Regional forage production assessment in arid and semi-arid rangelands — A steptowards social—ecological analysis

摘要

Many of the complex issues worldwide regarding environmental management and sustainable devel pment require integrating the social and natural sciences. Nevertheless, while theoretical discussions ha' been increasingly developed, operative issues are still major barriers to integrated social-ecologic analysis. The aim of this paper was to assess regional forage production in semi-arid rangelands a key feature in social-ecological analysis, by using human organizational units (i.e. counties). We us( these state-administrative units to explore demographic and farming indicators in order to addre socio-productive implications of different regional forage production dynamics. We studied the fora] spatial and temporal dynamics in two different large ecological regions: Monte and Patagonia, und a single administrative unit (i.e. province). Since forage production estimations in arid rangelands a not trivial, we tested two different methods. We found that inter-annual variability in foraj production explained the main differences between regions. At a regional level, zones with highi temporal variability in forage production registered less rural residents and farm numbers, but inver: situations were registered at sub-regional scales. We found a non-linear relationship between foraj production variability and rural population density. We proposed differentiated policy recommendi tions regarding rangeland management and animal husbandry, considering both the social an ecological contexts.