Estimation of Grassland Carrying Capacity by Applying High Spatiotemporal Remote Sensing Techniques in Zhenglan Banner, Inner Mongolia, China

Abstract

Overgrazing directly leads to grassland degradation, which is a serious constraint to the sustainable development of animal husbandry. In drylands, grassland biomass is highly heterogeneous in space and time. It is difficult to achieve sustainable utilization of grassland resources by focusing only on the average annual carrying capacity assessment obtained from grass yield. Here, we proposed a novel approach for assessing grassland carrying capacity, taking Zhenglan Banner (County) in Inner Mongolia as the study area. First, monthly grass yield at 30 m spatial resolution was estimated, derived from Carnegie–Ames–Stanford Approach (CASA) model and spatial and temporal adaptive reflectance fusion model (STARFM). Then, based on the degree of sand mobility and degradation condition of typical steppe, the utilization patterns for sandy land and typical steppe in different grazing seasons were developed separately to obtain available grass yield. Finally, the carrying capacity at the Gacha (Village)-scale was estimated and the current livestock carrying status was evaluated to facilitate the grassland refined management. In Zhenglan Banner, the carrying capacity was 237.46 thousand cattle-units in summer. The grassland resources are being overgrazed, with an overload rate of 19.32%. At Gacha-scale, the maximum reasonable stock density was ranged from 0.06 cattle-unit/ha to 0.42 cattle-unit/ha. Fifty-one Gachas exhibited livestock overload. This study is expected to provide technical support and scientific reference data for ecological conservation and grassland management in the study area, as well as in dryland pastoral areas of northern China.