Climate change will have a considerable influence on the biodiversity and productivity of meadows and pastures.
Climate change will have a considerable influence on the biodiversity and productivity of meadows and pastures. However, according to the results of the large-scale climate and land use experiment, GCEF, which has been conducted at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) for 10 years, the extent of these changes depends on the land use. Grassland optimised for high yield responds much more sensitively to periods of drought than less intensively used meadows and pastures. According to an article recently published in Global Change Biology, this can certainly have economic consequences for the farmers affected.
Grassland is one of the most important and most widespread ecosystems on earth. Such open landscapes with grasses and herbs not only cover more than one quarter of the entire land surface but also store at least one third of the terrestrial carbon, are crucial for food production, and can be extremely species-rich in a relatively small area. But what is the future of these habitats? The study provides new insights into this question.
It has long been clear that two environmental changes are threatening the world’s grasslands. Particularly in Europe, grasslands are now fertilised much more heavily, mowed more frequently, and grazed more intensively. In addition, farmers often sow only a handful of grass varieties that promise a particularly high yield. This intensification of land use is fundamentally changing the species composition and functionality of meadows and pastures. The same applies to climate change. For Germany, climate change will result in a shift in the seasonal distribution of precipitation as well as an increase in hydrological extremes (e.g. heavy rainfall and droughts), among other things. It is considered the second largest threat for these ecosystems.
Read more at Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ
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