- Journal of Resources and Ecology
- Vol. 11, Issue 3, 247 (2020)
Abstract
Keywords
1 Background
Animal husbandry and crop farming are specialized for development through a long history in the northern plateau and southern valleys, respectively, on the Tibetan Plateau. Such a pattern of isolation has led to current concerns over rangeland degradation and forage shortages with the increasing pressures of livestock growth and declining soil fertility due to intensive farming (
Due to rangeland degradation and shortages of forage, especially at the end of the season, herders are facing the curse of animal husbandry: emaciation in winter and death in spring. Similarly, more than 90% of the valley cropland is cultivated with food crops by monoculture, so it is difficult to improve the income of local farmers. Therefore, the development of Tibetan agriculture, animal husbandry and social economy is severely constrained thanks to the separate and non-holistic development patterns. To tackle both predicaments of forage shortage and low-income agriculture, an alternative to the existing specialized agriculture is crop-forage rotation for potential crop-livestock integration. Cultivated pasture for forage production is a major source of livestock rations in grazing systems due to its intensive production and high nutrient content (
Regional synergy has emerged as an integrated approach to link rangeland livestock with the cropland farming system. It moves beyond the specialized animal husbandry and intensive agriculture systems to coordinate these two sectors through regional cooperation. By focusing on this integration, regional synergy enables a new way of facilitating mixed-system diversity and production and meeting sustainable development goals. In this paper, we first introduce crop-livestock integration and its development from local to regional scales. We then introduce the national R 【-逻*辑*与-】amp; D program in Tibet with a focus on regional synergy through reconciling rangeland ecological functioning and cropland production services. Finally, some progress of this program and a series of papers on the theme of rangeland ecology and management are also presented.
2 Crop-Livestock Integration: from local to regional scale
Crop-livestock integration (CLI) represents a model of sustainable farming for harvesting both food and livestock products according to the principles of nutrient recycling and efficient use of land and resources (
As individual farms have become more specialized, separate crop and livestock systems are faced with problems such as difficult and costly waste recycling, inevitable pollution and environmental degradation risks. Specialization has resulted in an uncoupling of the crop and livestock production enterprises, loss of landscape diversity and a decreasing resilience to environmental change and disasters. This dilemma again calls for the improvement of crop-livestock integration by adding livestock to a cropping system to seek a solution for both livelihood diversification and environmental goals. Livestock components also add species diversity and additional value to the cropping system and take advantage of synergism and niche complementarity effects among plant species that are more profitable than monoculture systems (
The integrated crop-livestock systems promote diverse and ecological interactions over space and time among the system components of crops, rangelands, and animals. CLI is common and efficient in local or on-farm levels due to the easy allocation of resources. However, the major constraints of on-farm integration are related to the limited farm workforce that is available, and the loss in skills and knowledge required to optimize both crop and livestock sub-systems (
3 Aiming at synergy through reconciling rangeland function with forage production
For a long time, the effort of restoration focused only on degraded rangeland per se, for example through fenced grazing exclusion, reseeding, fertilization, or killing off weeds and insects. The framework of rangeland capacity for carrying livestock, i.e. forage-livestock balance, is at the center of rangeland management. However, the carrying capacity cannot meet the demand of animal husbandry due not only to growing livestock numbers but also to great variations in forage production caused by interannual precipitation fluctuations. This practice suggests that forage-livestock balance is very difficult to maintain in the fluctuating environment on the Tibetan plateau (
The integrated crop-livestock system can solve the problems of forage shortage and agro-pastoral development through cultivating pasture, promoting animal husbandry and maintaining the sustainability of the nutrient cycle and resource use of the farming and animal husbandry system, which is considered an important way to diversify the livelihoods of farmers and herdsmen and promote ecosystem resilience (
