Grazing Intensity Data

These data were collected as part of the NSW Grazing Study. The study sampled a range of grazing intensities based on both recent (last 2-3 years) and historic (up to 20 years) grazing.

To assess recent grazing intensity we identified and counted the dung or pellets of all herbivores (cattle, sheep/goat, kangaroo) within the large (5m x 5m) and small (0.5m x 0.5m) (kangaroo, rabbit, sheep/goat) quadrats. For cattle, we counted dung events rather than individual fragments, i.e. we considered a number of small fragments to have originated from one dung event, if the fragments were within an area of a few metres. At ten sites we counted, collected, dried and weighed the dung from 10 large quadrats to obtain a relationship between dung counts and dry mass for each herbivore. This relationship was then used to calculate the total oven-dried mass of dung per hectare per herbivore as our measure of recent grazing intensity. Where dung from the same herbivore was assessed in both the large and small quadrats, we derived an average mass per hectare based on both quadrats for that herbivore type. We were unable to discriminate between sheep, goat and in very few cases deer (Cervus spp.) dung, or between European rabbit and European hare (Lepus europaeus) dung.

Other indicator of recent grazing were also collected (rabbit burrows, latrines and kangaroo hip holes). The abundance of these were collected in a 200m x 10m belt transect.

To assess historic grazing intensity we measured the width and depth of all livestock tracks crossing the 200 m transect to derive a total cross-sectional area of livestock tracks for each site (Pringle and Landsberg 2004).