Impact of grazing on carbon dioxide exchanges in an intensively managed Belgian grassland

Given that the soil carbon (C) sequestration potential by grasslands can be used to partly mitigate the total greenhouse gas emissions of livestock production systems, a better understanding of the effects of management practices, and especially grazing, on grassland carbon dioxide (CO2) exchanges has become a major concern. This study aimed at quantifying grazing impact on CO2 fluxes measured by eddy covariance by using innovative data analyses and experiments. For that, we distinguished direct and indirect grazing impact. Indirect impact results from biomass consumption, excretion deposits and soil compaction by cattle that modify CO2 exchanges. Direct impact results from livestock CO2 emissions through respiration that add to total ecosystem respiration. For the indirect impact, the variation during periods with fixed stocking rate of gross primary productivity at light saturation (GPPmax) and normalized dark respiration (Rd,10) was analyzed. On average, GPPmax decreased during grazing periods and increased during non-grazing periods which could be explained by aboveground biomass reduction and re-growth, respectively. In addition, GPPmax variations were negatively correlated to grazing intensity (defined as the product of the stocking rate and the grazing duration). On the contrary, no significant evolution of Rd,10 was found during both grazing and non-grazing periods, probably due to a combination of opposing effects of grazing on the total ecosystem respiration components. The direct impact was emphasized through four specific designed confinement experiments. Each experiment extended over three successive days. On the first and third day, there was no cattle on the plot, while, on the second day, cattle were confined in the main wind direction area of the eddy covariance set-up to increase the stocking rate (≈26 livestock units ha−1). The average livestock CO2 emissions during confinement, FCO2,livestock, were deduced from the differences between half-hourly measurements taken at 24 h interval with or without cattle and under similar environmental conditions. They were estimated to be 2.59 ± 0.58 kg C livestock unit−1 d−1 on average. This result was corroborated by independent estimates based on the C ingested by cattle during confinement. Using an annual average stocking of 2 livestock units ha−1, we found that livestock CO2 emissions represent only 8% of this grassland annual total ecosystem respiration. To our knowledge, this study is the first to quantify both direct and indirect livestock contribution to CO2 fluxes exchanged at the ecosystem scale using the eddy covariance technique.