicts that some fifty million people will be faced with displacement in the coming decades. The FAO has recently introduced the monthly “Cereal Supply and Demand Brief” to track the world's cereal supply: http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/wfs-home/csdb/en/.

How can we effectively manage grasslands?

·  Most experts agree that the biggest culprit in desertification, by far, is overgrazing—when too many animals feed on a given patch of land. Biologist Allan Savory established the African Center for Holistic Management (ACHM) in Zimbabwe to explore ranching practices that would help prevent land degradation. He used electric fencing to divide the land into small paddocks, and then pulled all the livestock together into just one such paddock. Then he allowed the animals a day or two to eat everything they possibly could before releasing them into the next paddock. Each paddock would then have an entire season—roughly 180 days, depending on how the rains fell that year—to recover. Watch this video to learn more about Savory's thoughts on overgrazing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojSOeEipOow&feature=related.

·  Another land-management technique that also reduces soil erosion and protects grasslands from degradation is the planting of shelterbelts—a stand of trees that blocks the wind and thus decreases wind erosion. Shelterbelt programs helped the United States recover from the Dust Bowl and are being used today in areas facing desertification, such as Inner Mongolia and China (where the shelterbelt is referred to as the “Green Wall of China”): http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=52941.

Additional information about other topics from this chapter:

Grasslands, LLC

·  Rancher Jim Howell partnered with a group of investors to create Grasslands, LLC, a private equity fund whose aim is to buy up failing ranches throughout the Great Plains region and use Allan Savory’s holistic management techniques to resuscitate them. Learn more about this organization's efforts at http://www.savoryinstitute.com/2012/02/announcements/healing-the-land-grasslands-llc/.