Can simple, on-ground vegetation and soil measures reliably indicate the health of rangelands? An application in Australia’s semi-arid woodlands

John A. Ludwig; David J. Tongway; Norman Hindley

doi:10.1071/RJ24004

RESEARCH ARTICLE (Open Access)

Previous Contents Vol 45(6)

Can simple, on-ground vegetation and soil measures reliably indicate the health of rangelands? An application in Australia’s semi-arid woodlands

John A. Ludwig ^A ^D ^* , David J. Tongway ^B and Norman Hindley ^C

+ Author Affiliations

- Author Affiliations

^A Retired. Formerly of CSIRO Environment, Atherton, Qld 4883, Australia.

^B Retired. Formerly of CSIRO Environment, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia.

^C Deceased. Formerly of CSIRO Environment, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia.

^D Present address: 51 Saiala Road, E Killara, NSW 2017, Australia.

^* Correspondence to: jack.ludwicki@outlook.com

The Rangeland Journal 45(6) 235-245 https://doi.org/10.1071/RJ24004

Submitted: 2 March 2024 Accepted: 25 May 2024 Published: 17 June 2024

© 2023 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing on behalf of the Australian Rangeland Society. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND)

Abstract

Sustainably managing grazing lands is aided by monitoring and responding to simple and reliable indicators of how well the vegetation and soils of these landscapes are functioning to capture scarce resources such as water and nutrients. Indicators are needed because direct measurement of resource capture is time consuming and costly. Our aim was to assess how simple measures of vegetation patch cover and size, and soil surface condition, would apply to patchy (run-on/run-off) semi-arid landscapes being grazed at different intensities. We used the grazing gradient design where distance from water serves as a surrogate for grazing intensity, which is a combination of herbage consumption and trampling. From 0.5 to 8.9 km distance from water, we measured vegetation and soil indicators of landscape function on 12 sites, six along a grazing gradient in a mulga (Acacia aneura) woodland and six in a gidgee (Acacia cambagei) woodland. We found the size of tree groves, at both mulga and gidgee sites, declined near water, indicating a loss in the capacity of these groves to capture mobile resources in run-off. Enhancing this capacity at sites in ‘good’ rangeland condition was the presence of a thick band of grass upslope of tree groves. The number of soil erosion features (rills) was also a reliable indicator of landscape function at both gidgee and mulga sites. Soil surface condition indices of stability, infiltration and nutrient cycling had no detectable trends with distance from water at gidgee and mulga sites, but these three indicator values were always significantly higher within groves than inter-groves, confirming the important role of maintaining healthy groves of trees and upslope bands of grass within these semi-arid rangelands.

Keywords: Acacia aneura, Acacia cambagei, gidgee woodlands, grazing gradients, landscape function, mulga woodlands, rangeland health, soil erosion.

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