The relative abundance or dominance of grasses and woody vegetation is highly dynamic at timescales ranging from decades to centuries to millennia (Fig. 2.1). Over the past 100 years or so, there has been a directional shift toward increased abundance of woody vegetation worldwide (Sala and Maestre 2014). The phenomenon of woody plant encroachment (WPE) in grasslands and savannas contrasts with deforestation and dieback occurring in many forested systems. The proliferating trees and shrubs can be non-native species that were introduced purposely or accidentally or native species that have either increased in abundance within their historic ranges or expanded their geographic range. Woody plants have been displacing grasses across bioclimatic zones. Trees proliferate in humid regions while unpalatable shrubs replace grasses in more arid regions, which is regarded as a type of desertification. In both cases, the proliferation of trees and shrubs threatens the maintenance of grassland and savanna ecosystems and the plants and animals that are endemic to these systems.
In this chapter we (1) review the rates, dynamics, causes, and consequences of woody plant proliferation over the past 100 years, (2) evaluate the extent to which interventions aimed at reducing woody vegetation have effectively restored lost or altered key ecosystem services, and (3) assess trade-offs influencing ecological and socioeconomic decisions and priorities for managing woody plants in rangelands.
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Among papers reporting relationships between shrub encroachment and grazing, mean (SE) shrub cover was statistically comparable on grazed sites (21 % 0.9) and sites protected from grazing (24 % 0.9). Overall, the presence or absence of grazing did not predict changes in shrub cover over time. Variation within many of these studies was high, indicating that the role of grazing is complex, even at the ranch level. Weighted regression analysis further indicated that precipitation, continent (North and South America, Australia, Africa), and grain size (i.e., plot/pixel size) were not significant predictors of grazing importance. Interestingly, there was a significant relationship between the data source (field sampling vs. remote sensing) and grazing importance. Assessments based on broad-scale remote sensing (aerial photos, satellite imagery) were more likely to conclude that grazing promotes shrub encroachment, whereas field-based studies were more likely to conclude that grazing has no effect on shrub encroachment. This may reflect the fact that studies of shrub encroachment and grazing based on field data focus on, and are restricted to, the outcomes of short-term grass-woody plant interactions at plant and patch scales, whereas remote sensing assessments reveal the longer term, landscape-scale outcomes of patch-scale dynamics (e.g., Milne et al. 1996). Photo credit: E. Andersen
Livestock grazing is a primary use of grasslands worldwide (Asner et al. 2004) and is often associated with WPE. The arrival of livestock with Anglo-European settlers in the Americas, Australia, and Southern Africa, although occurring at different times, coincided with dramatic and swift changes in woody abundance in grasslands and savannas (Archer 1994). Grazing by livestock removes fine fuels, which reduces fire frequency and intensity and also enhances woody plant recruitment (Madany and West 1983). The advantages for woody plants may be magnified where livestock are effective dispersers of their seeds. In addition, livestock introductions can be associated with displacement of native browsers and seed predators, releasing woody plants from top-down controls.
Drivers of change must also be considered in the context of time. At a site in the Sonoran Desert, woody cover increased both within 74-year-old livestock exclosures and in the surrounding grazed landscapes, suggesting that factors other than grazing were responsible. However, heavy grazing in the late 1800s and early 1900s may have altered ecological processes in ways that predisposed the site to shrub encroachment prior to the time exclosures were established in 1932 (Browning and Archer 2011). In addition, cessation or relaxation of grazing subsequent to degradation may have promoted WPE by enabling a degree of grass recovery that then facilitated shrub recruitment (e.g., de Dios et al. 2014).
Depth of rainfall infiltration and seasonal timing of rainfall can interact with MAP to locally constrain the extent to which maximum potential woody cover might be realized at a given location. Rainfall that percolates deep into the soil is typically more assessable to deeper rooted woody plants than to shallow-rooted grasses. Accordingly, frequent low-intensity events (Good and Caylor 2011), large rainfall events (Kulmatiski and Beard 2013), and precipitation delivered during the period of grass dormancy (Walter 1979; Bond et al. 1994; Gao and Reynolds 2003) are more likely to recharge soil moisture at depths benefitting woody plants. Grasslands would therefore be favored in climates characterized by summer rainfall and small rainfall events that moisten only upper horizons (Neilson et al. 1992). At local scales, however, rainfall is redistributed by topography and the extent to which it infiltrates and percolates is influenced strongly by soil texture and depth (Sect. 2.3.3).
