Grassland Dynamics

grassland dynamics

Grasslands cover a substantial part of the land area in many regions of the world. They range from agriculturally used grasslands with high management intensity to areas with less intense or no management at all, for instance, nature conservation areas. All these grasslands provide important ecosystem functions and services, such as hay, fodder and bioenergy production, biodiversity conservation, provision of habitat to various other species (e.g. pollinators, butterflies), or cultural values. Grassland management decisions often come with a trade-off between productivity and biodiversity. Moreover, climate change and extremes (like droughts) are expected to threaten the ecosystem functions and services provided by grasslands.

GRASSMIND model
We develop models of different complexities to understand and robustly predict how grassland dynamics emerge from the interplay of species traits and states with management and environmental conditions. One of the models is GRASSMIND, an individual- and process-based model for simulating the dynamics of species-rich managed temperate grasslands. The model simulates the dynamics of individual plants (establishment, growth, death) on a daily time scale. It explicitly considers competition between individual plants for resources, management actions, and weather and soil conditions. Since its initial development, the model has constantly been refined and applied to different German study sites.

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