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

极端天气事件预计将在频率和强度上增加。此外，由于气候变化，预计地球上许多地区的年内降雨量变化会更大。它们对植被和生态系统功能的影响鲜为人知。然而，初步证据表明，极端天气事件会改变植物的生产力、碳分配、植物竞争、物候和植物群落的入侵性。这些发现对生态和农业都有影响。然而，土地利用与更大的年内降雨量变率和更极端的天气事件相互作用的影响却很少受到科学界的关注。特别是，据我们所知，关于改变割草和施肥制度加速或减轻极端天气事件对温带草原生态系统功能影响的潜力的实验分析迄今尚未发表。在这个项目中，我们想要试验性地设置四种不同的降水制度，它们在分布(频率)和季节性上不同，与四种不同的土地利用制度相互作用，频率和幅度不同，并分析它们对中欧天然草原群落生产力和多样性的影响。生产力是农业最相关的生态系统功能和经济货币，多样性是生态学理论中最具根本性争议的参数，也是保护管理和政策中应用最广泛的植被变化指标。最后，我们想要讨论未来气候对温带文化景观中植物表现和植物分布的影响。

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.