Team
GRASS4FUN is an EU-Biodiversa+ project that addresses the questions:
(1) How effective are conservation measures in protecting soil biodiversity?
(2) How does grassland management affect plant and microbial response to multiple global change stressors?
This project is led by Manuel Delgado Baquerizo at the Instituto de Recursos Naturales y Agrobiología de Sevilla, and is a collaboration between seven institutions throughout the EU. We will study the effects of land management from protected, natural grasslands (e.g., from Natuurmonumenten areas) to intensively managed cereal fields (maize and wheat).
Natural grasslands and cereal fields play fundamental roles in supporting biodiversity conservation and sustainable food production. Natural grasslands, managed agricultural grasslands, and cereal fields provide multiple ecosystem services, but also involve significant trade-offs (e.g., food production vs. soil carbon sequestration). Yet, unlike aboveground plants and animals, the capacity of European protected areas to conserve plant and soil microbial diversity and ecosystem services in natural grasslands under global environmental changes is virtually unknown. Moreover, we know very little about how cereal fields will respond to multiple co-occurring global change stressors, such as drought, pesticides and over-fertilization, which are threatening the conservation of soil biodiversity and function as well as food production. In this project, we will evaluate whether protected areas promote soil biodiversity and multiple ecosystem services in European natural grasslands, and will monitor the microbial diversity and function in cereal fields. We will conduct a European-level survey across grasslands triplets with different land use intensities (from protected natural grasslands and unprotected managed grasslands to maize and wheat fields). In addition, we will investigate whether multiple global change stressors impact the microbiome and function of European natural grasslands and cereal fields. We will do this by combining modelling and mapping of soil biodiversity and function across climate and land cover change scenarios with a manipulative study using microcosms subjected to multiple global change stressors. This work will be performed in close collaboration with a stakeholder advisory board to facilitate engagement and uptake by end-users, policy makers and society with the fundamental goal of providing ground-breaking knowledge to increase the resilience of grasslands to global stresses and protect European biodiversity, including organisms living in soils. GRASS4FUN will provide critical knowledge for the long-term economic benefits of the EU, and it is in line with multiple European-level programs such as Farm to Fork Strategy, EJP Soil and European Green Deal.
Interested to know more? Contact Natalie Oram, Albert Brangarí, and Franciska de Vries
Plant-soil Ecology 