IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/agiwat/v165y2016icp72-81.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Unrestricted dairy cattle grazing of a pastoral headwater wetland and its effect on water quality

Author

Listed:
  • Hughes, Andrew O.
  • Tanner, Chris C.
  • McKergow, Lucy A.
  • Sukias, James P.S.

Abstract

Unrestricted cattle access to pastoral wetlands can result in increased pollutant loads from agricultural areas. We quantified the time a herd of dairy cattle spent grazing a pastoral headwater wetland and its associated impact on water quality. Over a two year period a herd of ∼220 dairy cattle rotationally grazed a paddock containing a permanently saturated pastoral wetland. Flow and turbidity were continuously monitored at a v-notch weir and baseflow and event samples were collected and analysed for TSS, Escherichia coli and various forms of N and P. Cattle were detected grazing the wetland paddock on 18 days by time-lapse cameras. Cattle only entered and grazed the saturated wetland area for 30–40% of the time and there were usually only a few animals in the wetland at one time. Cattle that did graze the wetland tended to remain near the edge. We attribute the low level of wetland grazing to the cattle recognizing the risk of entrapment in the deep (up to 2m), boggy wetland soil. A measurable increase in pollutants (attributable solely to cattle generated disturbance) occurred only once. This occurred when a cow became entrapped in close proximity to the water quality monitoring location on a day when wetland flow was elevated. Exclusion of cattle from our study wetland by fencing is therefore unlikely to substantially improve downstream water quality. Further research is required to determine whether this is the case for similar wetlands in different environments.

Suggested Citation

  • Hughes, Andrew O. & Tanner, Chris C. & McKergow, Lucy A. & Sukias, James P.S., 2016. "Unrestricted dairy cattle grazing of a pastoral headwater wetland and its effect on water quality," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 72-81.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:agiwat:v:165:y:2016:i:c:p:72-81
    DOI: 10.1016/j.agwat.2015.11.015
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378377415301694
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.agwat.2015.11.015?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Vidon, Philippe & Campbell, Marie A. & Gray, Mark, 2008. "Unrestricted cattle access to streams and water quality in till landscape of the Midwest," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 95(3), pages 322-330, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Frederick Asare & Lobina G. Palamuleni & Tabukeli Ruhiiga, 2018. "Land Use Change Assessment and Water Quality of Ephemeral Ponds for Irrigation in the North West Province, South Africa," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 15(6), pages 1-16, June.
    2. Horak, Cristina Natalia & Assef, Yanina Andrea & Miserendino, María Laura, 2019. "Assessing effects of confined animal production systems on water quality, ecological integrity, and macroinvertebrates at small piedmont streams (Patagonia, Argentina)," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 216(C), pages 242-253.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hanan Tadele Dessalegn & Alex Bolding & Charlotte de Fraiture & Mekonen Ayana, 2021. "Livestock and Small-Scale Irrigation Scheme Interactions as a Key Source for Sedimentation during the Irrigation Season: Four Case Studies from South-West Shoa, Ethiopia," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(10), pages 1-18, May.
    2. Miller, J. & Chanasyk, D. & Curtis, T. & Entz, T. & Willms, W., 2010. "Influence of streambank fencing with a cattle crossing on riparian health and water quality of the Lower Little Bow River in Southern Alberta, Canada," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 97(2), pages 247-258, February.
    3. Horak, Cristina Natalia & Assef, Yanina Andrea & Miserendino, María Laura, 2019. "Assessing effects of confined animal production systems on water quality, ecological integrity, and macroinvertebrates at small piedmont streams (Patagonia, Argentina)," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 216(C), pages 242-253.
    4. Muirhead, Richard W., 2019. "The effectiveness of streambank fencing to improve microbial water quality: A review," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 223(C), pages 1-1.
    5. Miller, J. & Chanasyk, D. & Curtis, T. & Entz, T. & Willms, W., 2011. "Environmental quality of Lower Little Bow River and riparian zone along an unfenced reach with off-stream watering," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 98(10), pages 1505-1515, August.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:agiwat:v:165:y:2016:i:c:p:72-81. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/agwat .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.