SGS Biodiversity Theme: impact of plant biodiversity on the productivity and stability of grazing systems across southern Australia

Abstract

The relationships between productivity and plant species diversity were assessed using data from the Sustainable Grazing Systems (SGS) 10 national experiment sites. Each site applied up to 7 different management treatments. Sites varied in the amount of data available for analysis. Plant species diversity was assessed in terms of both the total and native species present at each site. More than 200 plant taxa were recorded over the period of the experiment, about one-third of which were native. In the majority of cases, the native species present within a treatment remained there throughout the experiments, even when fertilised and oversown with introduced species. The number of native species increased by 1 or 2 over the 3