Abstract
Horses are of increasing relevance in agriculturally managed grasslands across Europe. There is concern to what extent grazing with horses is a sustainable grassland management practice. The effect of longer-term horse grazing on the vegetation characteristics of grasslands has received little attention, especially in comparison to grazing cattle. Our study analyses the relative importance of grazing system (grazer species and regime) and grassland management for vegetation characteristics in grasslands as indicator for sustainable management. We monitored grassland vegetation in western central Germany and compared paddocks grazed by horses under two different regimes, continuous (HC) vs. rotational (HR), to paddocks grazed by cattle (C) under similar trophic site conditions. We observed more plant species and more High Nature Value indicator species on HC compared to C. The vegetation of C was more grazing tolerant and had higher forage value than HC. Regardless of the grazing regime, the competitive component was lower, the stress-tolerant component higher and the floristic contrast between patch-types stronger on HC and HR paddocks compared to C. Species richness was strongly influenced by the extent of the floristic contrast. Our results emphasize the potential of horse grazing for biodiversity in agriculturally managed grasslands.
Highlights
Grazing livestock is seen as a promising option for maintaining and promoting grassland biodiversity [1,2,3,4]
Forty -three single species were classified as HNV-indicator species. 80% of HC, 75% of HR and 55% of C paddocks could be allocated to HNV grasslands with four or more HNV indicator species
These effects were significant in the full models for species richness (SR), HNV indicator species per paddock (HNV-SR), forage indicator value and the floristic contrast between patch types (Table 2)
Summary
Grazing livestock is seen as a promising option for maintaining and promoting grassland biodiversity [1,2,3,4]. Research has focused on free-ranging horses grazing in nature reserves to study the effects of horse grazing on grassland vegetation and sward structure [8,26,36,37,38,39], some demonstrating benefits for nature conservation [40,41] These results are not directly transferrable to agricultural grassland with domesticated horses. This has consequences for the practice of horse grazing, which is often inappropriate and causes land use conflicts in peri-urban and rural landscapes [17] Given this background, our study aimed to investigate the effect of horse compared to cattle grazing on vegetation characteristics in agricultural grassland. The grassland vegetation of the study paddocks belongs to the Molinio-Arrhenatheretea class
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