BIOMES OF THE EARTH - GRASSLANDS Part 9 docx

Crops would need more irrigation tomake good the shortfall, and in time natural grassland wouldbecome dominated by plants that tolerate drought while lesstolerant plants would disappear.

evaporation pan that is left standing in the open Obviously

the amount of water lost from the ground by evaporationcannot exceed the amount that falls as precipitation, but thepotential evaporation can exceed the precipitation It is pos-sible, therefore, for precipitation to increase but for theground to become drier

If the average temperature rises by less than about 3.6°F(2°C), precipitation will increase more than the potentialevaporation and so the ground will become more moist Thismight allow some plant species to grow more vigorously atthe expense of others, altering the balance of species in thenatural grassland community, and it might encourage thegrowth of more trees Where grassland has been converted toarable farmland, soil that is moister might increase cropyields, although crops could be damaged if some of theincreased precipitation arrives in the form of violent hail-storms

If the average temperature rises by more than about 3.6°F(2°C), potential evaporation will increase faster than precipi-tation and the ground will become drier This would be amore serious situation Crops would need more irrigation tomake good the shortfall, and in time natural grassland wouldbecome dominated by plants that tolerate drought while lesstolerant plants would disappear

At present the evidence suggests that the rise in ture will be modest and grasslands will not suffer, althoughtheir composition may change It is possible that forestmight expand into moister areas of what is now grassland Ifthe rate of warming were to increase substantially, however,grasslands would be confined to the moister regions whileother areas turned to semidesert or desert

tempera-Expansion of towns and roads

Nowadays most Americans and Europeans live in cities Inthe United States 79 percent of the population lives in urbanareas In the United Kingdom 89.5 percent of people are citydwellers, in France the proportion is 75.5 percent, and inGermany it is 87.7 percent More Italians live in the country-side, but even in Italy 67.1 percent of the population is

urban Russia is vast, but 73.3 percent of Russians live in

cities

The move into the cities is fairly recent Many city dwellers

were born and raised in rural areas, and even more of them

have parents or grandparents who lived in the countryside

Urban expansion is a process that accompanies the

industri-alization of economies Britain is one of the most highly

urbanized countries in the world, but in about 1800 almost

75 percent of the population lived in villages and hamlets,

and most of the towns outside London had fewer than 1,000

inhabitants In 1851 approximately 25.5 percent of the

pop-ulation lived in urban areas, but by 1931, only 80 years later,

this proportion had risen to 76.7 percent Industrialization

and the associated urbanization occurred earlier in Britain

than in most other countries, but even there many people

still feel they have family links to the countryside In other

parts of the world the links are closer

People moved into the cities—and still do—in search of a

better life Employment opportunities were greater and

wages were higher than those paid by farmers Despite the

overcrowding, poor sanitation, and appalling working

condi-tions in the industrializing cities of the 19th and early 20th

centuries, urban life promised better prospects of improved

living standards They offered hope—dreams of streets paved

with gold But as the unrealized dreams faded, the new city

dwellers began to recall their former rural lives more fondly

Memories of clear blue skies, green fields, trees, rivers of clean

water, and sweet-smelling air seemed very attractive amid the

smoke and grime of the city streets The long hours of hard

labor in the cold, rain, and mud were forgotten, along with

the hunger, grinding poverty, and insecurity that were the lot

of most farmworkers

As a consequence, many modern city dwellers value the

countryside highly Some dream of moving there to live, and

others content themselves with occasional visits, but even

people who never leave the city find reassurance in the

knowledge that the countryside exists and that they could

visit it if an opportunity arose and they chose to do so Many

do visit the countryside, of course When the railroads

opened in the course of the 19th century one of their first

tasks was to run excursions from the cities into the side, and the number of visitors increased still more rapidlywhen affordable mass-produced automobiles became avail-able.

country-The countryside has come to be valued both as an amenityand as the historic background to the lives of our own fami-lies Not surprisingly people guard it jealously and are strenu-ous in their opposition to any development that woulddiminish it

