Effects of Livestock Grazing on Sediment Production, Edwards Plateau of Texas

Abstract

The influence of short duration grazing (SDG), moderate continuous grazing (MCG), heavy continuous grazing (HCG), and grazing exclusion on sediment production of midgrass and shortgrass-dominated communities was evaluated over a 20-month period on the Texas Agricultural Research Station located near Sonora in the Edwards Plateau, Texas. A combination of cattle, sheep, and goats was used in each grazing treatment. Sediment production was consistently less from the midgrass (bunchgrass) than from the shortgrass (sodgrass) community. The HCG pasture was severely overgrazed and resulted in excessive soil loss. The midgrasses in this pasture were destroyed after 26 months of over-grazing. Sediment production from the SDG pasture stocked at double the recommended rate increased during the study period. The SDG pasture, by the end of the study, had lost more sediment from both the midgrass- and shortgrass-dominated communities than the MCG pasture. Sediment loss from the midgrass community in the MCG pasture was consistently low during the study; however, sediment production from the shortgrass community decreased in the MCG pasture. Sediment production from the midgrass community in the non-grazed pasture remained consistently low throughout the study, but the shortgrass community showed a strong decrease in sediment loss during the study.