Livestock grazing is the most economically important use of rangeland ecosystems in many parts of the world. An extensive body of literature has investigated livestock grazing plans that are economically optimal or ecologically sustainable. This paper's contribution to the literature is development and application of an empirical mathematical programming model for optimizing the economic performance of livestock grazing on rangeland ecosystems for a wide array of vegetation biomes, forage productivity levels, and economic conditions. The model is calibrated to replicate historically observed data for select counties, in which predictions of the income optimization model match available data on county-wide forage, animal performance, grazing pressure, stocking level, and net income. Results show how climate stress and economic conditions affect the economically optimized choice of stocking rates and net income for 18 observed conditions and 126 potential conditions for six counties in the Intermountain West and Mediterranean western US. While findings show optimized outcomes for a large set of conditions in that region, the methods developed here have potential application to rangeland ecosystems internationally wherever data required by the model can be secured. The modeling results provide insight and utility for ranchers, scientists, and policymakers who seek economically optimal rangeland ecosystem outcomes.

中文翻译：

---

在价格和气候压力下优化牧场畜牧业的经济绩效

在世界许多地区，牲畜放牧是牧场生态系统最重要的经济用途。大量文献研究了经济上最佳或生态上可持续的牲畜放牧计划。本文对文献的贡献是开发和应用经验数学规划模型，用于优化牧场生态系统中牲畜放牧的经济绩效，适用于各种植被生物群落、饲料生产力水平和经济条件。该模型经过校准，可复制选定县的历史观察数据，其中收入优化模型的预测与全县草料、动物性能、放牧压力、库存水平和净收入的可用数据相匹配。结果显示，在美国西部山间和地中海西部的 6 个县的 18 种观察条件和 126 种潜在条件下，气候压力和经济条件如何影响载畜率和净收入的经济优化选择。虽然研究结果显示该地区大量条件的优化结果，但这里开发的方法有可能应用于国际范围内的牧场生态系统，只要可以确保模型所需的数据。建模结果为寻求经济上最佳牧场生态系统结果的牧场主、科学家和政策制定者提供了见解和实用性。