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Biblioteca Shieling Areas: Historical Grazing Pressures and Landscape Responses in Northern Iceland

Shieling Areas: Historical Grazing Pressures and Landscape Responses in Northern Iceland

Shieling Areas: Historical Grazing Pressures and Landscape Responses in Northern Iceland

Resource information

Date of publication
Dezembro 2012
Resource Language
ISBN / Resource ID
AGRIS:US201400166069
Pages
81-99

Historical domestic livestock grazing in sensitive landscapes has commonly been regarded as a major cause of land degradation in Iceland. Shieling areas, where milking livestock were taken to pasture for the summer, represented one element of grazing management and in this paper we consider the extent to which historical shieling-based grazing pressure contributed to land degradation. Based on a grazing model to assess pressures and tephrochronology -based soil accumulation rates allied to micromorphology as a proxy for land degradation, our findings suggest that the shieling sy stem contributed to the maintenance of upland vegetation cover and related productivity levels without causing land degradation from settlement through to ca. AD 1300. As land degradation accelerated from ca. AD 1477 it is likely that shieling management continued to operate effectively contributing to the overall resilience of livestock farming.

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Authors and Publishers

Author(s), editor(s), contributor(s)

Brown, Jennifer L.
Simpson, Ian A.
Morrison, Stuart J. L.
Adderley, W. Paul
Tisdall, Eileen
Vésteinsson, Orri

Publisher(s)
Data Provider
Geographical focus