Why is grassland important to earth

This would facilitate the identification of optimised land use and management systems, targeting policy for sustainable agriculture, and determination of the role of grassland in such an objective. Grasslands have to be considered at world level as biome as important as forest for global environment of the earth in relation with global changes.

For that, grassland has to be considered not only as a mean for producing food for domestic herbivores to ensure increasing food demand from increasing human population, but also as a functional component of the biosphere for regulating all the bio-geochemical cycles and the dynamics of biodiversity.

Multifunctionality is a new paradigm for grassland science. It requires multi-disciplinary research and multi-scale approaches. If animal production related to grassland management is a relatively short term issue, environment and biodiversity purposes require long term observation and experimentation to provide significant results. So grassland science needs to organize networks of long term multi-disciplinary experimental platforms at national or at international scale, in order to monitor and compute all agronomical, environmental and ecological outputs.

Such a network requires a more integrated organisation of grassland research either at national and international level. Lemaire lusignan. Abrir menu Brasil. Revista Brasileira de Zootecnia. Abrir menu. Lemaire About the author. Key words: agro-ecology, environment, grassland science, research priorities, tertiary education 1.

Grassland as an agro-ecosystem Grassland ecosystems are composed of inseparable and interactive components: i a vegetation community or communities together with a varied population of herbivores, ii the physical and chemical components of the soil, iii a diverse soil microbial community and micro-fauna.

With this approach: a wide range of grassland ecosystems climate, soil, vegetation would be investigated; contrasting managements would be applied as perturbations for long term observation of divergent evolutionary trajectories; time course for evolution of relevant state variables for vegetation, soil and populations of organisms would be monitored; plant-herbivore interactions and their consequences to biogeochemical cycles and vegetation dynamics would be analysed; environmental fluxes from and to the atmosphere and to the hydrosphere would be regularly estimated and related to changes in state variables in relation to global changes; key processes and interactions between compartments of the systems would be evaluated.

To do this will require us to undertake key core measurements such as i identifying and characterizing the compartments of the soil organic matter playing a key role, ii quantifying some of the key internal fluxes and to monitor at the boundaries of the system fluxes towards atmosphere and hydrosphere, iii investigating the functional role of plant, microbial and soil fauna diversity with the aim of characterising the response of the whole system to the disturbance regime induced by contrasted management over the long term, iv simulating the long term evolution of the system under climate change scenarios The outcome of such a research programme must be a common integrated data base and information system allowing exchanges and communication between different research teams of different disciplines.

Grassland at farm and landscape scale: environmental and ecological analysis and socio-economic perspectives The approach discussed above is built on process-based research and it cannot take into account all the diversity of management programmes that grassland areas are subjected to.

The functioning of such a territorial entity can be analysed through: the integrated environmental fluxes at the boundaries of the system to the atmosphere and hydrosphere taking into account the spatial interactions between the different agro-ecosystems; biodiversity at different levels of organisation within the territory and for different populations or communities of plants, insects, birds and mammals Wallis De Vries, ; the landscape value from a cultural and heritage point of view Mormont, Conclusion Grasslands have to be considered at world level as biome as important as forest for global environment of the earth in relation with global changes.

Measurement of soil organic matter turnover using 13C natural abundance. In: Boutton, T. Modelling population reinforcement at large spatial scale as a conservation strategy for the declining Little Busard Tetrax tetrax in agricultural habitats.

Animal conservation in press , CLAY, K. The impact of parasitic and mutualistic fungi on competitive interactions among plants. In: Grace, J.

Beyond the Green Revolution. New Dimensions for Agricultural Research. Characterisation by fractal analysis of foraging paths of ewes grazing heterogeneous swards. Nitrogen economy on grasslands and annual forage crops: control of environmental impact. In: Durand, J. Effects of management on species richness of grasslands: sward scale processes lead to large-scale patterns. Multi-functionality: a conceptual framework for a new organisation of research and development on grassland and livestock systems.

Predicting short-term extinction risk for the declining Little Busard Tetrax tetrax in agriculture areas. Conserv in press , Accounting for nutrients in grassland: Challenges and needs. In: CorallA. Grassland in a CO 2 -enriched world. Grassland primary production: North American Grasslands in perspective. In: French, N. Perspectives in Grassland Ecology. Predicting changes in community composition and ecosystem functioning from plant traits: revisiting the Holy Grail.

Ecol , v. Molecular analysis of bacterial community structure and diversity in unimproved and improved upland grass pasture. Microbiol , v. What does grassland represent? Gross nitrogen fluxes in soil: theory, measurement and application of 15N pool dilution techniques. Agron , v. Chemical structure and sources of the macromolecular resistant, organic fraction isolated from a forest soil Lacadee, south-west France.

Geochem , v. Location and chemical composition of stabilized organic carbon in topsoil and subsoil horizons of two acid forest soils. Soil Biol. Biochem , v. Vertical distribution, age, and chemical composition of organic carbon in two forest soils of different pedogenesis. The dynamics of Trifolium repens in a permanent pasture. I- The population of leaves and nodes per shoot axis. Series B , v. Changing agendas for agricultural research. In: Alston, J. Agricultural Science Policy. The North American grasslands were once home to millions of bison.

No other habitat is as agriculturally useful to humans as grasslands. Soils tend to be deep and fertile, perfect for cropland or pastures. Much of the North American prairielands have been converted into one of the richest agricultural regions on Earth. For the general public, grasslands do not exhibit the same need for protection as a rainforest or an old growth redwood stand BUT in truth grasslands are far more threatened.

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