Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
Abstract
Mountain areas are important sources of livestock forage production, water, energy, and biological diversity. Furthermore, they are sources of such key resources as minerals, forest products and agricultural products and of recreation. Mountain environments are susceptible to accelerated soil erosion, landslide and rapid loss of habitat and genetic diversity. They are essential to the survival of the global ecosystem. In the West Azarbaijan province of Iran the existed livestock are about two times more than range capacity. Nowadays considering genetic erosion and plant cover retrogression, the study of balanced grazing as an approached strategy for proper management of natural resources is necessary and inevitable. For the study of livestock productions the weights of sheep under balance grazing and traditional grazing were compared with each other. In this study the vegetation type of Festuca ovina -Bromus tomentellus with fair condition, negative trend and grazing capacity of 0.7 animal units in three month was selected. This vegetation type with considering grazing capacity and range readiness was studied under balanced grazing from 1999 to 2003. The results indicated that the range condition promoted from fair condition to good condition, and the grazing capacity reached to 2.7 animal units per month. The average of plant cover and soil protection values reached from 24 and 54 percent to 33 and 64 percent respectively (significant difference at 5 % level of probability)
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