People object to the expansion of urban areas into thecountryside, both because this reduces the area of country-side and because expansion that takes place on the edge of anexisting city moves the countryside farther away from thoseliving near the urban center Roads provide access to thecountryside, but to do so they remove ribbons of country-side They are also visually intrusive and noisy, and vehicleexhausts from them pollute the air

Each year in the United States 1 million new homes andapproximately 10,000 miles (16,000 km) of new roads arebuilt in the 48 contiguous states and District of Columbia.Buildings and roads now cover 43,480 square miles (112,610

km2) That is an area almost as large as the state of Ohio Itsounds immense, and the rate of expansion sounds alarmingbecause of our high regard for the countryside across whichthese homes and roads are spreading How can anyone doubtthat urban expansion is gobbling up the countryside? Surelythe scale of the problem is clear At this rate it cannot be longbefore the few remaining patches of natural grassland vanishbeneath the asphalt and concrete

Indeed the total urban area of the United States is large,but many of the new houses are built to replace old housesthat have been demolished Even if all of them were beingbuilt in open countryside, however, the United States is a bigcountry and buildings and roads cover only a tiny proportion

of it—no more than 1.4 percent This makes the UnitedStates more highly urbanized than the world average, of 0.2percent of the total land area, but less so than some coun-tries In Britain buildings and roads cover 3.9 percent of theland

This is not the way it appears to people traveling out from

the cities They see the road or rail track lined by buildings

that extend far from the city center, with other groups of

buildings in the distance, separated by fields and trees, giving

them the impression that countryside survives only in

pock-ets It is not so, and the view from the air quickly dispels this

false impression Very little of the countryside has been

sacri-ficed to urban development even in the most densely

popu-lated and highly urbanized countries, and there is no reason

to suppose the urban area will increase greatly in years to

come Buildings and roads are unlikely to spread across the

world’s grasslands

Lessons from the Dust Bowl

Grasslands grow in those parts of the world where the mate is too dry to sustain forests but not so dry as to preventall plant growth In a climate of this type droughts are likely

cli-to occur at intervals, and the fact that the grassland plantssurvive shows they are adapted to periodic drought TheGreat Plains of North America are no exception, and thedrought that caused the Dust Bowl (see “The Dust Bowl” onpages 55–57) was not unique It led to tragedy—for the land

as well as for the families it ruined—because farmers hadbeen lulled into a false sense of security by several years ofgood weather and because they failed to take measures thatwould have reduced the amount of soil erosion

Two lessons emerged from the Dust Bowl disaster The firstwas that the native prairie grasses were able to survive pro-longed drought The second was that soil erosion can be min-imized and that farmers needed to be educated in the tech-niques of soil conservation

Grassland ecologists in Nebraska, Iowa, and Kansas studiedthe effects of the drought as it developed In the years prior

to the drought, vegetation covered 85 percent of the surface

on the short-grass prairie where no livestock grazed As thedrought progressed, the grasses began to die back and newgrowth failed to appear in the spring, until by 1940 plantscovered only 20 percent of the surface The composition ofthe grassland also changed As some plants—other floweringherbs (forbs) as well as grasses—died back, others spread.Nevertheless, the ground was almost bare and its surface soilblew in the wind

When the drought ended with the return of the rain in thewinter of 1941–42, grasses and forbs that had not been seenfor several years began to emerge above ground Their roots

