Abstract
Ruminants directly or indirectly influence nutrient cycling and vegetation structure in grassland ecosystems. We assessed the impact of natural cattle dung deposition on soil attributes and the resulting effects on species composition, species diversity and biomass of herbaceous vegetation in a natural grassland in the seasonally dry tropical environment of Banaras Hindu University, India. For this 72 plots of 1 × 1 m [12 locations × 2 treatments (dung residue and control) × 3 replicates] were selected in January 2013 and soil and vegetation samples collected. A total of 74 species belonging to 66 genera and 25 families were recorded. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) ordination revealed that the dung residue (DP) and control (CP) plots were distinctly different in terms of soil attributes and species composition. The k -dominance plot showed greater species diversity in DPs than CPs, with higher soil nutrients and moisture and lower soil pH in DPs than CPs. Similarly, DPs showed more herbaceous species and greater biomass than CPs. This trend can be explained by the positive responses of forbs, erect plants, annuals, large-statured, non-native and non-leguminous species to dung residue, while increased biomass can be partly due to cattle preferentially not grazing areas adjacent to a dung pat. Overall, the study showed that deposition of dung during grazing by cattle stimulates growth of pasture species and increases species diversity. Therefore cattle dung could be used as a sustainable alternative to chemical fertilizers to manage soil pH, species composition and diversity, and forage production in the seasonally dry tropical grasslands of India, which are nutrient- and moisture-limited. Keywords: Animal manure, herbaceous vegetation, plant functional attributes, soil pH, species change. DOI: 10.17138/TGFT(3)112-128
Highlights
Grasslands occupy roughly 25% (33 × 106 km2) of the total land surface of the Earth (Shantz 1954) and about 18% of the total land area in India (Singh et al 2006), the second most populous country globally
The mean values for soil moisture (t = 18.33, P≤0.0001), porosity (t = 12.86, P≤0.0001), NH4+-N, NO3--N, mineral-N, organic-N and total soil nitrogen (total-N) were significantly higher in dung residue plots (DPs) than in control plots (CPs) (Tables 1−3)
Total-C, total soil phosphorus (total-P) and C:N ratio varied significantly due to location, treatment and location × treatment (Table 3), with values approximately 2-fold greater in DPs than CPs (Tables 1 and 2)
Summary
Grasslands occupy roughly 25% (33 × 106 km2) of the total land surface of the Earth (Shantz 1954) and about 18% of the total land area in India (Singh et al 2006), the second most populous country globally. The effects of dung on pasture ecosystems have been studied extensively with respect to nutrient cycling (Dickinson and Craig 1990) and species composition in temperate grasslands (MacDiarmid and Watkin 1971; Castle and MacDaid 1972). Such studies, with particular emphasis on biodiversity and biomass of plants, are lacking in tropical grasslands. We hypothesized that dung residue may promote herbaceous biomass production and species diversity of certain plant species (Steinauer and Collins 1995), because moist dung is a nutrient-rich microhabitat that facilitates seed germination and seedling establishment of competitively superior species (Brown and Archer 1987)
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