ARS Scientists Discover Strategically Applied Livestock Grazing Can Benefit Sagebrush Communities

by Amaani Lyle, USDA, Agricultural Research Service
August 5, 2024

While a cow grazing in a field isn’t typically remarkable, United States Department of Agriculture scientists have identified potential ecological benefits of strategically applied livestock grazing in sagebrush communities across U.S. western rangelands.

As recently published in the scientific journal Ecosphere, the collaborative research effort among Agricultural Research Service (ARS) rangeland scientists at Burns, Oregon, and Fort Collins, Colorado, challenged the outdated dogma that livestock grazing in the sagebrush steppe always negatively impacts these ecosystems and, in fact, can convey desirable outcomes, particularly in regard to limiting both wildfire risk and invasive annual grasses.

In addressing these ecological challenges, ARS scientists discovered that strategically applying livestock grazing prior to the occurrence of climate-induced wildfires can modify sagebrush steppe characteristics in ways that decrease fire probability and severity in the communities, promote biodiversity while reducing postfire annual grass invasion, fire-induced loss of native bunchgrasses, and fire damage to soil biocrusts, the collection of bacteria, fungi and mosses on the soil surface.

Keep reading: https://www.ars.usda.gov/news-events/news/research-news/2024/ars-scientists-discover-strategically-applied-livestock-grazing-can-benefit-sagebrush-communities/

Read the Ecosphere paper: https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecs2.4859