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Climate And Topographic Controls On Simulated Pasture Production In A Semiarid Mediterranean Watershed With Scattered Tree Cover, J. Lozano-Parra, Marco P. Maneta, S. Schnabel

Geosciences Faculty Publications

Natural grasses in semiarid rangelands constitute an effective protection against soil erosion and degradation, are a source of natural food for livestock and play a critical role in the hydrologic cycle by contributing to the uptake and transpiration of water. However, natural pastures are threatened by land abandonment and the consequent encroachment of shrubs and trees as well as by changing climatic conditions. In spite of their ecological and economic importance, the spatiotemporal variations of pasture production at the decadal–century scales over whole watersheds are poorly known.We used a physically based, spatially distributed ecohydrologic model applied to a 99.5 ha …