A Study of Vegetation Response to Grazing Intensities in Mountain Rangelands of Gorgan

Heydari, Ghodratollah; Tamartash, Reza; Tatian, Mohammadreza; Baghestanifar, Mohsen

A Study of Vegetation Response to Grazing Intensities in Mountain Rangelands of Gorgan

Document Type : Original Articles

Authors

¹ Assistant Professor of Range Management Department, Faculty of Natural Resources, University of Sari Agricultural Science and Natural Resources

² Instructor of Range Management Department, Faculty of Natural Resources, University of Sari Agricultural Science and Natural Resources

³ M.Sc. Graduated of Range Management, Faculty of Natural Resources, University of Sari Agricultural Science and Natural Resources

Abstract

The intensive grazing of livestock of is one of the physical destroyer pressures on the rangeland ecosystems that cause reduction of vegetation and species variations. The basis for this study was to investigate the grazing effect of livestock on the plant characteristics in the grazed and non-grazed area. The Mountain rangelands of Gorgan, which have been moderately and heavily grazed areas, were selected. The systematic sampling was done randomly on four plots with three transects in each area. Simpson, Shannon, Menhinick and Margalef indices in PAST Software, recorded the species characteristics as diversity and richness in each plot. The data method used to analyzed there data was analysis of variance and means comparison in MINITAB Software. The results showed that the vegetation indices in heavily grazed area were less than the non-grazed area. The species diversity did not show significant difference in the moderately grazed areas comparable to other regions.

Keywords