Abstract
Traditional livestock systems of the Northwest of the Dominican Republic require a transformation towards sustainable productive alternatives such as silvopastoral systems (SPS), which result from the combination and interaction of trees-animals-grass. Therefore, the study was carried out with the objective of studying the diversity of silvopastoral arrangements and their tree species in dairy production systems of the municipality of Monción, Santiago Rodríguez, Dominican Republic, for the promotion of these systems as a sustainable alternative to the climate change. The silvopastoral arrangements and their tree species were studied through direct inspection and application of semi-structured interviews to selected livestock producers from Monción. Dasometric variables were measured (e.g.: chest diameter or CD, total height) and descriptive statistics were applied. It was evident that the most predominant SPS was scattered trees (87 %), followed by windbreaks (23 %) and trees on boundaries (20 %). The least frequent arrangements were living fences (13 %), riparian forests (7 %) and forest patches (7 %). 26 tree species were recorded, the four being dominant: Prosopis juliflora(21 %), Pinus occidentalis(17 %), Mangifera indica(10 %) and Swietenia mahagoni(9 %). The species Acacia skleroxylaobtained the highest height with 8.62 m and M. indicastood out with the highest DBH with 54.85 cm. It is recommended that Monción ranchers expand the tree coverage of their farms with the replanting and management of species such as Gliricidia. sepium, P. julifloraand Guazuma ulmifolia, in order to enrich the forage alternatives for their livestock.