Consequences of more extreme precipitation regimes interacting with land use practices for productivity and diversity of grassland in Central Europe

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Extreme weather events are expected to increase in frequency and magnitude. Additionally, greater intra-annual rainfall variability due to climate change is predicted for many regions on earth. Their effects on vegetation and ecosystem functions are widely unknown. However, first evidence suggests that extreme weather events alter i.e. plant productivity, carbon allocation, plant competition, phenology and invasibility of plant communities. These findings have ecological and agricultural implications. Yet, effects of land use interacting with greater intra-annual rainfall variability and more extreme weather events have received minimal attention from the scientific community. Particularly, to our knowledge, experimental analyses of the potential of altered mowing and fertilization regimes to accelerate or mitigate effects of extreme weather events on ecosystem functions in temperate grassland have not been published to date. Within this project, we want to experimentally install four different precipitation regimes varying in distribution (frequency) and seasonality interacting with four different land use regimes varying in frequency and magnitude and analyse their effects on productivity and diversity of natural grassland communities in Central Europe. Productivity is the most relevant ecosystem function and economic currency for agriculture, diversity the most fundamentally debated parameter in ecological theory and most widely used indicator of vegetation change in conservation management and policy. Finally, we want to discuss implications for plant performance and plant distribution in cultural landscapes in the temperate zone in future climate.