Doctoral candidate
Savanna and rangeland ecology
Tel +49 (0)711 / 459-23605
sabine.baumgartner@uni-hohenheim.de
Research Interests
· Rangeland ecology
· Plant-animal interactions
· Land-use change
Rangelands cover around 40% of the earth surface. A large proportion of the rangelands are located in arid and semi-arid regions and are, despite its importance for people’s livelihoods, often prone to heavy degradation. Overutilization by people and livestock, land-use change and increased climate variability pose a big threat to the health of the ecosystem. The management of rangelands is crucial and can cause or prevent rangeland degradation. I am interested in the interaction between herbivory and vegetation dynamics, nutrient distribution and the impact of increasing climate variability on the condition of rangelands in savanna ecosystems.
During my Master thesis we were looking into the effect of different herbivore assemblages on the vegetation inside Kruger National Park and the adjacent communal rangelands in South Africa. Access to the communal rangeland is usually free and stocking rates in our case exceeded the recommended number by about four times, whereas only 50% of the potential browsing capacity was exploited. Increasing the herbivore diversity, particularly by adding browsing animals, such as goats, was beneficial for grass biodiversity and nitrogen content of grasses. Inside Kruger National Park, where stocking rates were low, positive effects of increasing herbivore diversity were additionally found for herbaceous vegetation cover as well as quality and quantity of the grass and standing biomass.
For my PhD project we focus on herbivore- plant- interaction in the Maasai rangelands of northern Tanzania. Land use policies and extensive logging activities during the last decades set incentives for agro-pastoralists to settle down and to extend their cropping land. The establishment of large conservation areas resulted in land fragmentation and further increased the pressure on the remaining grazing land. We investigate how traditional Maasai rangeland management including seasonal exclosures impacts the vegetation and nutrient distribution of the rangelands and if it can help to maintain the resilience of rangelands under high grazing pressure and unpredictable precipitation pattern.
Publications
Thellmann K, Cotter M, Baumgartner S, Treydte A, Cadisch G, Asch F (2018) Tipping Points in the Supply of Ecosystem Services of a Mountainous Watershed in Southeast Asia. Sustainability 10:2418.
Baumgartner SA, Treydte AC, Grant CC, van Rooyen J (2015) Can diverse herbivore communities increase landscape heterogeneity? Comparing wild and domestic herbivore assemblages in a South African savanna. Perspect. Plant Ecol. Evol. Syst. 17:34–43.
Treydte AC, Baumgartner S, Heitkönig IM, Grant CC, Getz WM (2013) Herbaceous forage and selection patterns by ungulates across varying herbivore assemblages in a South African Savanna. PLoS ONE 8:e82831.
