A landscape-scale assessment of the relationship between grassland functioning, community diversity, and functional traits
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Author / Producer
Date
2020-09
Publication Type
Journal Article
ETH Bibliography
yes
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Abstract
Livestock farmers rely on a high and stable grassland productivity for fodder production to sustain their livelihoods. Future drought events related to climate change, however, threaten grassland functionality in many regions across the globe. The introduction of sustainable grassland management could buffer these negative effects. According to the biodiversity-productivity hypothesis, productivity positively associates with local biodiversity. The biodiversity-insurance hypothesis states that higher biodiversity enhances the temporal stability of productivity. To date, these hypotheses have mostly been tested through experimental studies under restricted environmental conditions, hereby neglecting climatic variations at a landscape-scale. Here, we provide a landscape-scale assessment of the contribution of species richness, functional composition, temperature, and precipitation on grassland productivity. We found that the variation in grassland productivity during the growing season was best explained by functional trait composition. The community mean of plant preference for nutrients explained 24.8% of the variation in productivity and the community mean of specific leaf area explained 18.6%, while species richness explained only 2.4%. Temperature and precipitation explained an additional 22.1% of the variation in productivity. Our results indicate that functional trait composition is an important predictor of landscape-scale grassland productivity.
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Publication status
published
External links
Editor
Book title
Journal / series
Volume
10 (18)
Pages / Article No.
9906 - 9919
Publisher
Wiley
Event
Edition / version
Methods
Software
Geographic location
Date collected
Date created
Subject
BEF; Biodiversity; Drought; Ecosystem functioning; Ecosystem services; Grasslands; Plant; Productivity; Trait composition
Organisational unit
09553 - Pellissier, Loïc / Pellissier, Loïc
02722 - Institut für Terrestrische Oekosysteme / Institute of Terrestrial Ecosystems