Maintaining scattered trees to boost carbon stock in temperate pastures does not compromise overall pasture quality for the livestock

Tölgyesi, Csaba and Kelemen, András and Bátori, Zoltán and Kiss, Réka and Hábenczyus, Alida Anna and Varga, Anna and Erdős, László and Frei, Kata and Tóth, Benedek György and Török, Péter (2023) Maintaining scattered trees to boost carbon stock in temperate pastures does not compromise overall pasture quality for the livestock. AGRICULTURE ECOSYSTEMS & ENVIRONMENT, 351. ISSN 0167-8809

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Abstract

Scattered trees in wood-pastures represent outstanding conservation value by providing microhabitats for a variety of organisms. They also diversify ecosystem services by creating shade for livestock, and capturing and storing carbon. However, trees in wood-pastures are declining Europe-wide and an appropriate legal environment to maintain them is mostly lacking. Here we looked beyond the well-documented beneficial effects of trees and assessed potential ecosystem disservices, which may drive the controversial appreciation of trees. In a grazing exclusion experiment, we assessed the effect of trees on herbage production in wood-pastures from semiarid continental to humid montane areas in the temperate deciduous forest ecoregion, and found that trees have a suppressive effect throughout the year, although herbage nutritive value, as indicated by herbage nitrogen content, seems to be improved in spring. When we up-scaled the local ecosystem disservice on herbage yield to entire wood-pastures, the loss remained below 3%, which is lower than reported gains in livestock production due to free access to shade. Thus, the motivation for the under-appreciation of trees by land managers and decision makers may lie in that trees suppress herbage production, but the importance of this effects is offset by the magnitude of the beneficial services of trees. We recommend current wood-pasture stakeholders to revisit their attitude towards scattered trees and encourage tree planting campaigns and tree-based climate mitigation strategies to consider the protection of trees in wood-pastures and the establishment of young ones in currently open pastures up to traditionally low tree cover proportions, as livestock production is unlikely to be compromised by this action.

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