In the Neotropics the predominant pathway to intensify productivity is generally thought to be to convert grasslands to sown pastures, mostly in monoculture. This article examines how above-ground net primary productivity (ANPP) in semi-natural grasslands and sown pastures in Central America respond to rainfall by: (i) assessing the relationships between ANPP and accumulated rainfall and indices of rainfall distribution, (ii) evaluating the variability of ANPP between and within seasons, and (iii) estimating the temporal stability of ANPP.

In the present study an estimation of livestock enteric CH4 emission has been made from feeding systems (diets) for different animal functions (maintenance, production and growth) prevailing in different agroecological regions (AERs) of India using livestock population 2003. Estimations comprised of dietary intake, digestibility and CH4 emission factors for ruminant species of different age groups determined from feeding systems/diets. Methane production (ml g–1) from production diets in animal species tended to be more than growth and maintenance diets.

Imagine charging your cellphone from a meadow or harvesting electricity from rice paddies. The technology works, but can we make plant power a staple crop?

There's a solution to the continent's rampant fires and feral animals, says David Bowman — introduce large mammals and increase hunting pressure.

Both earthworms and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) are important ecosystem engineers co-occurring in temperate grasslands. However, their combined impacts during grassland establishment are poorly understood and have never been studied. We used large mesocosms to study the effects of different functional groups of earthworms (i.e., vertically burrowing anecics vs.

The authors studied the activity patterns and feeding ecology of Asian Elephants Elephas maximus in deciduous and dry thorn forests of the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve, southern India. Over 20,000 instantaneous scan samplings on elephants revealed that 60% of the daylight hours were devoted to feeding.

Savannas worldwide are vital for both socioeconomic and biodiversity values. In these ecosystems, management decisions are based on the perception that wildlife and livestock compete for food, yet there are virtually no experimental data to support this assumption. We examined the effects of wild African ungulates on cattle performance, food intake, and diet quality. Wild ungulates depressed cattle food intake and performance during the dry season (competition) but enhanced cattle diet quality and performance during the wet season (facilitation).

Widespread adaptation of biomass production for bioenergy may influence important biogeochemical functions in the landscape, which are mainly carried out by soil microbes. Here we explore the impact of four potential bioenergy feedstock crops (maize, switchgrass, Miscanthus X giganteus, and mixed tallgrass prairie) on nitrogen cycling microorganisms in the soil by monitoring the changes in the quantity (real-time PCR) and diversity (barcoded pyrosequencing) of key functional genes (nifH, bacterial/archaeal amoA and nosZ) and 16S rRNA genes over two years after bioenergy crop establishment.

Global warming is predicted to induce desiccation in many world regions through increases in evaporative demand. Rising CO2 may counter that trend by improving plant water-use efficiency. However, it is not clear how important this CO2-enhanced water use efficiency might be in offsetting warming-induced desiccation because higher CO2 also leads to higher plant biomass, and therefore greater transpirational surface. Furthermore, although warming is predicted to favour warm-season, C4 grasses, rising CO2 should favour C3, or cool-season plants.

When the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced this month that it did not have the authority to oversee a new variety of genetically modified (GM) Kentucky bluegrass, it exposed a serious weakness in the regulations governing GM crops. These are based not on a plant's GM nature but on the techniques used for its genetic modification. With changing technologies, the department says that it lacks the authority to regulate newly created transgenic crops.