Grassland management for sustainable agroecosystems

Abstract

Knowledge on sustainable grassland management is available in the large body of literature. However, it is unclear where to look for it, and what is really relevant to the many interrelated challenges of sustainable grassland management. This special issue illustrates options to fill some of those gaps. This editorial introduces the Special Issue entitled “Grassland Management for Sustainable Agroecosystems”. Two review articles deal with (i) concepts for monitoring grassland degradation (by Tiscornia et al. Agronomy 2019, 9, 239) and (ii) impacts of alternative management practices and disturbances (by Wagle and Gowda et al. Agronomy 2018, 8, 300). One paper (by Steiner et al. Agronomy 2019, 9, 699). summarized a series of papers of the special issue. Other topics covered include four main aspects: (I) Landscape features (Ravetto Enri et al. Agronomy 2019, 9, 333), two papers by Northup et al. Agronomy 2019, 9, 329, Northup et al. Agronomy 2019, 9, 281, and Ma et al. Agronomy 2019, 9, 238; (II) climate (Zhou et al. Agronomy 2019, 9, 219, Starks et al. Agronomy 2019, 9, 235, and Moinet et al. Agronomy 2019, 9, 124); (III) soil fertility (Franzluebbers et al. Agronomy 2019, 9, 204, Poblete-Grant et al. Agronomy 2019, 9, 191); and (IV) one on modeling (Puche et al. Agronomy 2019, 9, 183). Two additional papers are from Andueza et al. Agronomy 2019, 9, 273 (on the feed value of barn-dried hay) and Úbeda et al. Agronomy 2019, 9, 340 (on the role of prescribed burns).