On sustaining the ecology and livestock industry of the Bayanbuluk Grasslands

A short visit to the Bayanbuluk Grassland in the Tianshan Mountains, Xinjiang, PRC, revealed a number of environmental and livestock production problems, including grassland degradation, loss of grassland biodiversity, soil erosion and flash flooding downstream, decreased pasture productivity, and poor livestock nutrition (especially in winter) leading to stock losses and flocks and herds of low productivity. This paper describes those problems and then suggests some solutions. Short duration, high intensity grazing could be one of the solutions to both improving grassland condition and improving livestock nutrition. Local production of fodder crops for feeding in winter and spring deserves testing, using adapted strains of Alfalfa (Medicago sativa) and trialling fodder root crop production. It is important to realise that the land management objectives of scientists, administrators, herders and farmers may be similar, and that there are opportunities for land improvement through working together.

Land husbandry:an agro-ecological approach to land use and management Part 2:Consideration of soil conditions

This paper,complementing the first part(Shaxson et al.,2014),sketches the outlines of an ecologically-based approach to better care of soils,within the overarching context of‘land husbandry’,contributing to more-effective conservation of soil and water.It suggests an up-dated paradigm which concentrates more on renewing and conserving the biologically-moderated spaces in the soil in the root-zone rather than on the solid soil-particles themselves.When read in sequence,the two papers offer contributions to better understanding of both the problems and the possibilities for solving the ongoing uncertainties of how best to repair damaged lands,to maintain and improve those areas already in use,and to safeguard the potentials of those as-yet-unopened areas which surely will be brought into production in the future,by the planning and executing of optimum strategies for assuring sustainability of their uses into the future.These two papers do not set out to challenge existing knowledge,but rather to suggest additions to,and alternative interpretations of,what may already be known.The conclusions suggest some important amplifications to any curriculum for the training and/or up-dating of people involved in those subject-areas which contribute to better land husbandry and more-effective conservation of soil and water,as well as to the buffering of soils’productive capacities against the possible adverse effects of climate change.