Year-round grazing to counteract effects of atmospheric nitrogen deposition may aggravate these effects

Excessive nitrogen input in natural ecosystems is a major threat to biodiversity. A coastal dune area near Amsterdam in the Netherlands suffers from high atmospheric nitrogen deposition affecting sensitive habitats such as fixed coastal dunes with herbaceous vegetation ('grey dunes'). To m...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Environmental pollution (1987) 2014-12, Vol.195, p.226-231
Main Authors: VAN DOBBEN, H. F, WAMELINK, G. W. W, KLIMKOWSKA, A, SLIM, P. A, VAN TIL, M
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Air Pollutants - analysis
Animal Husbandry
Animal, plant and microbial ecology
Animals
Applied ecology
Atmosphere - chemistry
Atmospherics
Biological and medical sciences
Cattle
Coastal dunes
Conservation, protection and management of environment and wildlife
Deposition
Ecosystem
Environmental degradation: ecosystems survey and restoration
Feeding
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Grazing
Habitats
Hay
Herbivory
Manure
Netherlands
Nitrogen - analysis
plant diversity
rabbits
responses
Soil Pollutants - analysis
trends
Winter
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Summary:Excessive nitrogen input in natural ecosystems is a major threat to biodiversity. A coastal dune area near Amsterdam in the Netherlands suffers from high atmospheric nitrogen deposition affecting sensitive habitats such as fixed coastal dunes with herbaceous vegetation ('grey dunes'). To mitigate its effect year round grazing was applied from 2007 until 2012. In winter, when natural food supply is low, the cattle received supplementary hay that caused additional inputs of nitrogen. Estimates based on nitrogen contents of hay, as well as of manure, showed the input through winter feeding (c. 3-14 kg N ha(-1).y(-1)) is in the same order of magnitude as both the actual deposition (c. 17 kg N ha(-1).y(-1)) and the critical load for a number of herbaceous habitat types (10-15 kg N ha(-1).y(-1)). Locally, the effect of winter feeding adds to the effect of nitrogen redistribution within the area caused by the cattle's terrain usage. We conclude that winter feeding may aggravate effects of atmospheric nitrogen deposition.
ISSN:0269-7491
1873-6424
DOI:10.1016/j.envpol.2014.08.029