MANAGING THE GRASSLANDS

218

or underground stems had survived in a dormant state,

need-ing only a generous soakneed-ing to stimulate them into

produc-ing new shoots Moreover even while dormant, those roots

and underground stems (rhizomes) bound soil particles

together Soil blew from the natural prairie and produced

dust storms, but much more soil blew from land where the

native grasses had been removed

Soil scientists and ecologists recognized that certain parts

of the short-grass prairie should not be cultivated because of

the high risk of soil erosion during the inevitable periodic

droughts These areas were left as natural prairie or sown

with native species where these had been removed

The need to improve farming practices was obvious, and in

1935 the Soil Conservation Act established the Soil

Con-servation Service (SCS) as a bureau of the U.S Department of

Agriculture (USDA) Hugh Hammond Bennett (1881–1960),

one of the world’s leading authorities on soil conservation,

was the first head of the SCS The new service directed its

help and advice beyond the Great Plains to farmers

through-out the nation

Under Bennett’s direction SCS advisers promoted soil

con-servation techniques that were traditional in Europe Bernard

Eduard Fernow (1851–1923), a German immigrant who went

on to head the USDA Division of Forestry, had demonstrated

them at the Cotton States International Exposition held at

Atlanta, Georgia, in 1895 Fernow showed three large models

that had been made according to his instructions to show

the same farm under different conditions The first model

showed the erosion that followed when deforested land was

farmed badly; the second showed the same land being

reclaimed; and the third showed the land fully recovered and

productive Techniques to prevent soil erosion clearly

exist-ed, and Fernow published photographs of his models in the

1895 edition of the Year Book of the United States Department of

Agriculture (now called the Yearbook of Agriculture) Experts

also encouraged farmers to adopt dry farming methods (see

the sidebar “Dry farming” on page 224)

The SCS divides the country into “soil conservation

dis-tricts,” and in 1956 Congress designed the Great Plains

Conservation Program to help farmers and ranchers devise

and apply conservation measures to reduce the risk of sion on their own land Under the program landownersplanted rows of trees and shrubs as windbreaks to shelterland from the wind The program also improved the efficien-

ero-cy of irrigation systems and the reliability of water supplies tolivestock Many of the ponds built to conserve water alsocontain fish Such measures as these have enhanced thebeauty of the countryside, while increasing the productivity

of the land

The drought that drove countless families from their farmsgenerated dust clouds that filled the sky over vast areas, andcreated the Dust Bowl was a catastrophe of epic proportions

It demanded an effective response, and it received one.Droughts continue to occur at intervals—they are naturalphenomena and inevitable—but even though they continue

to generate dust storms, the damage can now be limited

Ranching on equatorial grasslands

Cattle ranching is widespread on land that was formerlyforested in tropical South America Ranching accounts for anestimated 44 percent of all the deforestation that occurs inthe whole of the South American tropical forest and for 70percent of the deforestation in Brazil Since the mid-1960sapproximately 58,000 square miles (150,000 km2) ofAmazonian forest has been converted to grassland, mainly insouthern Pará and northern Mato Grosso states

The ranchers are descended from Spanish and Portuguesesettlers, and the first cattle ranch was established in 1692, onMarajó Island, near Belém, Brazil Far from being a recentphenomenon, ranching is deeply rooted in Hispanic culture,and there have been cattle ranches in the South AmericanTropics for more than three centuries

Nor is it true that the conversion of tropical forest to cattleranches is driven by the “hamburger connection”—thedemand for cheap beef in the United States Internationalbeef prices were high in the 1960s and early 1970s, and theUnited States was an important export market for SouthAmerican beef during those years, but almost none of thebeef was raised on deforested land In 1982 the Amazon sup-

