Fig 1.
Study sites and sampling design.
A. Study site locations and grassland remnants in southern Brazil; pictures with typical landscapes in Pampa and highland grasslands. Study sites: 1- Aceguá, 2- Alegrete, 3- Lavras do Sul, 4- Aratinga Ecological Station, 5- Aparados da Serra National Park, 6- Tainhas State Park. B. Block with three experimental plots, each randomly subjected to one treatment: ‘control’, under continuous cattle access from the larger, enclosing grazing area where the block is located, ‘deferred grazing’, with controlled cattle access, and complete ‘grazing exclusion’; the subsampling design for description of plant communities is indicated within each experimental plot. C. a picture is showing contrasting vegetation structure after one year of exclusion (right side of the fence) compared to the grazed control (left side of the fence). D. Timeline showing sampling events and starting points of treatments.
Fig 2.
Classification of grassland plant life forms.
Fig 3.
Mean effect size (Hedges’ g) of grazing exclusion and deferred grazing on grassland habitat descriptors.
Numbers 0–4 correspond to years of treatment (2010–2014). Error bars are bootstrap 95% confidence intervals. Treatment effect is significantly positive or negative (filled circles) when intervals do not overlap with zero. Vegetation biomass was not sampled in the first year (*).
Fig 4.
Mean effect size (Hedges’ g) of grazing exclusion and deferred grazing on grassland plant life forms.
Effect based on standardized cover values. Numbers 0–4 correspond to years of treatment (2010–2014). Error bars are bootstrap 95% confidence intervals. Treatment effect is significantly positive or negative (filled circles) when intervals do not overlap with zero.
Fig 5.
Mean effect size (Hedges’ g) of deferred grazing and grazing exclusion on alfa, beta, and gamma plant taxonomic and functional diversity.
A. Taxonomic diversity. B. Functional diversity. Numbers 0–4 in the x-axis correspond to years of treatment (2010–2014). Error bars are bootstrap 95% confidence intervals. Treatment effect is significantly positive or negative (filled circles) when intervals do not overlap with zero.
Fig 6.
Plant species diversity profiles described by Renyi’s entropy values for each year of experiment.
Data from six grassland sites separated by treatment (continuous grazing [solid blue lines], deferred grazing [dashed green lines], and grazing exclusion [solid orange lines]), and year (2010–2014). Data pooled according to spatial component (alpha [1 x 1 m subplots, n = 162] and gamma [70 x 70 m plots, n = 18]).
Fig 7.
Mean effect size (Hedges’ g) of grazing exclusion and deferred grazing on soil and vegetation arthropods abundance.
A. Vegetation arthropods. B. Epigeic arthropods. Numbers 1–4 correspond to years of treatment (2011–2014). Error bars are bootstrap 95% confidence intervals. Treatment effect is significantly positive or negative (filled circles) when intervals do not overlap with zero.