Open Access

REVIEW

Ecosystem Services of Grazed Grasslands in the Flooding Pampa

by Elizabeth J. Jacobo^1,#,*, Adriana M. Rodríguez^2,#

1 Facultad de Agronomía, Área de Agroecología, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, 1417, Argentina
2 Facultad de Agronomía, Departamento de Producción Animal, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, 1417, Argentina

* Corresponding Author: Elizabeth J. Jacobo. Email:

(This article belongs to the Special Issue: Ecology of Rangelands in Argentina)

Phyton-International Journal of Experimental Botany 2024, 93(6), 1179-1202. https://doi.org/10.32604/phyton.2024.050928

Received 22 February 2024; Accepted 30 May 2024; Issue published 27 June 2024

Abstract

The Flooding Pampa grasslands are the last remnant of the Rio de la Plata grasslands in Argentina. Anthropogenic interventions have led to severe degradation and, as a result, the ecosystem services provided by the grasslands are declining, in terms of provisioning, regulating, and supporting services. We synthesized the existing literature on the ecosystem goods and services provided by these grasslands under grazing in different conditions and conservation status. We found that plant and animal diversity and primary production are the most studied ecosystem services, while climate regulation, water supply, nutrient cycling, meat production and erosion control, in that order, are less studied. Cultural services are under-researched. Continuous grazing and glyphosate spraying are the main drivers of grassland degradation. Controlled grazing and conservative stocking rates have been shown to reverse degradation and demonstrate that livestock production is compatible with ecosystem conservation by maintaining regulating and provisioning services. As these management strategies are poorly integrated, improving their implementation will require important changes in farmers’ decisions and the development of policies that create the economic conditions for this to happen. Research is needed to understand the conditions that prevent the knowledge generated from being transferred to producers and translated into practices that would improve the provision of ecosystem services.

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Keywords

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