Grassland Biodiversity Dynamics

While productivity is typically the focus of grassland site management, plant biodiversity is another important characteristic of grasslands, which does not necessarily coincide with high productivity. However, both are important for long-term feed and bioenergy supply, food security, and the diversity of other trophic levels (e.g. pollinators).

We therefore investigate how different climate change scenarios, soil conditions and management regimes affect grassland biodiversity and productivity. We apply the grassland model GRASSMIND and develop it further. GRASSMIND is an individual-based, mechanistic ecological model. For a given grassland site, it explicitly simulates the processes that let biodiversity dynamics emerge: individual plants can establish, grow and die.

The poster was first presented at the BioDT Annual Meeting 2023, 13-14 June in Leiden, Netherlands.

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