Resiliency in Forage and Grasslands: An Overview.

The issue of resiliency in agricultural systems has gained greater relevance in recent years particularly concerning climate change, and its impact on food security.  In relation to climate events like drought, resilience can be defined as the rate of return back to normal productivity.  For example, if a drought lowers grassland productivity, greater biomass growth rates during recovery lead to greater resilience up until they are sufficiently rapid to lead to full recovery of normal productivity during the subsequent year.  Ecosystem resistance is often used interchangeably with resiliency, but it actually indicates the ability of a system to maintain productivity at normal levels during a climate event.   In grasslands, resiliency and resistance can be generated in many ways – possibly through increasing plant diversity, changing plant species composition, improving soil fertility, or managing livestock in different ways (rotational grazing).  In reality, a combination of management approaches is probably necessary to build up resilience into grasslands.  Talks within this symposium will address this important topic from a regional perspective with discussion of management scenarios that can be implemented to generate greater forage and grassland resiliency in response to weather variability and climate change.