Improving Understanding of Prairie Rangeland Grazing Capacity in Climate Change and Adaptive Management Options
Activity Rationale
Livestock production on the Canadian prairies relies to a considerable extent on native prairie grassland productivity. Larger image
Native grasslands occupy about 7.8 million hectares across the Canadian prairies, and provide significant forage resources for the livestock sector of the region. However, because of the reliance of livestock production on grasslands, this may be one of the most vulnerable economic sectors in the prairies region to climate change. This activity examines the potential impact of climate change on grazing capacity of native grasslands in the Canadian prairies.
Leader: Stephen Wolfe
The Topic
Although previous studies have assessed the impacts of climate change on arable agriculture and cultivated forage in the Canadian prairies, studies on native grassland are limited. In order to assess the impacts of climate change on the productivity of native grasslands, relationships between climate and grassland production were modelled. This was done by relating field measurements of production (for example, available forage in kilograms per hectare) to climate variables and water balance estimates using statistical analysis.
Results
An example of future average annual production rates of native grassland (shown as 100s of kilograms per hectare) in the Canadian prairies on loam soils in the 2050's. Larger image
Overall, the ecosystem models predicted little change in grassland productivity under climate change scenarios, indicating that native grasslands in the Canadian prairies will probably remain productive over the next 50 years. In addition, warm-season grasses could increase in a warming climate, particularly on sandy soils, which could benefit productivity in some circumstances.
It should be mentioned that this analysis deals with average levels of production in order to determine long-term grazing capabilities. Productivity in Canadian prairie grasslands is highly variable on a year-to-year basis due to weather. Therefore, increases in drought due to climate change could have an important impact on grazing operations, beyond the impact of changes in average productivity.
Study Data
Prairie rangeland grazing capacity scenarios: climatic variables (temperature, precipitation, evapotranspiration), production rates, and study area characteristics are available upon request from the Saskatchewan Research Council (publication #11561-1E04).
Publications
Please note that subscriptions may be required for access to some articles. To request a copy of publications, or for any more information, please contact Stephen Wolfe.
Check for more recent publications in GEOSCAN, the publications database of the Geological Survey of Canada and the Canada Centre for Remote Sensing.
J. Thorpe, S.A. Wolfe and Houston, B. 2008 Potential impacts of climate change on grazing capacity of native grasslands in the Canadian prairies. Canadian Journal of Soil Science. v. 88, no. 4, 595–609. Cont # 20070266.
J. Thorpe, B. Houston and S.A. Wolfe. 2004 Impacts of climate change on grazing capacity of native grasslands in the Canadian Prairies. SRC Publication No. 11561-1E04.
Thorpe, J., Wolfe, S. A., Campbell, J., Leblanc, J. and Molder, R. 2001. An ecoregion approach for evaluating land use management and climate change adaptation strategies on sand dune areas in the Prairie Provinces. Saskatchewan Research Council Publication No. 11368-1E01. 293 pp.
Presentations
S.A. Wolfe, J. Thorpe, and Houston, B. 2008 Potential impacts of climate change on grazing capacity of native grasslands in the Canadian prairies. NRCan-ESS and Ag. Can. Workshop on climate change Apr 22, 2008.