plied a mere 0.0007 percent of the beef consumed in the

United States, and the Amazon region never produced more

than five percent of Brazilian beef The region has been a net

importer of beef in most years Most Brazilian beef is

processed before export into such products as corned beef

and sausages Beef prices fell during the 1980s, and the U.S

market became more dependent on domestic production and

imports from other North American Free Trade Agreement

(NAFTA) members, with the result that U.S beef imports

from the whole of Latin America have declined greatly since

then

Ranching expanded for several reasons Land prices rose

steadily for several decades in tropical Latin America, making

land acquisition a sound investment, and when governments

introduced settlement programs and designated particular

forest areas as reserves for conservation, prices rose even

faster Buyers acquired their land from governments, and

sev-eral governments made it a condition of ownership that the

buyer occupy the land This policy made deforestation a

con-dition of land ownership Since it was easier and cheaper to

convert forest to ranch land than to plow it and grow crops,

ranching became the simplest way to meet the requirement

Some governments paid subsidies for clearing forest and

introducing livestock These incentives have now ended in

most countries

Ranchers also raise dairy cattle The smaller stock farms

generally specialize in dairying and the bigger ranches in beef

production

Cleared forest was sown with pasture grasses and stocked

with about one head of cattle on every two acres (1.5/ha), but

after about five years there were some places where the

pas-ture would support no more than one animal to every six

acres (0.5/ha) Weeds had sprung up among the sown grass,

sprouts were growing from tree stumps, and trampling by

cattle had compacted the soil Insect pests attacked the

grasses, termites thrived, and birds and mammals continued

to deposit weed seeds Ranchers responded by sowing

dif-ferent grass species and experimenting with difdif-ferent

stock-ing densities They found that if stockstock-ing is too sparse, the

weeds will proliferate, and if it is too dense, the pasture will

be overgrazed and the soil damaged by trampling—also couraging weeds Ranchers and farmers control weeds main-

en-ly by clearing them manualen-ly and by planting braquiarao,

also called brizantão (Brachiaria brizantha), a pasture grass

that grows vigorously and suppresses weeds Herbicides aretoo costly to be used extensively

Demand for beef and dairy products is rising, and pasturesmust be improved if the demand is to be met with the leastharm to the environment This will require more researchinto the most suitable species of pasture grasses and the mostefficient management techniques Increasing the productivi-

ty of existing farms and ranches will ease the pressure on theforest There will be less need to clear the forest to providemore land, and landowners may find they have surplus land

on which they can grow crops This process will not removethe threat of deforestation, but it will reduce it

Farming tropical grasslands

Tropical grasslands support large herds of grazing mammalssuch as buffalo, antelope, elephants, and gazelles TheSerengeti and Masai Mara are world famous for their herds ofgrazers and for the lions, cheetahs, hyenas, and dogs thatpursue them (see “Protecting grassland species” on pages201–204) Local people have hunted game animals through-out history, and in Africa they also graze domestic livestock—humped (zebu) cattle, sheep, and goats—on the savannagrassland

Savanna grasslands cover two-thirds of the land area of theAfrican continent, and although the wildlife is protected inreserves such as the Serengeti and Masai Mara, grasslandsoutside the reserves are under threat The human population

is increasing, and some African countries encourage people

to settle on the grasslands to relieve pressure on the muchsmaller areas of arable farmland The people who live on thegrassland and graze their livestock there depend on theirdomestic animals for food and income, and they rely on thenatural vegetation for plant foods, fuel, and raw materials forbuilding and for making household items such as furniture

The average annual rainfall is 12–28 inches (300–700 mm),

making the area too dry for conventional arable farming, and

most people of the African savanna lead a pastoral life

Depending on local conditions, some live as nomads,

mov-ing their livestock from one seasonal pasture to the next

Others live a more settled life, moving between winter and

summer pastures There are also ranches on the savanna,

where the people have permanent homes and allow their

cat-tle to range over a wide area Some people grow a few crops as

well as tending livestock These ways of life are traditional,

but as pressure on the grasslands has intensified, overgrazing

has become a serious problem (see “Overgrazing and soil

ero-sion” on pages 209–211)

Savanna grasslands are so extensive and so many people

depend on them that ways must be found to manage them

more efficiently At present grasslands are undervalued The

fate of tropical forests is a matter of great international

con-cern, but grasslands are largely neglected They belong to no

one and are therefore vulnerable to the “tragedy of the

com-mons.”

