Information
Level 2 Detail of experimental conditions (what might be found in a journal paper or project brief in Hydstra)
Description of study
What?
This study investigated the changes in a number of landscape stability parameters when an area of land is subject to high pressure grazing. It also assessed the benefits of maintaining land in “A” condition.
When and Where?
Between 1994 – 2001 (6 year trial period) a grazing trial was undertaken on Ironbark (Eucalyptus melanophloia) pastures at Rubyvale, Central Queensland. The site was characterised by a predominance of the 3P (palatable, perennial, productive) grasses: Desert bluegrass (Bothriochloa ewartiana), Black speargrass (Heteropogon contortus) and Golden beardgrass (Chrysopogon fallax).
How?
Data was gathered over six years under low and high grazing conditions.
Density and basal cover of major perennial grasses, ground cover, pasture yield, land condition, runoff and soil movement were recorded.
Pasture utilisation was calculated from modelled pasture growth and estimates of animal intake (Stone et al. 2008). Land condition was estimated using the definitions of Chilcott et al. (2004), where “A” pasture condition is based on the density of 3P grasses and “A” soil condition has no evidence of sheeting, scalding, rills or gullies.
Project administration
Site identifier code: na
Principal investigator: Jones P
Principal data manager: na
Principal organizations: DPIF, QCCCE
Data custodian: DPIF
Key co-operators:
Data access policy: Research has been published but base data is not archived
Planned pathway for data: completed study, no evidence of formal database records.
Data warehousing: for ongoing studies -na
Planned data upload frequency: for ongoing studies -na
Key references and sources of this data synthesis
These data summaries have been extracted from
- Jones P, Silcock R and Stone G N.D. Grazing land in ‘A’ condition is stable and resilient.
- Chilcott, C.R., Paton, C.J., Quirk, M.F. and McCallum, B. (2004). Grazing Land Management Education Package – Workshop Notes, Burnett. Meat and Livestock Australia Limited, Sydney.
Keywords:
Pasture, high pressure grazing, Rubyvale, 3P grass