Use of Fire to Maintain Pasture
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Controlled Burning (also called Prescribed Burning) is an important and cheap management tool to manage rangelands. Fire is also routinely used as a method for clearing land. Agricultural activities considered responsible for increases in Carbon dioxide levels in our atmosphere include: deforestation and land clearance, biomass burning, tillage and intensive cultivation, and drainage of wetlands. | Positive Impacts Negative Impacts Environmental Assessment: Pressure State Response Indicators Technology Options Policy Pressures and Policy Options See Also

A system for carbon sequestration can also be a seen as a solution to the problem in which carbon can be removed from the atmosphere and permanently sequestered into the soil or plant material.

See Also
Carbon Sequestration
Carbon Sequestration on Agricultural Land.
Carbon Sinks

Under climate with a sufficient dry season, part of the vegetation, particularly grasses and annual herbs constitutes a dry and combustible material. Pastures and rangelands threatened by fire must be burned at a chosen period, and on chosen areas.

Positive Impacts

Fire is able to "clean" the pastures, removing ungrazed grass, a part of the litter and controlling the density of woody plants (trees & shrubs). Fires also stimulate the growth of perennial grasses in savannas and provides nutritious regrowth for livestock.

Controlled burning (normally early in the dry season) prevents uncontrolled and more destructive fires, which usually occur later in the dry season. Controlled burning reduces the hazard of or risk from large and extensive bushfires. This works by consuming the combustible lower layer at an appropriate humidity stage. There is little combustible material remaining later in the season and any fires that do start are unable to spread too far and are easier to control. A moderate burning is not so destructive to the plants and animals, many of which may be adapted to periodic fires.

As many grass species are fire tolerant, often much more so than tree species (specially at young stage), burning is also used as a tool to maintain an appropriate balance between grass cover and woody vegetation, and therefore reduce or prevent bush encroachment.

Negative Impacts

On the other hand, fires have a destructive effect on different vegetation communities and animal species, reduce the organic matter recycling to soil and result in a decrease of soil fertility in the long term. Environmental consequences of rangeland and grassland fires depend on the environmental context and conditions of application.

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