Sustainable Grazing Systems

Summary

The Biodiversity Theme was established to investigate:

1. The impact of using land for grazing on biodiversity,

2. The relationships between biodiversity, productivity and sustainability of grazing systems, &

3. Develop tools to monitor and manage biodiversity.

These are very broad questions, embracing much more than SGS was able to address with the resources available. SGS was also focused on small paddocks such that effects at a landscape scale could not be addressed, nor could native animals such as birds, reptiles and ants that can readily move between the small paddocks studied. To reduce the scope to something manageable, the main focus across Sites has been on plant species biodiversity and productivity in relation to grazing management treatments plus measurements on some other ecosystem components as explained in following sections.

The strategy adopted by the Theme was to concentrate efforts at the Carcoar Site near Orange, with its strong focus on native pastures, progressively intensified, including have a PhD student do a study of the invertebrates of the soil surface layer, and analyses of the grassland structure in relation to the landscape and the soil seed bank. A limited study was done on microbial diversity. Soil microbial biomass estimates were done at some other Sites.