Soil organic matter (SOM) provides crucial storage for carbon but also contains a majority of soil nitrogen. Land use intensity (LUI) may affect the particulate and mineral-associated SOM pools having repercussions on the carbon and nitrogen storage and cycling. Soil organic matter dynamics and composition plays a key role for the extent of these processes, yet its interactions remain poorly...
Montane grasslands play a vital role in regional water cycling and agricultural productivity, yet their response to climate change remains insufficiently understood. This study presents findings from a multi-year climate manipulation experiment in the Austrian Alps, where high-precision lysimeters combined with warming (+3 °C) and elevated CO₂ concentrations (+300 ppm) were used to assess...
Raising water levels in peatlands is an important component in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and therefore achieving the legally defined climate protection targets. However, high water levels on agricultural land require adapted management, which usually results in changing existing work and operating procedures.
Peat soils in Baden-Wuerttemberg are mainly located in the southeast of the...
The soil microbiome plays a pivotal role in biogeochemical cycles, particularly in carbon and nitrogen cycling, which are central to the regulation of Earth's climate. As global climate change accelerates, understanding whether the soil microbiome functions primarily as a mitigator or as a contributor to this threat is increasingly critical.
Recent advances in metagenomics, isotope tracing,...
Background: Agricultural grasslands are often managed intensively, influencing soil properties and local macro and micro- communities. The impacts of such anthropogenic changes are not limited to host diversity but can also affect diversity of host-associated microbial assemblages. These changes can have cascading effects across ecosystems, resulting in significant community alterations and...
Over centuries mountain pasture has been a traditional way of agriculture in the alpine regions in Europe. This seasonal grazing led to species- and nutrient rich alpine grassland combined with human maintenance even below the tree line. Due to societal change and economic pressure within the last 50 years lots of those mountain pastures had been abandoned. So, the study area Brunnenkopfalm in...
Clonal demographic traits play important roles in regulating community dynamics. Yet, it remains unclear how the responses of these clonal traits to drought might depend on previous drought exposure, and how drought responses vary among grasslands. We conducted a repeated drought experiment across four grasslands along an aridity gradient in the Mongolian plateau. We assessed the effects of...
The National Climate for Climate Services (NCCS) is currently implementing a programme aimed at developing decision-making tools for dealing with climate change in Switzerland. As a contribution to “Ecosystem Services”, one of the projects included in the programme, Agroscope is setting up an interactive information platform that will allow users to display the projected impacts of climate...
Grassland represents the most important land-use system in European alpine regions. Various utili-sation intensities caused by different site conditions, small-scaled structures and multiple cuts per growing season impede a systematic estimation of yield and forage quality. During the growth of grassland, the biomass increases, while at the same time, the forage quality decreases with...
Grasslands are widespread ecosystems that play a vital role in providing multiple ecosystem functions, particularly as sources of fodder. Despite their ecological and economic importance, knowledge about grasslands remains limited due to their high heterogeneity in use and management and, consequently, their species composition. This is particularly the case in regions such as southern...
Spatially explicit information on grassland traits (e.g., biomass, plant N content) can support the optimization of grassland management. Previous studies demonstrated the potential of remote sensing to retrieve different plant traits in grasslands using multispectral and hyperspectral sensors. However, most of these studies used empirical approaches and are therefore hardly transferable to...
Mountain grasslands have been shaped by human activities over centuries, contributing to the provision of crucial ecosystem services to people living inside and outside mountain regions. However, mountain grasslands in the European Alps nowadays are facing significant transformations, mainly due to changes in the grassland management as well as climatic variations. Spatially explicit and...
Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agriculture significantly contribute to climate change, with drained peatlands representing a substantial and often overlooked source, especially in Germany where 95% are drained for agriculture. Existing life cycle assessments (LCAs) of milk production often underestimate environmental impacts by neglecting these soil emissions. This study quantified the...
Fertilization plays an important role in grassland management and decisions are usually made at farm level. Data on fertilizer application rates are crucial for an accurate assessment of the effects of grassland management on ecosystem services. However, these are generally not available on farm/field scale. To close this gap, we present an agent-based model for Fertilization In Grasslands...
The Decision Support System (DSS) for grassland farming is a user-friendly online tool designed to assess the effects of current and alternative management practices and climate scenarios on key grassland parameters. These include yield, changes in soil carbon (C) stock, and environmentally relevant nitrogen (N) losses via leaching and gaseous emissions. The tool is based on the terrestrial...
Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agriculture significantly contribute to climate change, with drained peatlands representing a substantial and often overlooked source, especially in Germany where 95% are drained for agriculture. Existing life cycle assessments (LCAs) of milk production often underestimate environmental impacts by neglecting these soil emissions. This study quantified the...
Dear Editor,
I am pleased to submit an abstract for consideration of poster presentation in the International Grassland Conference 2025. The abstract is entitled “Estimating vegetation traits in pre-Alpine grasslands by combining multi-annual of in-situ data and UAV Imagery”.
Thank you very much for your consideration.
Sincerely,
Batnyambuu
Modern slurry application techniques have been shown to reduce ammonia losses, yet a comprehensive evaluation of their nitrogen (N)-related agronomic and ecological impacts is lacking. Therefore, we utilized 15N-labeled cattle slurry to examine traditional and modern application techniques regarding their effects on hydrological and gaseous N losses, plant N uptake, soil organic nitrogen (SON)...
Grasslands are the basis for milk and meat production in Alpine and pre-Alpine regions, where climate warming is occurring twice as fast as in global average. Warmer and drier conditions have been found to lead to versatile effects on grassland productivity and yields depending on pedo-climatic conditions. Experimentally, it has been discovered that higher and cooler elevations benefit from...
To achieve climate-smart soil management under the climate change crisis, mechanism-based management is essential for addressing agricultural productivity needs and enhancing carbon sequestration under contrasting land uses.
Based on a mechanistic assessment of grassland and cropland soils in a hillslope-floodplain system in Bavaria, this study provides several practical climate-smart soil...
In the context of climate change and declining mineral phosphorus (P) fertilizer reserves, understanding carbon (C), nitrogen (N), and phosphorus (P) biogeochemical cycling under contrasting land uses is essential for sustainable climate-smart management. This study provides a comprehensive assessment of coupled C-N-P cycling within a hillslope-flood plain system in Bavaria, Germany. It...
Alpine pastures have shaped the landscapes of the European Alps for millennia. However, more and more alpine pastures have been abandoned since the 1950s, e.g., due to the work intensiveness at high altitudes. Such abandonment of alpine pastures in the long term leads to natural reforestation. Despite ample potential surface in the mountains, the pressure to provide important ecosystem...
Alpine and pre-Alpine grasslands represent ecologically rich and culturally important landscapes - shaped by long-standing human–nature interactions. By applying surveys in (pre-)Alpine Bavaria, we found that farmers and citizens not only attribute instrumental and intrinsic values, but predominantly relational values to grasslands. The results show that grasslands and their ecosystem services...
Fertilization strongly influences nitrogen (N) cycling and balance in managed grasslands. To investigate the long-term dynamics of organic N inputs, we applied fully 15N-labelled manure and slurry to 27 plots across three German regions under three different management intensities. Our findings show that slurry fertilization resulted in faster incorporation of fertilizer N into the plant-soil...
