Optimized grazing management enhances multiple ecosystem services by maintaining plant diversity and dominance in grasslands

Abstract

Effective ecosystem management seeks to optimize multiple services, including cultural, provisioning, regulating, and supporting. Grasslands, providing animal products for 1 billion people via grazing, are vulnerable to global change, which makes improved management crucial. While enhanced grazing practices could improve ecosystem services, there remain challenges for optimizing trade-offs between food production and environmental benefits, such as carbon sequestration. Our global meta-analysis found incorporating ‘‘rest’’ into grazing regimes improved multiple ecosystem functions, particularly those linked to regulating service. A long-term field experiment in northern China showed that rest during peak growing season, coupled with flexible grazing intensity, enhanced multiple services, thereby improving grassland multifunctionality through increasing plant diversity and preserving the dominance of keystone species. Compared to traditional continuous grazing and grazing exclusion, this practice mitigates trade-offs between services. Our findings provide valuable insights for optimizing grassland management under climate change, while outlining ways to reduce stakeholder conflicts