Cattle on irrigated pasture, Colorado. (Gary Cramer, USDA NRCS)
Monitoring the ecosystem is also a key element in livestock production systems. In Holistic Management ®, for example, one of the cornerstones of whole farm planning is biological monitoring to assess the health of the land and productivity of the system as a whole. The main features of monitoring in this context are:
the use of simple strategies and techniques,
a goal of predicting changes and trends in the landscape in order to develop an effective response,
evaluation of plant growth rates, water and nutrient cycles,
analysis of both land performance and animal performance, and
the use of criteria that will help anticipate adverse impacts before they become major problems.
