Abstract
Pastoralist grazing management
practices play a vital role in maintaining rangeland productivity and
biodiversity. However, the degradation of rangelands and loss of
ecosystem services have raised concerns about the future of pastoralism
as a form of land use. Despite their importance, we have limited
knowledge about the effect of traditional grazing management practices
on vegetation attributes, such as species composition, richness,
diversity, herbage biomass, and density, and canopy cover. To address
this knowledge gap, we studied the changes in vegetation attributes
under three traditional grazing management practices in the Somali
pastoral ecosystem of Ethiopia.
We found a significant difference in herbaceous and woody vegetation
attributes among the grazing management practices (p < 0.001).
Enclosures supported higher herbaceous species diversity and abundance
of desirable species, such as Chloris gayana, Chrysopogon aucheri,
Cynodon dactylon , and Themeda triandera , compared to open
grazing and browsing management sites. The herbage biomass was three
times higher in enclosures than in open grazing and twice higher than in
browsing management practices. However, browsing management practices
supported significantly higher levels of wood biomass, density, and
canopy cover than the other management practices. Our results suggest
that transitioning from open grazing to enclosure and browsing
management practices can lead to higher plant productivity, which
supports the local pastoral economy in the Somali rangeland of Ethiopia.
Thus, dryland restoration programs should consider traditional
indigenous knowledge for ensuring the sustainability of future rangeland
productivity and biodiversity conservation.