Impacts of holistic planned grazing with bison compared to continuous grazing with cattle in South Dakota shortgrass prairie
Paper assesses Holistic Planned Grazing outcomes in shortgrass prairie of the Northern Great Plains of North America. Researchers compared key ecosystem functions on the ranch of long time Holistic Management practitioner Mimi Hillenbrand who grazes bison, with those on neighboring cattle ranches using set stocked light continuous (LCG) and heavy continuous grazing (HCG).
Grazing management impacts on vegetation, soil biota and soil chemical, physical and hydrological properties in tall grass prairie
This paper finds that adaptive management using multi-paddock grazing produced superior outcomes on vegetative cover and soil. In a comparison of four grazing schemes: light continuous (LC), heavy continuous (HC), multi-paddock with adaptive management (MP), ungrazed areas – exclusion (EX), the MP lots were better in almost every measure. Factors measured included soil organic matter (SOM), water infiltration rate, water volumetric percentage, cation exchange capacity, fungal/bacterial ratio, percent bare ground and standing biomass of desirable and undesirable plants.
