Soil microbial community response to different grazing system in the Canadian Prairies

Soil microbes are a vital component of grassland ecosystems and play a major role in Carbon (C) and Nitrogen (N) cycling and can affect forage production and greenhouse gas emissions from soil. Livestock grazing can affect the soil microbial community by changing the vegetation, physicochemical properties of soil and microclimate. However, the effect of different grazing systems on the soil microbial community has not been extensively studied, especially in the Canadian Prairies. Adaptive multi-paddock grazing (AMP), where livestock are grazed at high densities in small paddocks, has been proposed to increase soil carbon. Upama’s main research objective is to characterize the soil microbial community and link them to differences in C and N cycling under Adaptive Multi-paddock (AMP) and continuous grazing (CG) systems. Sampling will be done in ranch pairs throughout Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Thus, the study will provide a comprehensive analysis of microbial community composition and response of specific functional groups under AMP and CG grazing system in the Canadian prairie. She anticipated that the findings of this study will improve our understanding of carbon cycling in response to grazing management and can provide important guidelines for ranchers and policymakers to encourage practices that will offset atmospheric climate change.