Regional forage production assessment in arid and semi-arid rangelands - A step towards social-ecological analysis

Many of the complex issues worldwide regarding environmental management and sustainable development require integrating the social and natural sciences. Nevertheless, while theoretical discussions have been increasingly developed, operative issues are still major barriers to integrated social ecological analysis. The aim of this paper was to assess regional forage production in semi-arid rangelands as a key feature in social-ecological analysis, by using human organizational units (i.e. counties). We used these state-administrative units to explore demographic and farming indicators in order to address socio-productive implications of different regional forage production dynamics. We studied the forage spatial and temporal dynamics in two different large ecological regions: Monte and Patagonia, under a single administrative unit (i.e. province). Since forage production estimations in arid rangelands are not trivial, we tested two different methods. We found that inter-annual variability in forage production explained the main differences between regions. At a regional level, zones with higher temporal variability in forage production registered less rural residents and farm numbers, but inverse situations were registered at sub-regional scales. We found a non-linear relationship between forage production variability and rural population density. We proposed differentiated policy recommendations regarding rangeland management and animal husbandry, considering both the social and ecological contexts. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.