Translations:Effects of climate change on livestock/18/en

Atmospheric CO
2 and livestock forage

The abundance of fodder and forage strongly benefits from the CO2 fertilization effect, which boosts growth and makes their water usage more efficient, potentially counteracting the effects of drought in certain places (i.e. many of the United States' rangelands). At the same time, it also causes plants' nutritional value to decline, with some forage grasses potentially becoming useless to livestock under certain conditions (i.e. during autumn, when their nutrition is already poor). On mixed grass prairies, experimental local warming of 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) during the day and of 3 °C (5.4 °F) at night has a relatively minor effect in comparison to increasing CO
2 levels to 600 ppm (nearly 50% larger than the ~420 ppm levels of 2023) during the same experiment. 96% of overall forage growth on such prairies stems from just six plant species, and they become 38% more productive largely in response to the increased CO
2 levels, yet their nutritious value to livestock also declines by 13% due to the same, as they grow less edible tissue and become harder to digest.