Plant and Animal Responses to Different Grazing Regimes on a Meadow Steppe in Northeast China

Grazing by domestic herbivores is often considered to be an essential factor governing grassland vegetation and animal production (Hodgson and Illius 1996). During recent decades, there is increasing interest as a fundamental interaction between plant-animal interface, especially for the simultaneous or interactive responses of plants and animals to grassland grazing regimes (Liu et al., 2015), which benefits on improving the efficiency of grazing or grassland resource management. To achieve sustainable animal productivity and maintain the stability of grasslands, farmers or stakeholders need to employ optimal grazing strategies or regimes based on practical grassland vegetation and environments. Unfortunately, up to date it remains unclear what grazing regime will favour animal production, and mitigate the grassland degradation resulted from long-term free grazing in the eastern areas of the Eurasian Steppe. For this study, we conducted a five-year grazing experiment to test how grazing intensity (mediate and heavy) interact with resting to impact on the performance of plants and animals in a meadow steppe, and estimate the effects of designed grazing regime in this region.