Physical Structure Assessment of Rivers Used by Grazing Livestock

Abstract

In recent years, the demand for meat has increased due to changing dietary habits as well as global population growth. In response to the increased demand for livestock products, grassland ecosystems are increasingly used for grazing and feed crop production, raising concerns about the negative environmental impacts caused by the expansion of livestock production. The author has studied a beef cattle farm that is one of the few farms in Japan that uses forest grazing. There have been concerns about the negative impact of farming grazing livestock near water bodies. When considering sustainable grazing livestock farming, the challenge is to conserve water quality and propose appropriate habitat design to conserve biodiversity. River ecosystem studies require an assessment of the physical environment and surveys of the number of organisms. RHS-HQA is a method developed in the UK and is a relatively easy survey method for obtaining information. This study investigated how grazing cattle use the rivers present in their pastures. A physical environment survey using the RHS-HQA was also carried out to investigate the status of the river on the grazing land. Based on these results, the environmental design of pastureland for sustainable grazing livestock production was discussed, with particular attention to rivers and other riparian areas. The results of the RHS-HQA showed that the river flowing through the target farm was maintained in its natural state, with diverse flow and bed material and a suitable bank environment for biological habitat. Also, the results suggest that by maintaining riparian forest between the grazing land and the river, riverbanks are less likely to become bare or collapse even when grazing cattle use rivers.