Economic, functional and compatible to rangeland landscape construction of rangeland roads
A sustainable and effective rangeland management requiers infrastructure such as rangeland roads. In this paper, the construction of rangelands roads was studied in the context of the principles of economy, functionality and compatibiltiy with the rangeland landscape. The analysis of the results of the above principles leads to useful conclusions in relation to the consrruction of rangeland roads.
Ecological footprint and grazing lands
The ecological footprint measures the human demand for goods originated from nature and compares the human consumption of natural resources with the ecological capacity or bio-capacity of the land to reproduce these resources. Both, the ecological footprint and the bio-capacity are measured in global hectares. The global hectare is a hectare which designates the average productivity of the overall biologically productive hectares upon the earth. For instance, for the year 2003, there were totally 11,2 billions of global hectares of available land and in the same year the human needs for products and services amounted to 14,1 billions global hectares (overshoot: 25%). Obviously, if this overshoot goes on, the various terrestrial ecosystems would continuously deteriorate and at the end maybe they will collapse. The procedure of measuring the ecological footprint and the bio-capacity could concern a person, an enterprise, a city, a country or even the whole planet (land and sea). However, what is valid today for the entire planet but also specifically for our country by these two meanings (ecological footprint and bio-capacity) in relation to the grazing lands? The human needs in meat, hides, wool and milk are increased all the time. The respective, for the grazing of animals, pasture lands are overgrazed. Would the improvements in the bio-capacity of ecosystems be able to reduce the gap between their supply and the respective human demand? And if so, in what way?
The performance of spraying machines in the improvement of rangelands
Plants during their growth, they are affected by enemies and diseases or they have to compete various weeds. Consequently, for their protection is essential to control all these enemies. The control can be accomplished with chemical compounds and their application is achieved with sprayings. Mechanical spraying in rangelands can be applied with a lot of methods. There are a lot of application methods for mechanical spraying in rangelands, provided that the methods and the machine used are the proper one to achieve our goal (reinforcement of plants, weed control, speed and economy of spraying). The hydraulic pressure sprayer is a machine with sufficient performance for application in rangelands and is carried out in the hydraulic suspension system of a tractor. The sprayer performance which is the total flow of each nozzle and it depends from the quantity of the liquid to spray, from tractor movement speed and spraying width. In this paper, we studied the theoretical performance of the carried hydraulic pressure spraying machine, in works for rangeland improvement, with the aim to extract conclusions for the proper application of sprayers in a way to have a great work performance in short time period with the least possible cost.
The economic dimension of extentification of livestockhusbandry in the island of Chalki
The island of Chalki of Dodecanese Prefecture and the adjacent islets constitute areas of “NATURA 2000”. The range condition of their grazing lands though is generally poor. This is testified by the presence of a large number of unpalatable species such as the dominant phrygana. Up to now, eight animal farmers of Chalki have joined the program “Extentification of livestockhusbandry” of the Agro-Environmental Measure 3.4., Axis 3 of the Document Planning of Rural Development 2000-2006 (DPRD). It was found that the present grazing capacity of the grazing lands amounts to 1.312 animals (goats and sheep). On the contrary, the stocking rate amounts to 4.491 goats-sheep. From the area of grazing lands which was allocated to farmers in order to join the program of extentification of livestock husbandry of DPRD, it comes out that this allocation was done by the Municipality based on the highest limit of grazing density which is anticipated by the Codes of Rational Agricultural Practice, namely one hectare per animal unit. This density however is not valid for Chalki, where the productivity of grazing lands is very low. A more appropriate rate is 1 hectare per 0,1 AU. It must be noted that the Municipality does not allocate all the grazing lands to the existing animal farmers. On the contrary, by the rate of one hectare per AU many areas are left out which the Municipality subsequently leases to farmers as excess grazing lands and collects rent. Although this policy is favorable for the finances of the Municipality it does not favor the grazing lands and the environment. Therefore, a drastic decrease of animals in Chalki (almost 60%) is needed for the following reasons: a) improvement of animal farmers’ economic situation, b) upgrading of grazing lands’ productivity and b) protection of fauna and flora of the island.
Earthmoving works for the improvement of rangelands
In recent years, the application and execution of earthmoving works are essential in all works and especially in management and improvement of rangelands. The reasons that dictated their utilization was not only for the increasing of work in rangelands (cultivation, improvement, harvesting) but also the need to reduce the total cost of each work. A machine that can be used in the various auxiliary earthmoving works in the improvement of rangelands is the wheeled articulated loader. This machine can be easily used in steep slopes, as usually happens in Greek condition, for the excavation of small earth volumes, for their transportation in small distances and for their grading. In this paper, the performance of the above machine was studied in the various works with the aim to extract conclusions for the proper application of loader in rangeland works in a way to achieve great work performance in a small time period with the least cost.
