Resilience of dry cattle rangelands to drought

Tropical forests are being rapidly converted into treeless pastures used for extensive livestock grazing. Yet, the overall effects of trees on grass and livestock productivity remain poorly understood and hotly debated. We hypothesise that trees may play a key role on the resilience of pastures during dry and hot periods. We assess the effects of tree cover on the capacity of dry rangelands to recover from drought events by monitoring grass productivity and cattle behaviour during dry and wet seasons in pastures with different levels of tree cover in Yucatán, southern Mexico.

Publications:

Hernández-Salmerón, I.R., M. Holmgren. 2022. Global meta-analysis: Sparse tree cover increases grass biomass in dry pastures. Frontiers in Environmental Science 10 (DOI 10.3389/fenvs.2022.949185)