Alan Short

• MSc
• Rangeland Ecologist at Themeda Eco Consulting

The balance of papers in this Special Issue show that how Holistic Planned Grazing™ is managed and where it is used impacts the efficacy of the approach. While we will do well to develop more mechanistic models that can identify these thresholds and test them in real-life situations, it is certain that broad generalisations will not do. We can neit...

A long-term rangeland monitoring program needs to employ a field survey technique that is practicable, precise, powerful enough to distinguish change, not prone to worker bias, and able to distinguish real change from operator error arising from staff turnover. These criteria were used to evaluate a widely used grassland sampling technique in South...

Commercial livestock production offers one of the main opportunities for mainstreaming of biodiversity conservation in the grassland biome of South Africa. Grazing management is expected to influence success. With the uses of three long-term grazing trials, effects of stocking rate and cattle-to-sheep ratio on the plant composition and diversity of...

Understanding the response of aggregate specific leaf area (SLA) to management and environmental variables can inform on the response of plant communities to these environmental variables in a way that some current approaches can not for example species composition alone. This study investigated response of aggregate specific leaf area to enviro...

Annual veld condition assessments and herbaceous biomass measurements have been undertaken throughout the KNP since 1989. These data include an estimate of above ground herbaceous biomass based on the descending plate (disk pasture meter) measurements. These data provide an opportunity to explore the relationship between above ground herbaceous bio...

Payment for ecosystem services is potentially an important financial incentive for improving management of rangelands, and one ecosystem service that has been explored recently is sequestration of carbon in soil. A project was established to understand the determinants of soil carbon stocks and the rates of carbon sequestration in moist Highveld...

Long-term trends in rangeland sward dynamics (species composition, structure, productivity) were examined on three trials established between 1989 and 1996 at Kokstad Research Station in the Dry Highland Sourveld, while animal performance (average daily gain and gain per hectare) was examined on two of the trials. The region enjoys moderate rainfal...

The effects of burning on soil properties and landscape function were investigated in a long-term experiment comparing different burning strategies in a moist montane grassland. Total C, total N, total S, bulk density, plant-available nutrients, and soil acidity were determined in the top 200mm of soil, together with vegetation basal cover at the s...

Fire is a crucial part of the ecology of the Drakensberg Mountains, and understanding the role of fire on hydrology, animal ecology, and the response of grasses and woody plants has long occupied researchers in the moist grasslands of southern Africa. In more recent years, the importance of fire to biodiversity in general and plant diversity in par...

Operator effect is known to have a large influence on sampled species composition, and repeatable methods of botanical survey that minimise operator effect are essential for monitoring programmes. The aim of this study was to determine the reliability of four methods of botanical survey, in terms of minimising operator effect while maximising real...

Many thousands of vegetation surveys have been conducted in South Africa over the past century using a variety of methods. The opportunity therefore exists to find these data, re-locate the sites and resurvey the sites using the same techniques as used previously. A pilot study was conducted in East Griqualand, KwaZulu-Natal, in order to determine...

Stocking rate has been recognized as one of the primary driving agents of change in rangelands. However, animal type also plays a significant role, with smaller-bodied animals being generally more selective in their grazing habits than larger-bodied animals. This species- and area-selective grazing has long been held to cause degradation of rangela...

Published as "Effects of season and frequency of burning on soils and landscape functioning in a moist montane grassland"; see https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233251862_Effects_of_season_and_frequency_of_burning_on_soils_and_landscape_functioning_in_a_moist_montane_grassland

This study examined the compositional stability of Highland Sourveld in response to fire and grazing by wildlife (Coleford Nature Reserve) and by cattle on three properties over 20-25 years. A limited amount of compositional change took place except on a prop- erty stocked 1.5 times as heavily as the others, but no species were lost. In general, De...

The Drakensberg mountains in Lesotho and South Africa are an important reservoir of biodiversity. Fire is an integral part of management in the landscape, but the long-term effects of fire on plant diversity have been insufficiently studied. The species composition and basal cover of a twenty-year burning trial in a conserved area of the Drakensber...

The plant species composition of the annual spring, annual winter, biennial spring, five year spring and no bum plots were sampled at the Brotherton long~term burning trial at Cathedral Peak, KwaZulu-Natal Drakensberg, South Africa. The data was added to monitoring data taken in biennial surveys using the same methods from 1981-1991. The mean basal...