Grassland - Science topic

• Section -1- Introduction: Measuring Ecosystem services • Section-2- Terrestrial Ecosystem services: monitoring and assessment (Forests, Woodlands, • grasslands, Soils, and agro-ecosystems) • Section-3- Wetlands & Aquatic Ecosystem services: monitoring, assessment (Riverine, coastal, • wetlands, mangroves, marsh, swamp ecosystems) • Section-4- Int...

Section -1- Introduction and Advancement: Measuring Ecosystem services: scope, prospective and importance  Section-2- Terrestrial Ecosystem: monitoring and assessment (Forest, grassland and agro-ecosystems)  Section-3- Wetlands & Aquatic Ecosystem services: monitoring, assessment, Provisioning & Supporting Ecosystem services (Riverine, coastal, w...

Dear colleagues, it is my pleasure to announce the special issue entitled "The Role of Forage in Sustainable Agriculture" under Grasses (ISSN 2813-3463). I am serving as guest editor of this issue alongside Dr. Steve Larson from USDA ARS. The deadline for manuscript submissions is January 31, 2025. You can find more information below or by clicking...

Terrestrial invertebrates provide essential ecosystem services, and there is concern that their contribution could be compromised by population declines due to agricultural intensification, including pesticide use. Identifying alternative and beneficial agricultural land management measures could stem or reverse biodiversity loss. Here we examine m...

Birds play an important role in multiple ecosystems and face significant threats from both land-cover and climate change, the effects of which remain insufficiently understood. This study projected the impact of these global changes on habitat suitability of 478 birds in India, which has the 9th highest number of bird species globally, under presen...

The article discusses several rare finds from the territory of the Republic of Moldova, which belong to the Early Eneolithic and Early Bronze Age. The finds of the Early Eneolithic are represented by three flat flint axes with an arched and refined butt. Axes of this type were widespread in the steppe zone in the second half of the 5th millennium B...

It seems difficult to accept as true the association of Cucuteni with Muntenia, even the more so with Prahova County. Although the academic literature documents a few finds like for instance those of Homorâciu and Budureasca, scholars have never deemed these as relevant. Better known are the finds from the Buzău (Sărata Monteoru, Pietroasa Mică) an...

The grassland biome, which is classified as a terrestrial ecosystem, contributes significantly to carbon sequestration. About one third of this ecosystem covers the land surface in south Africa and faces the danger of being eradicated. Much of the pressure is attributed to by synthetic initiatives that seeks to expand the economy of the country the...

Ecosystem carbon flux components, including ecosystem gross primary productivity (GPP), ecosystem respiration (ER), and net ecosystem productivity (NEP), are the most direct indicators of ecosystem production capacity, carbon sequestration, and climate regulation strength. Nevertheless, little is known about how water availability affects the tempe...

The aim of this research was to identify the key factors determining the level of soil liming in Poland. Spatial analyses were conducted using data from the 2020 National Agricultural Census. The study presents regional variations in selected parameters that characterise agricultural production quality and structural features, including the market...

The hydrology and hydrography of the Canadian Prairies are complex and difficult to represent in hydrological models. Recent studies suggest that runoff velocities on the Canadian Prairies may be much smaller than generally assumed. Times to peak, basin-scale flow velocities and roughnesses were derived from hourly streamflow hydrographs from 23 ba...

The fermentation characteristics of five apple and five pear varieties from non-fertilized meadow orchards (“Streuobstwiesen”) was studied. While some varieties fermented without problems, some varieties showed sluggish and stuck fermentation with high residual sugar concentration at the end of the fermentation period. A potential reason for these...

The main aspects of the current systematics and taxonomy of plants, the main morphological and ecological groups of them, living forms, methods for selecting an assortment of plants and their specificity in the minds of landscaping in Steppe Zone of Ukraine. The materials are presented on the typology of natural and artificial groupings of villages...

Open biomass burning (OBB) is a significant source of air pollutants, profoundly impacting regional air quality and global climate change. However, due to the lack of high-resolution burned area products, limited biomass data resolution, and inappropriate emission factors (EFs), current OBB emission inventories have significant uncertainties. In th...

Endangered pygmy bluetongue lizards are now only found on livestock grazed properties in the Mid-North of South Australia, in a highly fragmented habitat of remaining native grasslands. This relationship has persisted since European colonisation of Australia. The lizards rely on abandoned trapdoor and wolf spider burrows for their homesites, and ti...