A development program in the Darwin-Kakadu region of

northern Australia is supporting farmers as they rapidly

con-vert the grasslands to farmland At the time the program

began in 1979 buffalo were overgrazing and causing

consid-erable damage Agents removed more than 100,000 buffalo

from the area between 1979 and 1990, but they were not

eliminated entirely A herd of domesticated buffalo was

allowed to remain, but feral buffalo entering the farmed area

from outside are removed whenever they are found Most of

the area comprises small-scale beef farms; there are larger

properties to the south and west Farmers have improved the

pasture and the farms now produce cattle and buffalo They

also export hay, some of which is made into pelleted feed;

increasing amounts of hay go to supply the needs of those

raising recreational horses, a lucrative market

Northern Australian grasslands enjoy a moister climate

than the African savanna, with rainfall averaging more than

33 inches (840 mm) a year, but it is possible to improve

pas-ture and even to grow crops in regions with low rainfall “Dry

farming” was developed on the short-grass prairie of NorthAmerica (see the sidebar).

Tropical grasslands can be exploited efficiently and tainably Herds of wild animals use the pasture efficiently, bymoving on as soon as they have eaten the most nutritiousplants Domestic livestock can be managed in the same way

sus-Dry farming

In the 1860s a group of Scandinavian settlers plowed the land close to what is now BearRiver City, Utah, but the water they used to irrigate their crops was alkaline and their cropsfailed With only poisonous water available to them, the farmers could think of only onesolution: Sagebrush was growing on the land around their farms They plowed this land,mixing the sagebrush plants into the soil as they did so; sowed their seeds; and hoped forthe best The experiment succeeded and they harvested a good crop The settlers had

devised their own version of what is now known as dry farming.

Researchers explored the possibilities of dry farming in greater depth at the agriculturalcolleges that were being established across America during the 19th century, and tech-niques were developed independently in Utah, California, Washington, and Colorado.After the Dust Bowl years dry farming techniques were adopted over an even wider area.Today dry farming is practiced widely in regions where rainfall is sparse and unreliable Itmakes farming without irrigation possible in climates that receive less than about 12 inch-

es (305 mm) of rain a year

The first aim of dry farming is to conserve moisture by tilling the soil thoroughly andincluding a period during which the land lies fallow Where possible the land is plowed inthe fall and the seed is sown as soon as the soil has been prepared The crop grown musttolerate dry conditions—wheat, for example, rather than potatoes Once the crop hasbeen harvested, the land is left fallow, commonly for three years

An entire field may be left uncultivated, or crops may be grown in widely spaced stripsseparated by uncultivated strips, and cropped strips created in different locations eachyear Wild plants grow on the fallow land, and from time to time these are plowed into thesoil The plants gather moisture, and plowing buries their moist tissues before they havetime to lose water by transpiration By the end of the fallow period the partly decomposedwild plants will have released sufficient moisture into the soil to sustain the next crop

Dry farming is not unique to North America Farmers in many parts of the world havefound ways to grow crops in dry climates without irrigation

