Grasslands of the World.pdf - Disasters and Conflicts - UNEP

Grasslands of central North America 251
FUTURE OF THE GREAT PLAINS
It is likely that agriculture will continue to dominate the Great Plains into the
foreseeable future. While technology will continue to develop new approaches,
such as no-till cultivation , more efficient use of water and fertilizer , and
methods to survey and monitor landscapes, some of these technologies will be
difficult to apply because of economic, sociological and biological constraints.
For example, we now have the technology to consider management at
relatively large scales (Ludwig et al., 1997). Modern tools. including remote
sensing (Tueller, 1989), geographical information systems (GIS ) and global
positioning systems (GPS), provide the opportunity to consider land management
and ecological situations across landscapes and habitats. However, these
approaches need to be applied with consideration of some of the limitations,
such as lack of adequate ground truth data for remote sensing and GIS applications.
Development of landscape -scale planning for the Great Plains might
entail consideration of crop agriculture areas, riparian habitats and “natural ”
vegetation types . The extent and arrangement of agricultural areas and grassland
vegetation types would be challenging, even if all those concerned could
agree on percentages of land areas devoted to each and the spatial distribution
of land devoted to different or several uses because of differences in land ownership
patterns and extent of agricultural development . Developments such as
the buffalo commons would be difficult to effect because of the large extent of
private land in the region. Eventually, lack of water resources will have heavy
impacts on both agricultural and industrial development.
Major cities in the Great Plains may not expand into adjacent farmland and
wild land to the same extent as those in other western cities, but there will
probably be some expansion. Cities along the western edge of the Great Plains
– Fort Collins, Denver, Colorado Springs, Pueblo, etc. – will continue to grow
because of favourable perceptions of location near the mountains.
Livestock enterprises, although stressed economically, will probably remain
relatively stable. Walker (1995) stated that grazing systems have largely not
changed the selective nature of livestock grazing. Stocking rate is the primary
factor determining livestock and vegetational responses (Holechek,
1988; Walker, 1995). Competition with forages produced under irrigation will
probably continue to erode livestock production from rangelands in the Great
Plains (Glimp, 1991).
Genetic modification of both plants and animals has the potential to change
plant and animal agriculture in the Great Plains (Walker, 1997). However, public
acceptance of genetically modified plants and animals will influence how
fast these technologies are used.
REFERENCES
Adams, D.C., Clark, R.T., Klopfenstein, T.J. & Volesky, J.D. 1996. Matching the
cow with the forage resources . Rangelands, 18: 57–62.