Interpretive Summary: Matching livestock to landscape: a proposal of metrics to phenotype grazing distribution from Global Navigation Satellite System collar data

By: Francisco Maroto-Molina, Eseró Padrón-Tejera, Dolores C Pérez-Marín

Grazing lands cover above one-third of Earth’s ice-free terrestrial surface, playing a key role as suppliers of ecosystem services, such as livestock feed production, water supply, erosion control, carbon storage, biodiversity conservation, etc. Since grasslands are reliant on weather, primarily rainfall and temperature, climate variability largely affects their performance.

Many extensive livestock farms are situated in arid and semi-arid areas, making them especially vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. In arid regions, increasing temperatures and declining rainfall are already being observed, and a shift in the seasonal distribution of pasture production (e.g., shorter growing seasons), as well as an increasing year-to-year climate variability, are also expected. Changing climate will require farmers to adapt their management practices to be sustainable and resilient.

Read the full article in Animal Frontiers.