Livestock grazing is a major land use in the western United States. Riparian areas are an important source of forage and water for cattle. Proper grazing is essential in maintaining riparian function and value. Improper grazing practices can impair riparian function by depletion of riparian vegetation, trampling streambanks, and overbrowsing of riparian shrubs. Use of grazing deferment and or rest are commonly recommended practices for managing riparian zones. We placed global positioning system (GPS) collars on cattle under time controlled grazing management and a more traditional season long grazing system in Rich County, Utah. The two adjacent grazing systems provided an opportunity for a comparison of the two grazing systems in order to describe the effects of these systems on riparian use by cattle. Resource selection functions were used to estimate the relative importance of various environmental factors on site selection by cattle and the overall differences in cattle use of riparian areas. This work will illustrate how cattle use of riparian areas differ between grazing systems and will provide an important ranch scale assessment of how grazing systems affect livestock distribution.
Oral presentation and poster titles, abstracts, and authors from the Society for Range Management (SRM) Annual Meetings and Tradeshows, from 2013 forward.