Get reliable rangeland science

Rangelands can serve as nature-based solutions to climate and biodiversity crises by sequestering and storing carbon and providing habitat for multiple species. Since rangeland systems are complex, inherently variable, and are facing high rates of change, prescriptive or standardized management practices cannot reliably produce desired benefits. Since 2014, the South of the Divide Conservation Action Program Inc. (SODCAP) has collaborated with rangeland managers in Saskatchewan, Canada, employing a participatory, outcome-based approach to enhance ecosystem health and wildlife benefits in a livestock production context. SODCAP's ongoing Living Lab-Central Prairies (LL-CP) project engages agricultural land managers, researchers, and other stakeholders, using a producer centric approach, to identify characteristics of grazing management systems that can reliably produce needed benefits, including carbon storage and biodiversity. Work to date indicates that a Diverse Adaptive Landscape-Livestock Interaction (DA LLI) approach to grazing management is used by local ranchers to ensure that desired benefits are produced over time. DALLI managers dynamically adjust grazing strategies and tools across spatial and temporal scales to distribute livestock impacts throughout landscapes, leveraging techniques like animal herding, strategic water and mineral placement, flexible fencing, and incorporation of diverse perennial and annual land use types within grazing systems. Management responds to and promotes ecosystem heterogeneity, producing a shifting mosaic of impacts, which supports system resilience and biodiversity. Interviews with ranchers who use this approach underscore how diverse factors, such as climate conditions, economic viability, and community well-being, shape management decisions and outcomes. LL-CP's ongoing data collection on soil carbon, greenhouse gas emissions, plant biomass, diversity, nutrient quality, and socioeconomic factors will help to quantify the benefits of DALLI grazing management. This work will help validate the potential of diverse, adaptive grazing strategies to promote sustainable rangeland management amidst dynamic environmental challenges.