To change the traditionally separated modes of grassland grazing and crop monoculture, integration of agriculture with animal husbandry is becoming the development trend of Tibet's structural adjustment of agriculture and animal husbandry. Ensuring the production and supply of sufficient forage and feed is the key to the success of this agro-pastoral structural adjustment. In Tibet, compared with pastoral areas, the agricultural areas have the advantages of lower altitude and relatively good water and heat conditions for the development of forage and feed production. On the other hand, in recent decades, the total grain production of 0.96 million tons per year provided a surplus over the food consumption demand in Tibet, causing a large amount of food overstock in some areas. According to the latest estimation, Tibet’s farmers and herdsmen need about 0.70‒ 0.80 million tons of grain, and 1.5´105 ha of arable land, accounting for only ca. 60% of the existing arable land (
4 Implementation of national R 【-逻*辑*与-】amp; D program
To rehabilitate the degraded rangeland, China has implemented a series of ecological engineering programs and taken adaptive ecosystem management measures, such as adopting fenced grazing exclusion and establishing cultivated pasture. Among them, a national key R 【-逻*辑*与-】amp; D program,
The Tibetan Plateau is one of the important ecological security shelters in China. With the features of high altitude, cold and drought, alpine ecosystems are extremely vulnerable to environmental changes, and are thereby prone to degradation under the pressures of climate change and anthropogenic disturbance. Rehabilitation of degraded ecosystems is quite difficult due to a fairly low recovery rate. The restoration of degraded rangeland and deserted land has always been the top priority among the protection and construction programs of the national ecological security shelter on the plateau. The main factors leading to alpine grassland degradation in northern Tibet are the decline of ecological functioning and forage production, and the imbalance between forage supply and animal feed demand. The key solution to this degradation problem is to build up a grass-based livestock husbandry technology system by enhancing forage production to meet the growing demand of an increasing livestock population. Land desertification is mainly the result of the interaction of climate change and human activities. An integrated approach to curb the expansion of desertified land area is to establish a sustainable land use technological system and enhance ecosystem functioning and services. Focusing on the above key issues and research objectives, and aiming to restore alpine rangeland degradation in Tibet, the national R 【-逻*辑*与-】amp; D project is devoted to adopting innovative technologies, such as optimally allocating ecological and production functions, reseeding native varieties of forage, planting high-yield cultivated pasture, processing high-quality forage products, and developing organic livestock products (
To this end, the regional synergy of ecosystem functioning and services is essential for rangeland degradation control. On the Northern Tibetan Plateau, rangeland has low grass yield, poor carrying capacity, severe shortages of forage grass in winter and spring, and poor capacity for regulating the forage-livestock balance, so maintaining ecological functioning is the top priority. In the south of Tibet, the water and heat conditions are much better in the lower watersheds, so developing high-yield and high-quality cultivated pasture is beneficial. Forage production in South Tibet can provide the feed supply for the north Tibet rangelands and regulate the regional balance of grass and livestock (
Three pathways are identified for securing the above- mentioned regional synergy. First, design different restoration technologies and models for various degrees of degraded alpine rangelands and steadily improve the ecological functioning in northern Tibet, and simultaneously reclaim appropriate cultivated pasture in the suitable areas with available irrigation to increase the winter and spring forage supply so as to indirectly achieve the goal of restoring and conserving the degraded rangeland. Second, focus on the construction of high-yield and high-quality cultivated pasture in the agriculture-pastoral ecotone of southern Tibet to boost ecological animal husbandry and improve the restoration technologies and modes of degraded rangeland so as to improve the ecological function of production. And finally, make use of the advantages of high yield cultivated pasture in marginal land or low-productivity arable land in the South Tibetan River Valley to provide a feed supply for livestock in the North Tibetan pastoral area. Through this regional agriculture and pastoral coordination, the shortages of grass products will be solved and animal pressure on the rangeland will be reduced, and therefore, the region will arrive at a win-win goal.
This special issue contains a series of papers broadly organized into two themes: (1) Rangeland ecosystem function and management, and (2) Ecosystem responses to climate change. In the first theme of ecosystem functioning,
With regard to ecosystem responses to climate change,
It is imperative to call for regional synergy through integrating ecological functioning with ecosystem service, considering the alarming threat of rangeland degradation on the Tibetan Plateau. The series of papers in this issue, and those published previously, provide a collection of rangeland ecology and management studies in an effort to ensure sustainable use and management of the alpine ecosystems. We hope that this effort will provide incentives for further research and have invaluable implications for alpine ecosystem management.
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