Distribution, size, and density of woody vegetation are also influenced by topography. In the Northern Hemisphere, south-facing slopes are warmer and drier than north-facing slopes and typically support less woody plant cover (Bailey 2014). Runoff from slopes concentrates water and nutrients in downslope areas and augments incoming precipitation, potentially enabling arroyos, washes, and intermittent drainages to support higher densities of larger-sized woody plants than upslope portions of the landscape (Coughenour and Ellis 1993). Runoff and runon relationships and their substantive influences on woody plant abundance are also evident on gently sloping landscapes (Tongway et al. 2001). Landscape-scale variation in rates and patterns of WPE in recent decades are therefore related to and constrained by topoedaphic variation (Wu and Archer 2005; Naito and Cairns 2011; Browning et al. 2012; Rossatto et al. 2014) (Text Box 2.2).
Pleistocene-age surfaces, with their well-developed claypan horizons (39 % clay at 10 cm depth), have experienced similar climate and levels of atmospheric CO2 enrichment and have experienced similar land-use (livestock grazing) and disturbance regimes (heavy grazing in the early to mid-1900s, and lack of fire) as the Holocene-age landscapes, and yet have persisted as C4 grassland. Note that shrub abundance is also higher in runon areas (arroyos and intermittent drainages) in both geomorphic settings and that shrubs give way to trees as elevation increases.
Woody encroachers are composed overwhelmingly of C3 plants. By contrast, grasslands and savannas in tropical, subtropical, and warm-temperate biomes often are dominated by C4 grasses. This pattern led to the hypothesis that woody encroachment might be a consequence of a CO2-mediated correction in the competitive relationships between C3 and C4 plants (Idso 1992; Polley 1997). However, this cannot entirely explain WPE at the global scale, as woody plants also encroach into grasslands dominated by C3 grasses. Woody plants have other structural and functional advantages over herbaceous vegetation, which increase their ecological opportunities under accelerated growth conditions (Poorter and Navas 2003). Whereas herbaceous plants lose most annual biomass accumulation to herbivory, combustion, or decomposition, woody plants build up woody biomass and carbohydrate storage over decades, thereby strengthening their ability to persist in the face of stress and disturbance. Woody plants are most vulnerable to injury, physiological stress, and competition when they are small, and faster growth would expedite their transition to more resilient and competitive life stages.
When woody plant seedlings germinate in grasslands, they face intense competition for light, water, and soil nutrients. In lightly grazed, high-productivity grasslands, grasses will initially be taller than woody plant seedlings, reducing light availability (de Dios et al. 2014). Typically, grasses and woody seedlings in water-limited environments share the same shallow soil horizon (Kambatuku et al. 2013), so that grasses may furthermore monopolize soil resources to near exclusion of woody plant recruits, especially under environmental conditions that favor grasses: fine-texture or shallow soil sites with a summer rainy season characterized by small rainfall events that wet only the near-surface soils (Fravolini et al. 2005). However, grazing reduces grass leaf area, root density, and depth and therefore competitive effects on seedlings above and below ground. The intensity of grazing required to induce this response is likely to vary among sites, and may vary with soil condition according to their favorability for grasses. Thus, critical grazing levels may be relatively low on sandy, deep sites and higher on clayey or shallower sites (Knoop and Walker 1985).
Both browsing and fire constrain the progression from sapling to mature shrub or tree (Norton-Griffiths 1979; Augustine and McNaughton 2004; Vadigi and Ward 2014). The frequency and intensity of fire are coupled strongly to grassland productivity (Krawchuk and Moritz 2011) and to grazing (Anderies et al. 2002; Fuhlendorf et al. 2008). Grasslands that develop a high density of standing biomass generate litter capable of fueling hot fires that top-kill or kill saplings. Further, reliability of dry-season fire in more productive systems reduces the occurrence of temporal refuges or fire-free periods that would permit some tree cohorts to pass into a fire-tolerant life stage. Similarly, high spatial connectivity of grass cover would reduce the occurrence of spatial refuges or patches that escape fire during a burn event. Fire is therefore considered the main factor limiting tree cover in warm, semiarid to subhumid savannas that would, without fire, transition to a community dominated by woody plants (Bond 2008). 2ff7e9595c
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