Hidden grassland productivity from overlooked herbivore impacts
- 1Lanzhou University, Peking University
Abstract
Grasslands cover approximately 40% of Earth's land surface and contribute substantially to terrestrial primary production. Despite widespread grazing, field estimates of grassland aboveground net primary productivity commonly overlook two grazing-related processes: biomass consumed by herbivores and post-grazing compensatory growth. The magnitude and direction of the resulting biases remain unclear. Here we quantified these biases using a 3-year yak grazing experiment on the Tibetan Plateau, a meta-analysis of 152 grazing experiments across China, and a global synthesis of 212 paired observations from 58 studies. Overlooking biomass consumed by herbivores consistently underestimated productivity by 34-51%. By contrast, overlooking grazing-induced compensation generated smaller but more variable biases, ranging from 29% underestimation to 19% overestimation, mainly reflecting contrasting compensatory responses under rotational versus continuous grazing. These findings show that overlooking grazing-mediated processes introduces substantial, process-dependent biases in grassland productivity estimates, underscoring the need to incorporate these processes into ecosystem and climate assessments.
Related
- A Decade of Rainfall Manipulation Reveals Growing‐Season Aridity as a Key Determinant of Grassland Productivity and Stability
- Optimizing nitrogen fertilization in mustard through GreenSeeker-based precision agriculture: Impacts on productivity, economics, and environmental sustainability
- Back to the roots: Fine-scale insights into adaptive foraging by a high-Arctic large herbivore.
- Recent immigrants from islands dominate two keystone forest herbivore assemblages in Australia
- Multiple host species maintain genetic diversity in herbivore populations
BibTeX
@misc{shi2026hidden,
title = {{Hidden grassland productivity from overlooked herbivore impacts}},
author = {Y. Shi and H. Wang and H. Zi and X. Wang and H. Gu and Z. Zhang and L. Peng and A. Chen and G. Yu and J.-S. He},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.64898/2026.10.13.758807},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.13.758807v1},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Hidden grassland productivity from overlooked herbivore impacts
AU - Y. Shi
AU - H. Wang
AU - H. Zi
AU - X. Wang
AU - H. Gu
AU - Z. Zhang
AU - L. Peng
AU - A. Chen
AU - G. Yu
AU - J.-S. He
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/13
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.10.13.758807
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.13.758807v1
AB - Grasslands cover approximately 40% of Earth's land surface and contribute substantially to terrestrial primary production. Despite widespread grazing, field estimates of grassland aboveground net primary productivity commonly overlook two grazing-related processes: biomass consumed by herbivores and post-grazing compensatory growth. The magnitude and direction of the resulting biases remain unclear. Here we quantified these biases using a 3-year yak grazing experiment on the Tibetan Plateau, a meta-analysis of 152 grazing experiments across China, and a global synthesis of 212 paired observations from 58 studies. Overlooking biomass consumed by herbivores consistently underestimated productivity by 34-51%. By contrast, overlooking grazing-induced compensation generated smaller but more variable biases, ranging from 29% underestimation to 19% overestimation, mainly reflecting contrasting compensatory responses under rotational versus continuous grazing. These findings show that overlooking grazing-mediated processes introduces substantial, process-dependent biases in grassland productivity estimates, underscoring the need to incorporate these processes into ecosystem and climate assessments.
ER -