Author(s)

Sandra Aparecida Santos^1*, Fábio Takahashi², Evaldo Luís Cardoso¹, Claudio Flores¹, Luiz Orcírio Fialho de Oliveira³, Geraldo da Silva e Souza⁴, Eliane Gonçalves Gomes⁴, Enrique Ortega⁵

¹Embrapa Pantanal, Corumbá, MS, Brasil.
²Universidade de Viçosa, Florestal, MG, Brasil.
³Embrapa Gado de Corte, Campo Grande, MS, Brasil.
⁴Embrapa Sede, Brasília, DF, Brasil.
⁵Universidade de Campinas, Barão Geraldo, SP, Brasil.

Wetland grasslands are important ecosystems for raising beef cattle, because they are highly productive and present forages with high quality. Most of these ecosystems are threatened by overgrazing or by being replaced by exotic pastures. Emergy synthesis approach was used to assess and value the services provided by native pastures wetland under three conservation status and also to compare them to exotic pastures on wetlands. The ecosystem service that was assessed included forage provision for calves production estimated from grazing capacity of cow with calf at the foot. Habitat maintenance to plant diversity and wild herbivores were also evaluated. The results showed that natural wetland pastures with better conservation status provided valuable ecosystem services and are highly renewable. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) showed that regardless of the conservation state of the natural pastures, wet native grasslands were more efficient than wet exotic grasslands. Replacing native pastures by exotic ones may reduce plant diversity and the renewability of the system. The proposed method has a holistic approach to pasture ecosystems and is able to help decision-makers to define sustainable management practices and to subsidise public policies when it comes to payments regarding ecosystem services.

Data Envelopment Analysis, Forage Resources, Natural Pasture, Plant Diversity, Sustainability

Santos, S. , Takahashi, F. , Cardoso, E. , Flores, C. , Oliveira, L. , Souza, G. , Gomes, E. and Ortega, E. (2020) An Emergy-Based Approach to Assess and Valuate Ecosystem Services of Tropical Wetland Pastures in Brazil. Open Journal of Ecology, 10, 303-319. doi: 10.4236/oje.2020.105019.