Impact of different destocking strategies on the resilience of dry rangelands

Toyo Vignal; Mara Baudena; Angeles Garcia Mayor; Jonathan A Sherratt

doi:10.1002/ece3.10102

Impact of different destocking strategies on the resilience of dry rangelands

Toyo Vignal, Mara Baudena, Angeles Garcia Mayor, Jonathan A Sherratt

Department of Mathematics Heriot-Watt University Edinburgh UK.

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

Half of the world's livestock live in (semi-)arid regions, where a large proportion of people rely on animal husbandry for their survival. However, overgrazing can lead to land degradation and subsequent socio-economic crises. Sustainable management of dry rangeland requires suitable stocking strategies and has been the subject of intense debate in the last decades. Our goal is to understand how variations in stocking strategies affect the resilience of dry rangelands. We describe rangeland dynamics through a simple mathematical model consisting of a system of coupled differential equations. In our model, livestock density is limited only by forage availability, which is itself limited by water availability. We model processes typical of dryland vegetation as a strong Allee effect, leading to bistability between a vegetated and a degraded state, even in the absence of herbivores. We study analytically the impact of varying the stocking density and the destocking adaptivity on the resilience of the system to the effects of drought. By using dynamical systems theory, we look at how different measures of resilience are affected by variations in destocking strategies. We find that the following: (1) Increasing stocking density decreases resilience, giving rise to an expected trade-off between productivity and resilience. (2) There exists a maximal sustainable livestock density above which the system can only be degraded. This carrying capacity is common to all strategies. (3) Higher adaptivity of the destocking rate to available forage makes the system more resilient: the more adaptive a system is, the bigger the losses of vegetation it can recover from, without affecting the long-term level of productivity. The first two results emphasize the need for suitable dry rangeland management strategies, to prevent degradation resulting from the conflict between profitability and sustainability. The third point offers a theoretical suggestion for such a strategy.

Original language	English
Article number	e10102
Number of pages	20
Journal	Ecology and Evolution
Volume	13
Issue number	5
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.10102
Publication status	Published - May 2023

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We are very grateful to the anonymous reviewer for their outstanding contribution. They have provided insightful comments that have significantly improved the paper and spotted a mistake present in the original manuscript. We would also like to thank A.W. Markus for bringing our figures to the next level. TV is grateful to C.M. Davis for his helpful advice while revising the manuscript. TV was supported by the EPSRC-funded MAC-MIGS PhD programme in Mathematical Modeling, Analysis and Computation, run jointly by Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt universities, as part of the Maxwell Institute Graduate School. MB acknowledges the Italian National Biodiversity Future Center (NBFC): National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), Mission 4 Component 2 Investment 1.4 of the Italian Ministry of University and Research; funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU (Project code CN_00000033).

Funding Information:
UK Research and Innovation—Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (UKRI EPSRC) grant EP/S023291/1; Heriot‐Watt University; University of Edinburgh.

Funding Information:
We are very grateful to the anonymous reviewer for their outstanding contribution. They have provided insightful comments that have significantly improved the paper and spotted a mistake present in the original manuscript. We would also like to thank A.W. Markus for bringing our figures to the next level. TV is grateful to C.M. Davis for his helpful advice while revising the manuscript. TV was supported by the EPSRC‐funded MAC‐MIGS PhD programme in Mathematical Modeling, Analysis and Computation, run jointly by Edinburgh and Heriot‐Watt universities, as part of the Maxwell Institute Graduate School. MB acknowledges the Italian National Biodiversity Future Center (NBFC): National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), Mission 4 Component 2 Investment 1.4 of the Italian Ministry of University and Research; funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU (Project code CN_00000033).

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Keywords

adaptive management
consumer-resource
dry rangeland
resilience

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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Ecology and Evolution - 2023 - Vignal - Impact of different destocking strategies on the resilience of dry rangelandsFinal published version, 1.84 MBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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title = "Impact of different destocking strategies on the resilience of dry rangelands",

abstract = "Half of the world's livestock live in (semi-)arid regions, where a large proportion of people rely on animal husbandry for their survival. However, overgrazing can lead to land degradation and subsequent socio-economic crises. Sustainable management of dry rangeland requires suitable stocking strategies and has been the subject of intense debate in the last decades. Our goal is to understand how variations in stocking strategies affect the resilience of dry rangelands. We describe rangeland dynamics through a simple mathematical model consisting of a system of coupled differential equations. In our model, livestock density is limited only by forage availability, which is itself limited by water availability. We model processes typical of dryland vegetation as a strong Allee effect, leading to bistability between a vegetated and a degraded state, even in the absence of herbivores. We study analytically the impact of varying the stocking density and the destocking adaptivity on the resilience of the system to the effects of drought. By using dynamical systems theory, we look at how different measures of resilience are affected by variations in destocking strategies. We find that the following: (1) Increasing stocking density decreases resilience, giving rise to an expected trade-off between productivity and resilience. (2) There exists a maximal sustainable livestock density above which the system can only be degraded. This carrying capacity is common to all strategies. (3) Higher adaptivity of the destocking rate to available forage makes the system more resilient: the more adaptive a system is, the bigger the losses of vegetation it can recover from, without affecting the long-term level of productivity. The first two results emphasize the need for suitable dry rangeland management strategies, to prevent degradation resulting from the conflict between profitability and sustainability. The third point offers a theoretical suggestion for such a strategy.",

