Multi-household grazing management pattern maintains better soil fertility

In addition to changes in land use and cover, changes in land management pattern can also have a significant effect on soil fertility. However, to date, changes in grassland grazing management pattern caused by policies have received less attention in terms of their impact on soil fertility. In this paper, we investigated the influence of two different grazing management patterns: the multi-household grazing management pattern (consisting of pastures managed by two or more households with no fences separating them) and the single-household grazing pattern (with fences between adjacent pastures managed by different households), which were implemented after the enactment of grassland contract policy, on soil fertility in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. Our hypothesis was that soil fertility differed between the two grazing management patterns. We selected five study sites with both grazing management patterns in Maqu County on the eastern Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau and sampled 30 winter grasslands from each grazing management pattern to explore differences in soil organic carbon, soil total nitrogen, and soil total phosphorus. We showed that these indicators of fertility status were significantly greater under the multi-household grazing management pattern (47 g C kg−1, 4.6 g N kg−1, and 0.77 g P kg−1) compared to the single-household grazing management pattern (43 g C kg−1, 4.3 g N kg−1, and 0.73 g P kg−1). This is the first study of the effects of grazing management pattern on soil fertility in this environment, and it indicated that the multi-household grazing management pattern could maintain better soil fertility and help to support sustainable use of these grasslands.