• Studies need to account for managerial variability and their contributions to the success of rotational grazing systems to provide insights and help resolve controversy surrounding this issue .
• Overall , the key point was about providing strategic rest to soils and pastures , and the method used ( Holistic Management , cell grazing , rotational grazing , continuous grazing with rest , wet season spelling , adaptive multi-paddock etc .) was secondary .
• The main benefit of regenerative grazing approaches appears to be changing the mindset of graziers so that they are more ecologically focused rather than animal focused . The actual grazing system used once their mindset shifted is less important .
The outcomes from the CSIRO and USQ research were submitted as a paper to the Rangeland Journal and the first paper cited as “ Do innovative regenerative grazing management practices improve vegetation and soil health in grazed rangelands ? Preliminary insights from a space for time study in the Great Barrier Reef catchments .’’ Rebecca Bartley CSIRO , Afshin Ghahramani USQ , Brett N . Abbott CSIRO , Aram Ali USQ , Rod Kerr NQ Dry Tropics , Dr . Christian Roth SeeSide Dialogue , Anne Henderson CSIRO .
Results suggest improvements in vegetation , soil and land condition can be obtained from implementing regenerative grazing principles , although it is likely to take up to ~ 20 years for statistical improvements to be measurable at a site , particularly for areas that are moving from a very degraded baseline condition . Vegetation attributes such as biomass , plant basal area and litter incorporation appear to be better surrogates than groundcover for representing improved landscape condition and soil health .
Dr . Rebecca Bartley made a presentation to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation ’ s Innovations about reducing erosion and fine sediment loss webinar in June 2022 and the key messages were :
• time for recovery is important > 10 years ;
• per cent cover is useful , but biomass , basal area , species diversity , litter are also important but hard to predict from remote sensing ;
• climate , fire , tree density are also important ; and
• areas of further work : o Grazing management and economics . o Trade off in certainty between on-ground measurements , remote sensing and models . o More long-term data and insights on ‘ recovery ’.
Following discussions with ( then ) CSIRO ’ s Dr . Christian Roth , the introduction of some simple measures of soil health into the monitoring program was recommended . The CSIRO and USQ regenerative grazing research project included a soil health component for sites on Strathalbyn , Glenalpine and Mt . Pleasant stations . The Stomping out Sediment Strathalbyn black soil project area ( stock exclusion and UHD treatments ) was added to the USQ soil health monitoring program to provide comparative data for four different livestock treatments . The two additional CSIRO project treatments were planned rotational grazing and continuous grazing . Testing of some soil biology monitoring techniques was also undertaken at the CSIRO Glenalpine project site .
The range of project treatments varied considerably across properties and project sites depending largely on the scale of project but also the sediment savings and hence cost effective investment that could be applied to the site . Monitoring techniques were developed as the scale of projects evolved and the requirements for specific sites were realised . An example was the use of LiDAR at Glenalpine which would have been difficult to justify on smaller sites .
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