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Livestock grazing-induced large-scale biotic homogenization in arid Mediterranean steppe rangelands
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  • Merdas Saifi,
  • Yacine Kouba,
  • Tewfik Mostephaoui,
  • Yassine Farhi,
  • Haroun Chenchouni
Merdas Saifi
Centre of scientific and technical research on arid regions

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Yacine Kouba
University of Oum-El-Bouaghi
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Tewfik Mostephaoui
Centre of scientific and technical research on arid regions
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Yassine Farhi
Centre of scientific and technical research on arid regions
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Haroun Chenchouni
University of Oum-El-Bouaghi, University of Tebessa
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Abstract

Despite many studies explored the effect of livestock grazing on plant communities, the response of species composition and diversity to livestock grazing in arid rangelands remain ambiguous. This study examined the effects of livestock grazing on plant communities in arid steppe rangelands of North Africa. Plant diversity of annual species, perennial species and all species combined was measured and compared between grazed and grazing-excluded areas. We also examined the relative importance of species turnover and community nestedness. Moreover, the effects of livestock grazing on beta diversity at local among transects and landscape among sites scales were examined using the multiplicative diversity partitioning. Results revealed that livestock grazing significantly decreased the alpha diversity of all species combined and the diversity of annual plants. Livestock grazing induced a shift in plant community composition where most of species composition variation (~74%) was due to infrequent species replacement ‘turnover’ between the two management types rather than nestedness (~26%). Results revealed also that among transects, beta diversity was higher in grazed steppes than in grazing-excluded steppes. Whereas, among sites, beta diversity was lower in grazed steppes compared to grazing-excluded steppes. These findings suggest that livestock grazing in arid steppe rangelands increases the variation in plant species composition at a local spatial scale and engenders vegetation homogeneity at landscape spatial scale. Therefore, the implementation of appropriate management practices such as short-term grazing exclusion is mandatory to prevent these ecosystems from large scale biotic homogenization.
26 Feb 2021Submitted to Land Degradation & Development
27 Feb 2021Submission Checks Completed
27 Feb 2021Assigned to Editor
05 Mar 2021Reviewer(s) Assigned
19 Mar 2021Review(s) Completed, Editorial Evaluation Pending
04 Apr 2021Editorial Decision: Revise Major
03 May 20211st Revision Received
04 May 2021Submission Checks Completed
04 May 2021Assigned to Editor
17 May 2021Review(s) Completed, Editorial Evaluation Pending
11 Jun 2021Editorial Decision: Revise Minor
11 Jul 20212nd Revision Received
12 Jul 2021Submission Checks Completed
12 Jul 2021Assigned to Editor
16 Jul 2021Review(s) Completed, Editorial Evaluation Pending
16 Jul 2021Editorial Decision: Revise Minor
25 Jul 20213rd Revision Received
26 Jul 2021Submission Checks Completed
26 Jul 2021Assigned to Editor
18 Aug 2021Review(s) Completed, Editorial Evaluation Pending
07 Sep 2021Editorial Decision: Accept