Remotely sensed primary productivity shows that domestic and native herbivores combined are overgrazing Patagonia

FERRANTE, DANIELA; OLIVA, GABRIEL; PAREDES, PAULA; CEPEDA, CARLA; RABINOVICH, JORGE

JOURNAL OF APPLIED ECOLOGY

WILEY-BLACKWELL PUBLISHING, INC

Año: 2019 vol. 56 p. 1575 - 1584

0021-8901

Carrying capacity is the maximum animal density an area can sustain without deterioration of its resources. Overgrazing has degraded Patagonia, but sheep stocks decreased and gave way to mixed systems with cattle, goats and guanacos (native wild camelids). The objective of this paper was to develop a method to estimate the carrying capacity based on the remotely sensed data, and to assess wild and domestic herbivore numbers in order to establish if grazing stocks have evolved to balance with carrying capacity. Net Primary Productivity (NPP) MOD17/A3 images and field Aerial Net Primary Productivity (ANPP) data of 66 sites were linearly regressed (R2 = 0.83, p