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author = "Toyo Vignal and Mara Baudena and Mayor, {Angeles Garcia} and Sherratt, {Jonathan A}",

note = "Funding Information: We are very grateful to the anonymous reviewer for their outstanding contribution. They have provided insightful comments that have significantly improved the paper and spotted a mistake present in the original manuscript. We would also like to thank A.W. Markus for bringing our figures to the next level. TV is grateful to C.M. Davis for his helpful advice while revising the manuscript. TV was supported by the EPSRC-funded MAC-MIGS PhD programme in Mathematical Modeling, Analysis and Computation, run jointly by Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt universities, as part of the Maxwell Institute Graduate School. MB acknowledges the Italian National Biodiversity Future Center (NBFC): National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), Mission 4 Component 2 Investment 1.4 of the Italian Ministry of University and Research; funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU (Project code CN_00000033). Funding Information: UK Research and Innovation—Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (UKRI EPSRC) grant EP/S023291/1; Heriot‐Watt University; University of Edinburgh. Funding Information: We are very grateful to the anonymous reviewer for their outstanding contribution. They have provided insightful comments that have significantly improved the paper and spotted a mistake present in the original manuscript. We would also like to thank A.W. Markus for bringing our figures to the next level. TV is grateful to C.M. Davis for his helpful advice while revising the manuscript. TV was supported by the EPSRC‐funded MAC‐MIGS PhD programme in Mathematical Modeling, Analysis and Computation, run jointly by Edinburgh and Heriot‐Watt universities, as part of the Maxwell Institute Graduate School. MB acknowledges the Italian National Biodiversity Future Center (NBFC): National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), Mission 4 Component 2 Investment 1.4 of the Italian Ministry of University and Research; funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU (Project code CN_00000033). Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2023 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.",

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N1 - Funding Information: We are very grateful to the anonymous reviewer for their outstanding contribution. They have provided insightful comments that have significantly improved the paper and spotted a mistake present in the original manuscript. We would also like to thank A.W. Markus for bringing our figures to the next level. TV is grateful to C.M. Davis for his helpful advice while revising the manuscript. TV was supported by the EPSRC-funded MAC-MIGS PhD programme in Mathematical Modeling, Analysis and Computation, run jointly by Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt universities, as part of the Maxwell Institute Graduate School. MB acknowledges the Italian National Biodiversity Future Center (NBFC): National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), Mission 4 Component 2 Investment 1.4 of the Italian Ministry of University and Research; funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU (Project code CN_00000033). Funding Information: UK Research and Innovation—Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (UKRI EPSRC) grant EP/S023291/1; Heriot‐Watt University; University of Edinburgh. Funding Information: We are very grateful to the anonymous reviewer for their outstanding contribution. They have provided insightful comments that have significantly improved the paper and spotted a mistake present in the original manuscript. We would also like to thank A.W. Markus for bringing our figures to the next level. TV is grateful to C.M. Davis for his helpful advice while revising the manuscript. TV was supported by the EPSRC‐funded MAC‐MIGS PhD programme in Mathematical Modeling, Analysis and Computation, run jointly by Edinburgh and Heriot‐Watt universities, as part of the Maxwell Institute Graduate School. MB acknowledges the Italian National Biodiversity Future Center (NBFC): National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), Mission 4 Component 2 Investment 1.4 of the Italian Ministry of University and Research; funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU (Project code CN_00000033). Publisher Copyright: © 2023 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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N2 - Half of the world's livestock live in (semi-)arid regions, where a large proportion of people rely on animal husbandry for their survival. However, overgrazing can lead to land degradation and subsequent socio-economic crises. Sustainable management of dry rangeland requires suitable stocking strategies and has been the subject of intense debate in the last decades. Our goal is to understand how variations in stocking strategies affect the resilience of dry rangelands. We describe rangeland dynamics through a simple mathematical model consisting of a system of coupled differential equations. In our model, livestock density is limited only by forage availability, which is itself limited by water availability. We model processes typical of dryland vegetation as a strong Allee effect, leading to bistability between a vegetated and a degraded state, even in the absence of herbivores. We study analytically the impact of varying the stocking density and the destocking adaptivity on the resilience of the system to the effects of drought. By using dynamical systems theory, we look at how different measures of resilience are affected by variations in destocking strategies. We find that the following: (1) Increasing stocking density decreases resilience, giving rise to an expected trade-off between productivity and resilience. (2) There exists a maximal sustainable livestock density above which the system can only be degraded. This carrying capacity is common to all strategies. (3) Higher adaptivity of the destocking rate to available forage makes the system more resilient: the more adaptive a system is, the bigger the losses of vegetation it can recover from, without affecting the long-term level of productivity. The first two results emphasize the need for suitable dry rangeland management strategies, to prevent degradation resulting from the conflict between profitability and sustainability. The third point offers a theoretical suggestion for such a strategy.

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Impact of different destocking strategies on the resilience of dry rangelands

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

UN SDGs

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