A comprehensive understanding of multipaddock, rotational grazing management on rangelands has been slow to develop, and the contribution of adaptive management (Briske et al. 2011) and sufficient scale (Teague and Barnes 2017) have been identified as key omissions. We designed an experiment to compare responses of vegetation and cattle in an adaptively managed, multipaddock, rotational system with that of a season-long, continuous system at scales comparable with those of a working ranch. We hypothesized that 1) year-long rest periods in the adaptively managed, rotational pastures would increase the density and productivity of perennial C₃ graminoids compared with continuously grazed pastures and 2) adaptive management, supported with detailed monitoring data, would result in similar cattle performance in the rotational as in the continuously grazed pastures. However, we found little supporting evidence for grazing management effects on C₃ graminoid abundance or production under either above-average or below-average precipitation conditions during the 5-yr experiment. Furthermore, adaptive rotational grazing resulted in a 12–16% reduction in total cattle weight gain relative to continuous grazing each year. Our work shows that the implementation of adaptive management by a stakeholder group provided with detailed vegetation and animal monitoring data was unable to fully mitigate the adverse consequences of high stock density on animal weight gain. Under adaptive rotational grazing, C₃ perennial grass productivity and stocking rate both increased following above-average precipitation. But when adaptive rotational management was directly compared with continuous grazing with the same increase in stocking rate, continuous grazing achieved similar vegetation outcomes with greater cattle weight gains. We suggest that managers in semiarid rangelands strive to maintain cattle at stock densities low enough to allow for maximal cattle growth rates, while still providing spatiotemporal variability in grazing distribution to enhance rangeland heterogeneity and long-term sustainability of forage production.

对多牧场，轮牧的轮牧管理的全面理解发展缓慢，适应性管理（Briske等，2011）和足够规模（Teague和Barnes，2017）的贡献已被确定为主要遗漏。我们设计了一个实验，用于比较适应性管理的多牧场轮作系统和一个为期一个赛季的连续系统在规模上与工作牧场相当的植被和牲畜的响应。我们假设1）在自适应管理的轮作牧场中长达一年的休息时间会增加多年生C ₃的密度和生产力与连续放牧的牧草相比，牛类动物具有更强的优势； 2）自适应管理，加上详细的监测数据，将使牛在轮作中的表现与连续放牧的牧草相似。然而，我们发现很少有证据支持放牧管理对C _3的影响在5年实验中，在高于平均水平或低于平均水平的降水条件下，类股虫的丰度或产量都很高。此外，与每年持续放牧相比，适应性轮牧使牛的总体重增加减少了12-16％。我们的工作表明，由提供详细的植被和动物监测数据的利益相关者小组实施适应性管理无法完全缓解高种群密度对动物增重的不利影响。在适应性旋转放牧条件下，C ₃高于平均水平的降雨使多年生草的生产力和放养率均增加。但是，当将适应性轮作与直接放牧相比，放牧率相同的情况下进行连续放牧时，连续放牧获得了相似的植被结果，但牛体重增加了。我们建议半干旱牧场的管理者努力使牲畜的种群密度保持在足够低的水平，以允许最大的牲畜生长速度，同时仍在放牧分布中提供时空变化，以增强牧场的异质性和牧草生产的长期可持续性。