Abstract
Understanding the responses of vegetation to grazing exclusion along a
salinity gradient is useful for the management of grasslands. We studied
the responses of vegetation to grazing removal (ungrazed areas) in three
semiarid regions with different soil salinity levels: non-saline,
moderately saline and hyper-saline. The results showed that Bray-Curtis
dissimilarity between grazed and ungrazed areas were highest in the
non-saline region. In the hyper-saline region, the grazing removal had
no significant effect on any of the diversity indices, while in the
non-saline regions, vegetation changes were occurred by grazing
exclusion at the highest magnitude. Generally, the magnitude of
vegetation changes by livestock grazing exclusion was decreased along
the soil salinity gradient. This research could help to understand how
disturbances and stresses interactively influence grasslands dynamics in
semiarid regions and to understand the effects of grazing on grassland
dynamics and sustainability in deserts in the context of salinization.