Farmers can fence off areas once they have been grazed to

allow them time to recover This practice will prevent

over-grazing and the deterioration of the pasture, and it may also

make it possible to improve the pasture by sowing better

grasses

American dry farming was developed on temperate

grass-land, but its techniques can be adapted to tropical grassland

Its disadvantage is that land must be left fallow and during its

fallow period it produces nothing

There is an alternative This begins with planting rows of

trees; on sloping ground the rows should run parallel to the

contours Acacia trees are especially suitable: They grow

nat-urally in the semiarid tropics, surviving drought well, and

they are legumes, which are plants that contribute nitrogen,

an essential plant nutrient, to the soil Once the trees are

established, annual crops such as millet or corn (maize) are

sown in the ground between the rows These crops grow

through the rainy season and are harvested when they ripen

The following year at the end of the dry season the farmer

cuts the trees down to about three feet (1 m) above ground

level The trimmed pieces themselves are useful; small, leafy

twigs can be fed to livestock and the wood provides fuel In

addition cutting the trees in this way makes them grow into

small, leafy bushes and leaves room for the next annual crop,

which is then sown between the rows This farming

tech-nique, called alley cropping or corridor farming, can be

sus-tained indefinitely Alley cropping is not practiced

every-where, but it is becoming more popular Its success

demon-strates that farming is feasible in the semiarid Tropics

Grassland restoration and conservation

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the federal

gov-ernment formed the Civilian Conservation Corps as one of

its projects to provide employment In 1936 the University of

Wisconsin hired workers from the corps to plant prairie

grasses and forbs in the University Arboretum That was the

first recorded attempt to reconstruct prairie vegetation In

1949 workers sowed 20 acres (8 ha) of prairie plants in the

Brownfields Wood Preserve of the University of Illinois,

under the supervision of the eminent ecologists Victor Ernest Shelford (1877–1968) and Samuel Charles Kendeigh(1904–86) There were further plantings at the MortonArboretum, at Lisle, Illinois, in 1963.

Almost all the original North American prairie has peared, but the prairie plants have survived They grow alongthe sides of roads and railroads, and in graveyards The pio-neers who died on the prairie were buried in cemeteries onthe prairie Prairie grasses and flowers covered the graves, andthe cemeteries, enclosed to keep out large animals, haveremained undisturbed ever since They are tiny patches ofthe original prairie

disap-The task of restoring the prairie vegetation begins by ing out the restoration site and clearing it of nonprairieplants This process requires at least a year and often longer,because seeds present in the soil must be allowed to germi-nate Meanwhile workers collect seeds from an area of surviv-ing prairie, usually by removing a small patch of soil togeth-

mark-er with all the plants growing on it The soil contains seedsthat are lying dormant, and the bare patch left behind soondisappears as seeds from surrounding plants fall onto it andgerminate The collected seeds are stored in a refrigerator—a

process called vernalization that breaks their dormancy.

The seeds are then sown Sometimes the scientists raise theforbs in a greenhouse and plant them out once they are bigand hardy enough to survive in the open Weeds have to beremoved by hand or cut down, usually for about the first twoyears, by which time the sown plants are fully established.Fires sweep across natural grassland whenever enoughdead and dry plant material has accumulated to supply fuel,and once the vegetation is growing strongly, the managers ofthe restoration site imitate this by firing the vegetation eachspring After a few years the vegetation is burned less fre-quently

Decades later the restored vegetation closely resembles ural prairie grassland There are many restoration sites acrossthe prairie states and provinces, with both short-grass andtallgrass types represented The restorations are not perfect,however Gradually certain of the introduced plants increase

nat-in number while others decrease, but the orignat-inal plantnat-ing

proportions can still be detected for a very long time, and in

many patches of restored prairie the proportions of species

are markedly different from those seen on natural prairie

There are also fewer animals Animals will enter of their

own accord if the area is accessible to them and supplies their

needs, but restored sites are like islands surrounded by oceans

of entirely different vegetation types Few prairie animals are

close enough to take advantage of such opportunities as the

site may offer, and the sites are too small to support any but

the smaller animals

Restoration is valuable, but it is no substitute for the “real

thing.” Where areas of undisturbed grassland remain, it is

important to conserve them, and there are prairie reserves

throughout the United States and Canada They vary in size

from the 10 acres (4 ha) of the Searles Prairie Natural Area in

Benton County, Arkansas, to the 13.5 square miles (35 km2)

of the Konza Prairie Biosphere Reserve and 17 square miles

(44 km2) of the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, both in

Flint Hills, Kansas

Areas of natural pampa, steppe, and tropical grassland are

similarly protected in reserves wherever they have escaped

being plowed or heavily grazed by farm livestock Their value

is recognized It will never be possible—or desirable—to

restore the vast grasslands that once existed, but the reserves

will ensure that so far as possible the grassland plants and

animals survive Some reserves achieve more, allowing

visi-tors to imagine what it must have been like when grasslands

blanketed so much of the world