Rangeland Ecology & Management

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Grazing on the Santa Rita Experimental Range
Author
Not Available
Publisher
Not Available
Publication Year
2007
Body

We are in the second year of a new livestock grazing management scheme was implemented on the Santa Rita Experimental Range (Santa Rita) under the supervision of Dr. George Ruyle, School of Natural Resources (gruyle@ag.arizona.edu) and in cooperation with Andrew McGibbon who owns the livestock. This new management began in November 2006 and it replaces the “Santa Rita Grazing System” experiment that was in place since 1972 (Martin and Severson. 1988. J. Range. Man. 41:291-295.) The new scheme applies adaptive grazing management principles to establish expected dormant season grazing capacity based on summer forage production, and summer grazing periods based on avoiding the re-grazing of plants in the summer growing season. The adaptive management elements include 1) use of summer production values to re-adjust stocking rates each fall, 2) start and duration of the summer growing season to determine when livestock should be moved between pastures, and 3) flexible pasture use to support the variety of research projects being performed on the Santa Rita. 

Language
English
Resource Type
Text
Document Type
Other
Collection
Keywords
Arizona
Santa Rita
Santa Rita Experimental Range
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