An Overview of Permanent Grassland Grazing Management Practices and the Impacts on Principal Soil Quality Indicators

Filippo Milazzo; Richard M. Francksen; Mohamed Abdalla; Simone Ravetto Enri; Laura Zavattaro; Marco Pittarello; Stanislav Hejduk; Paul Newell-Price; René L. M. Schils; Pete Smith; Tom Vanwalleghem

doi:10.3390/agronomy13051366

An Overview of Permanent Grassland Grazing Management Practices and the Impacts on Principal Soil Quality Indicators

Filippo Milazzo, Richard M. Francksen, Mohamed Abdalla, Simone Ravetto Enri, Laura Zavattaro, Marco Pittarello, Stanislav Hejduk, Paul Newell-Price, René L. M. Schils, Pete Smith, Tom Vanwalleghem

Aberdeen Centre For Environmental Sustainability

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

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Abstract

Grasslands are at risk of degradation due to unsustainable management practices and climate change. Here, we review the principal soil quality indicators (SQIs) to evaluate the sustainability of different grassland management practices globally. We discuss the importance of SQI assessment and the Soil Quality Minimum Dataset (MDS) specifically in the context of grasslands. We then review two potential solutions, the first of which is adopting grazing management, whereby sustainable grazing management plans (GMPs) offer great potential. The other solution is the development and adoption of novel grassland species, which may improve either drought resistance or infiltration rates, erosion and flooding. Sustainable grassland soil management can promote ecosystem service delivery and improve the resilience of the entire grassland ecosystem to anthropogenic change.

Original language	English
Article number	1366
Number of pages	16
Journal	Agronomy
Volume	13
Issue number	5
Early online date	12 May 2023
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy13051366
Publication status	Published - 12 May 2023

Bibliographical note

Funding
This research is funded by the European Union under the Horizon 2020 projects “Developing SUstainable PERmanent Grassland systems and policies (Super-G)”, grant no. 774124 and “Transforming Unsustainable management of soils in key agricultural systems in EU and China. Developing an integrated platform of alternatives to reverse soil degradation” (TUdi), GA 101000224. Views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union (EU) or the European Research Council. Vanwalleghem and Milazzo also acknowledge additional financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, the Spanish State Research Agency, and through the Severo Ochoa and María de Maeztu Program for Centers and Units of Excellence in R&D (Ref. CEX2019-000968-M).
Acknowledgments
We would like to acknowledge Richard Smith for providing some important pictures.

Keywords

soil quality indicators
grazing management
ecosystem services
permanent grasslands
management practices

UN SDGs

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

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© 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Final published version, 1.29 MBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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abstract = "Grasslands are at risk of degradation due to unsustainable management practices and climate change. Here, we review the principal soil quality indicators (SQIs) to evaluate the sustainability of different grassland management practices globally. We discuss the importance of SQI assessment and the Soil Quality Minimum Dataset (MDS) specifically in the context of grasslands. We then review two potential solutions, the first of which is adopting grazing management, whereby sustainable grazing management plans (GMPs) offer great potential. The other solution is the development and adoption of novel grassland species, which may improve either drought resistance or infiltration rates, erosion and flooding. Sustainable grassland soil management can promote ecosystem service delivery and improve the resilience of the entire grassland ecosystem to anthropogenic change.",

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An Overview of Permanent Grassland Grazing Management Practices and the Impacts on Principal Soil Quality Indicators

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

UN SDGs

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