Introducing chicken farming into traditional ruminant-grazing dominated production system for promoting ecological restoration of degraded rangeland in northern China
发布时间：2019年03月15日
作者：苏华；刘伟；徐宏；杨景成；苏本营；张秀杰；王瑞霞；李永庚
摘要：Free-range
chicken farming (CF) has been demonstrated to be effective in
controlling locust plagues and restoring degraded vegetation in
rangelands. However, the effects of CF on vegetation growth and soil
conditions of rangeland ecosystems are not yet well known. We studied
the effects of CF (treated by three stocking rates from low-intensity to
high-intensity), livestock grazing (LG) and zero grazing (ZG) on
vegetation characteristics and soil nutrient conditions in a degraded
rangeland of northern China. CF significantly improved vegetation growth
and soil quality compared with LG. The moderate CF2 with 333 birds per
hectare enhanced the aboveground net primary production to 2040 g m(-2)
yr(-1) and vegetation cover to 888%, which is significantly higher than
LG by 807% and 629%, respectively. Moreover, CF2 neutralized the pH
value and raised soil organic matter, total N content, available N
content and available P content to approximately 759 g kg(-1), 034 g
kg(-1), 8352 mg kg(-1) and 34 mg kg(-1), respectively. Compared with ZG,
the positive impacts of CF on rangelands depended on the stocking rate,
and better performance was achieved when lower stocking rates were
used. We also analysed the economic benefits of CF through a
cost-benefit analysis. A local family could obtain a net present value
of at least $25219 per hectare by engaging in CF, which was two-fold
higher than LG. Finally, we proposed a novel land-use model that
introduces CF into traditional LG dominated system and can be widely
applied to promote socio-ecological sustainable development in degraded
rangelands. Copyright (c) 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
《Land Degradation and Development》2018 卷：29 期：2 起始页：240 结束页：249 总页数：10 ISSN：1085-3278