The invasion of woody plants in variousparts of the world has been a longstanding concern in livestock production dueto the expected negative impact on secondary production. Native forests cover30% of the earth’s land surface. A great part of the livestock production ofEntre Ríos is developed in these ecosystems, which have been highly degradeddue to inadequate cattle management, and the invasion of shrub species. The aimof this study was to evaluate the natural pasture recovery in a degraded nativeforest, subjected to a mechanical intervention with a frontal roller-chopping,in order to increase the grazing area and improve secondary productivity. Thestudy was carried out in Paraná Department (Entre Ríos, Argentina). On15/12/2014 a mechanical intervention was carried out with a frontalroller-chopping designed by the Chair Ecology of Agricultural Systems. Toevaluate the dynamics of the recovery of the natural grassland of the nativeforest, seven measurements were made on the following dates: 15/05, 12/06,28/07, 11/09, 27/10 and 21/12/2015, and 22/02/2016. The vegetation cover wasmeasured with the line intercept method and phytomass production. In each ofthe evaluations, forage species cover was higher in the mechanically intervenedarea, presenting significant differences with respect to the control andregistering an average relative increase of 47% at the end of the trial. In thesection where mechanical intervention had been made, the coverage of Baccharispunctulata showed a marked decrease during all the measurements with respect tothe control, obtaining an average decrease of 91.8% at the end of the sampling.Mechanical intervention enables the cover of shrubs that compete with naturalgrassland in a degraded native forest to be reduced, while also recoveringforage vegetable species and thus improving primary production, due to a raisein the forage availability because of increased grazing area.
Cite this paper as: Sabattini, R.A., Sabattini, J.A., Cian, J.C., Lindt, M. Mechanical recovery of a native forest with shrubs of the Espinal Ecoregion (Argentina). Forestist 68(2): 78-86.