Jared Herman

Ecology of Food
12/1/14
The Role of Pasture Grasses: Ensuring Food Security, Mitigating Climate Change
and Restoring Ecosystems

Pasture grasses are essential to the ecosystems they are apart of, to humans who
rely on the food they offer to grazing animals and the ecosystem services they provide.
As perennial organisms, they maintain an important function in grasslands: building and
protecting soil, nourishing microbial communities, allowing for infiltration of water,
sequestering carbon and feeding grazing ruminants. Their abundance in terrestrial
ecosystems offers opportunities to increase food security for much of the worlds
population, particularly in dry climates. Grazing lands and pasture grasses have the
potential to facilitate the removal of large quantities of carbon from the atmosphere into
the soil and last in organic form for many centuries, offering a low-cost and
multifunctional solution to climate change. Additionally (talk about restoration
potential)?
A grassland can be defined as ground vegetation primarily dominated by grasses,
with little to no tree cover (FAO 2005). Grasslands are estimated to represent 40.5
percent of the worlds terrestrial area or an area of 52.5 million square kilometers (World
Resources Institute 2000). Often, grasslands serve as grazing lands and the pasture
grasses which grow here feed many grazing animals; consequently, the term grassland is
used to refer to grazing land, in several studies (FAO 2005). Grazing lands and
grasslands occur in many pars of the world and are called by different names: steppes in
Asia; prairies in North America; pampas, llanos and cerrados in South America;

savannas and velds in Africa; and rangelands in Australia (WWF). Grasslands exist
across a broad range of conditions, growing in dry climates or in poor soils where trees or
shrubs are unable to survive. Grasslands may also develop because of frequent grazing by
animals or fires, preventing growth of tree seedlings (WWF). Many of the worlds most
productive and wet grasslands have been developed for arable farming, leaving marginal
lands left for livestock to graze (FAO 2005).
The adaptive ability of grasslands to occupy dry and poor soils represents an
opportunity for the creation (or proper maintenance) of sustainable livelihoods in these
regions where arable farming and other practices are not feasible given the environmental
conditions and scarcity of resources. Around 1 billion people depend on livestock, and
the grasslands which support them, as both are socially and economically critical to the
rural livelihoods of pastoralists (World Bank 2007). Of the 3.4 billion hectares of
rangelands worldwide, around 73% are effected by soil degradation (WOCAT 2009).
Much of soil degradation in rangelands is the result of overgrazing, salinization,
acidification and alkalinization (FAO/LEAD 2006). As a byproduct of soil degradation,
carbon previously stored in soils is released into the atmosphere, contributing to climate
change as a source of greenhouse gas emissions. Though the amount of carbon loss from
grasslands are not well quantified, it is has been calculated that the conversion of
grassland to agricultural land has caused a 60 percent decline in carbon stocks (Paustian,
Collins and Paul, 1997; Guo and Gifford, 2002). Globally, grasslands store more
carbon in soils than in other ecosystems, including forests and agroecosystems (White
2000). Thus, grasslands not only represent a vital ecosystem capable of ensuring food
security, they also contain a substantial amount of carbon and can either be a source of

emissions, or a sink. It is important to consider the management of grasslands as serving

multiple functions. Proper grazing practices can play a role in increasing the health and
productivity of grasslands while increasing food security for rural populations. Numerous
examples exist where grasslands have been restored to a state of increased biodiversity
and ecosystem health while sequestering carbon using minimal technology and non-toxic
inputs (Savory 1999; Tainton; Teague 2011).
The evolutionary history of grasslands, grazing ruminants and soil provides deep
insight into how the emergence of a grassland ecosystem affected both its physical and
biotic environment. The study of ancient soils, called paleosols, reveals that sod and
bunch type grasslands first appeared 40 Mya during warm-wet climate spikes of the late
Eocene and early Miocene (Retallack 2013). Overtime grasslands began to displace
older vegetation types in move into semi-arid to sub-humid regions (Retallack 2013). In
North America, bunch-type grasslands first appeared during the late Eocene (40 Mya)
(Retallack 2013). During the 40 million years of existence, grasses evolved with grazing
ruminants to become mutually interdependent (Retallack 2007b). This relationship
resulted in the evolution of characteristics that allowed each organism to be utilized by
the other: grazers evolved teeth to tolerate the abrasiveness of grass and slender limbs
with hard hooves allowed for running in the grass plains to escape from predators;
grasses evolved rhizomes, underground sod, and other attributes that could withstand the
trampling of hard hooves and chewing of molars (Edwards et al. 2010).
During the Cenozoic era (beginning 65 Mya), which encompasses the Eocene and
Miocene, cooling of the planets climate is believed to be the result of a coevolution
between grasses and grazers (Retallack 2013). Unlike other types vegetation existing at

the time, namely sagebrush and cactus, grasslands created newly evolved sod and soils
that cooled the atmosphere though higher surface albedo, reduced evapotranspiration and
increased soil carbon sequestration (Retallack 2001). If past coevolution between grasses
and grazers and the creation of organic-rich soils resulted in global cooling, could these
evolved strategies of nature be used to mitigate our modern anthropogenic global
warming? To understand the potential of grasslands in mitigating global warming,
ecology can provide some insights it provides into relationships among grass, soil,
microbes and grazers, as these organisms facilitate the sequestration of carbon into soil.
Pasture grasses often exist within grasslands, which are defined as areas of
vegetation dominated primarily by grasses, with very little tree cover. Grasslands are
often found in areas too dry for forests and too moist for deserts and most plants of this
ecosystem have highly developed roots (Botkin and Keller 1998). Grasslands often exist
in areas frequented by disturbances such as fires or grazing by animals (WWF 2014).