Suchergebnisse

| openaire: EC/H2020/819202/EU//SOS.aquaterra Funding Information: The work was funded by ‐ , the Academy of Finland funded projects WATVUL (grant No. 317320) and TREFORM (grant no. 339834), and the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 819202). MH would like to acknowledge support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation MERLIN grant (INV023682). Maa ja vesitekniikan tuki ry Publisher Copyright: © 2022 The Authors. Global Change Biology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. ; Although the role of livestock in future food systems is debated, animal proteins are unlikely to completely disappear from our diet. Grasslands are a key source of primary productivity for livestock, and feed-food competition is often limited on such land. Previous research on the potential for sustainable grazing has focused on restricted geographical areas or does not consider inter-annual changes in grazing opportunities. Here, we developed a robust method to estimate trends and interannual variability (IV) in global livestock carrying capacity (number of grazing animals a piece of land can support) over 2001–2015, as well as relative stocking density (the reported livestock distribution relative to the estimated carrying capacity [CC]) in 2010. We first estimated the aboveground biomass that is available for grazers on global grasslands based on the MODIS Net Primary Production product. This was then used to calculate livestock carrying capacities using slopes, forest cover, and animal forage requirements as restrictions. We found that globally, CC decreased on 27% of total grasslands area, mostly in Europe and southeastern Brazil, while it increased on 15% of grasslands, particularly in Sudano-Sahel and some parts of South America. In 2010, livestock forage requirements exceeded forage availability in northwestern Europe, and southern and eastern Asia. Although our findings imply some opportunities to increase grazing pressures in cold ...