Detection of goat herding impact on vegetation cover change using multi-season, multi-herd tracking and satellite imagery.

The frequency and severity of Mediterranean forest fires are expected to worsen as climate change progresses, heightening the need to evaluate understory fuel management strategies as rigorously as possible. Prescribed small-ruminant foraging is considered a sustainable, cost-effective strategy, but demonstrating a link between animal presence and vegetation change is challenging. This study tested whether the effect of small-ruminant herd presence in Mediterranean woodlands can be detected by integrating remote sensing and herd tracking at the landscape scale.

Does preoperative paracetamol reduce pain after dental treatment? A randomized controlled double-blind study.

Objective: The present study compared the efficacy of preoperative administration of paracetamol and placebo in reducing postoperative pain after routine dental treatment in children. The primary objective was to compare postoperative pain level between the groups. The secondary objective was to identify other factors that can influence postoperative pain.

Volatiles and Tannins in Pistacia lentiscus and Their Role in Browsing Behavior of Goats (Capra hircus).

Goat herding is an important tool in the ecologically sound management of Mediterranean shrublands and woodlands, although effective levels of woody biomass removal by the goats is neither guaranteed nor easy to predict. Preliminary observations indicated that one reason for this may be poor understanding of plant-herbivore interactions that operate intraspecifically at the local spatial scale. We asked, whether goats show intraspecific preferences among neighboring plants when foraging a small local population of Pistacia lentiscus, a dominant tall shrub.

Impact of animal density on cattle nutrition in dry Mediterranean rangelands: a faecal near-IR spectroscopy-aided study.

In the context of determining the sustainable carrying capacity of dry-Mediterranean herbaceous rangelands, we examined the effect of animal density on cattle nutrition, which is fundamental to animal performance and welfare. The effects on dietary components of low (0.56 cows/ha; L) and high (1.

Evaluation of the IceTag leg sensor and its derivative models to predict behaviour, using beef cattle on rangeland.

Background: There is interest in using animal-mounted sensors to provide the detailed timeline of domesticated ruminant behaviour on rangelands.

New Method: Working with beef cattle, we evaluated the pedometer-like IceTag device (IceRobotics, Edinburgh, Scotland) that records step events, leg movement and body position (upright versus lying). We used partition analysis to compare behaviour as inferred from the device data with true behaviour as coded at high resolution from carefully synchronized video observations of 5-min duration.