Track 1-13: Monitoring and Managing Grass and Forage Biomass Resources at the Landscape Level

Description

In order to address grassland degradation, an individual contracting system, or namely, single-household rangeland management, based on Garrett Hardin theory of “tragedy of the commons”, had been conducted in Maqu since 1980s. Despite the support of local government, such a well-intentioned system saw little fruits on managing degradation, encountering extensive frustration due to its poor practical outcomes. Meanwhile, joint-household rangeland management, as an inheritance of locality-based management, has been vigorously pursued and has played an important role on Maqu’s grassland management system. In order to better illustrate the impact of size on managing the grassland ecosystem, an experiment was set up in which different herdsmen’s scales (single household, small-scale, medium-scale, large-scale, oversized-scale) existing in Maqu grassland was conducted.

This study was an attempt to provide a groundbreaking management model, thus inspiring the policy-makers to achieve better solutions.

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The Impact of Different Herdsmen’s Size on Grassland Ecosystem of Eastern Transect in Tibetan Plateau: A Case Study from Maqu

In order to address grassland degradation, an individual contracting system, or namely, single-household rangeland management, based on Garrett Hardin theory of “tragedy of the commons”, had been conducted in Maqu since 1980s. Despite the support of local government, such a well-intentioned system saw little fruits on managing degradation, encountering extensive frustration due to its poor practical outcomes. Meanwhile, joint-household rangeland management, as an inheritance of locality-based management, has been vigorously pursued and has played an important role on Maqu’s grassland management system. In order to better illustrate the impact of size on managing the grassland ecosystem, an experiment was set up in which different herdsmen’s scales (single household, small-scale, medium-scale, large-scale, oversized-scale) existing in Maqu grassland was conducted.

This study was an attempt to provide a groundbreaking management model, thus inspiring the policy-makers to achieve better solutions.