Malihe Erfani; Tahereh Ardakani; Fatemeh Jahanishakib
Abstract
Establishing a balance between protection and utilizing ecosystem services is a primary challenge in land management. Quantifying ecosystem services and assigning them value to mitigate the impacts of human actions may offer a potential resolution. Among the ecosystem services under significant ...
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Establishing a balance between protection and utilizing ecosystem services is a primary challenge in land management. Quantifying ecosystem services and assigning them value to mitigate the impacts of human actions may offer a potential resolution. Among the ecosystem services under significant pressure from exploitation is the quality of plant habitats. This study was explored in evaluating plant habitat quality in Kerman province and focused on one of its functions, namely the cultivation of medicinal plants. The InVEST method is used for modeling, whose inputs are layers of destruction resources, land use, and tables of threat and sensitivity resources, and the plant habitat quality map as an output has values in the score ranging from 0 to 1. Valuation of the habitat service layer was also done according to the allowed harvest price of rangeland medicinal plants. The results showed that valuable habitats are mainly covered by dense grasslands. The habitat hotspots extracted by the Jenks natural breaks algorithm showed that their area was 3,358,768 hectares, which includes 37% of rangeland land and 1% of the total area of the province. Also, according to the value of Moran’s index, it has a significant clustered distribution. (z-score=1328.83, p-value=0.00). Evaluation results showed that the total value of rangeland in the province is more than 32 billion tomans, the share of low and high-density rangeland are 12053925412 and 19948204105 tomans respectively. The results of this study can be used as an effective decision-support tool for prioritizing areas for conservation and management measures in the entire province.
M. Jankju; F. Noedoost
Abstract
Ecological studies on range plants enhance our knowledge on the rangeland ecosystems which are useful for their planning and management. By doing field and laboratory experiments during 2008-2009, ecological conditions were studied in the main habitats of Z. atriplicoides in the rural and winter ...
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Ecological studies on range plants enhance our knowledge on the rangeland ecosystems which are useful for their planning and management. By doing field and laboratory experiments during 2008-2009, ecological conditions were studied in the main habitats of Z. atriplicoides in the rural and winter rangelands of Northern Khorasan province (NKP). Forage quality was also studied at different phonological stages. According to the results, Z. atriplicoides grows in the habitats with mean annual rainfall ranging from 260-380 mm, temperature 8-16 ºC, and altitude 680-1200 meter a.s.l. Topography was as plains and rolling lands, with geologic formations being conglomerate, marl, shale and sandstone. Soil texture was silty loam, weak alkaline, and poor in phosphorus and nitrogen. Vegetative growth and flowering stages were simultaneously occurred at early April till early June, but seed ripening and shedding happened at late June-mid August. Toward the end of growing season, ADF and NDF increased while crude protein decreased, which led to a gradual decrease in forage quality. Ability for growing in different habitats – from cold dry to warm humid- and having protein content and metabolic energy higher than the critical level for rangeland livestock are the relative advantages, whereas significant leaf reduction in response to drought and heat stresses, inability for growing in saline lands and low palatability and preference values are the major disadvantage for Z. atriplicoides in the rangeland of Iran. The most suitable time for livestock grazing and seed collection of Z. atriplicoides in the NKP are May-June and July, respectively.
