Ecological Health Index: A Short Term Monitoring Method for Land Managers to Assess Grazing Lands Ecological Health

Abstract

Grazing lands should be monitored to ensure their productivity and the preservation of ecosystem services. The study objective was to investigate the effectiveness of an Ecological Health Index (EHI) for assessing ecosystem ecological health in grazing lands. The EHI was developed by synthesizing existing vegetation and soil cover indicators. We implemented long-term transects at 44 farms from two ecological regions in Patagonia, the Humid Magellan Steppe (HMS) (n = 24) and Subandean Grasslands (SG) (n = 20), to collect data on established quantifiable vegetative and soil measurements and the EHI. Using known quantifiable measures, the HMS had numerically greater species richness compared to SG. Similarly, the average percentage of total live vegetation was more favorable in HMS. Correlating the EHI with these known quantifiable measures demonstrated positive correlations with species richness, the percentage of total live vegetation and carrying capacity and was negatively correlations with bare ground. These results suggest that EHI could be a useful method to detect the ecological health and productivity in grazing lands. Overall, we conclude that EHI is an effective short-term monitoring approach that ranchers could implement annually to monitor grazing lands and determine the impacts of ranch decision-making on important ecosystem indicators.