Abstract
A pasture is not formed by an even distribution but by a mosaic or patches of herbage. Such a spatial pattern of herbage on pasture might be caused by the interactions between animals and vegetation. The following subjects are discussed in this paper: (1) definition of the spatial patterns, i.e., random, aggregated and regular, of herbage on a pasture, (2) a statistical model describing the spatial pattern of plant biomass: gamma distribution, (3) a new index for classifying categories of pasture spatial patterns: p, and (4) several experimental data of pasture changing in the course of grazing, and evaluation of pasture by model and index.