With the intensification of climate change and human activities, the impacts of land use shifts on hydrological processes are becoming more pronounced, especially in regions with complex geographic, geological, and climatic conditions such as the Northeast Black Soil Region, China. This study quantitatively examines the variations in various land u...

The Mexican prairie dog (Cynomys mexicanus) is an endemic rodent of the grasslands of northern Mexico, considered a keystone species for the maintenance of its ecosystem. The main problem it faces is the increase in the agricultural frontier, which means that it is constantly exposed to chemical products used in nearby farming areas, such as pestic...

This is an excerpted section from Deborah Miranda's Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir. It retells a story told by Isabel Meadows about an Esselen woman who, in complicity with a river, cursed the white man who stole her people's land and removed them.

https://ejuow.uowasit.edu.iq Understanding the hydrological cycle and finding data crucial for water management require a foundational understanding of basin-scale simulation. To create the most accurate stream flow modeling possible, data from the weather stations was combined with input from other maps of the research area, such as soil, land cov...

Established in the late 19th century, Empire Ranch, located on the prairies of southern Arizona, grew rapidly to become one of the largest cattle ranches in the United States before declining throughout the 20th century. The ranch's pastures and remaining buildings are now managed by the Bureau of Land Management, which has been working with farmer...

CONTEXT: In modern intensive dairy farming, cows are increasingly held indoors and fed arable crops instead of grass to maximize individual animal performance. This leads to environmental issues such as high farm-level nutrient surpluses and loss of grassland plant species diversity as well as a growing competition between food and feed. OBJECTIVE:...

Collective action remains a fundamental approach to governing common pool resources, and Ostrom’s design principles (DPs) have been widely used for analyzing such governance. However, grasslands, as typical common pool resources, have received limited attention within this framework in China. Based on the village-level survey data in Yushu, Qinghai...

The Chinese Loess Plateau (CLP) is ecologically fragile, and water resources are extremely scarce. Soil thermal conductivity (λ) is a vital parameter for controlling surface heat transfer and is the key to studying the energy exchange and water balance of the soil surface. The objective of this study is to investigate the spatial distribution chara...

Groundwater is the main water supply source especially in arid/semiarid regions, whose quality has been widely concerned. To clarify the spatial distribution, occurrence and the impacts of fluoride (F⁻) and nitrate (NO3⁻) in groundwater, 26 groundwater samples were collected from domestic water wells and agricultural irrigation wells in Xilinhot ci...

Previous research has established A. ordosica as the dominant shrub species in the Mu Us sandy grasslands of Northwestern China. To further confirm its dominance, we used the dominance index equation (RC+RD+RH)/3 and performed on-field data collection to calculate the actual dominance of A. ordoscia based on relative coverage, relative density, and...

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scenarios run by an ensemble of models developed by the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) projects an average sea level rise (SLRs) of 0.6 to 1.2 m for the low and high emission scenarios (SSP1-1.9, SSP5-8.5), during the next century (IPCC 2021). The coastal zone will experience an increas...

Vegetation restoration is a critical strategy for addressing ecosystem degradation globally. However, understanding the specific impacts of land-use changes, particularly the conversion of farmland to forestland and grassland, on soil nutrients and microbial biomass in the Loess Plateau remains limited and requires further evaluation. Therefore, th...

Human activities and climate change have significantly influenced the water cycle, impacting flood risks and water security. This study centers on the Jing River Basin in the Chinese Loess Plateau, analyzing hydrological patterns and flood progression using the HEC-HMS model under changing conditions. The findings indicate that climate change subst...

The response of arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) symbiosis to environmental fluctuations involves resource exchange between host plants and fungal partners, associations between different AM fungal taxa, and biomass allocation between AM fungal spore and hyphal structures; yet a systematic understanding of these responses to meadow degradation remains r...

Drought propagation is a complex process, and understanding the propagation mechanisms of meteorological drought to soil drought is crucial for early warning, disaster prevention, and mitigation. This study focuses on eight tributaries in the upper reaches of the Shiyang River. Based on the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and the Standardize...

Non-point sources of pollution (NPSPs) originating from runoff from contaminated agricultural and populated areas are becoming a growing concern in developing countries, endangering the environment and public health. This requires systematic investigation, including modelling the likely impact using an appropriate hydrological model. This study qua...

Within the diverse South American fauna of jumping spiders, the genus Jollas comprises small spiders, generally associated with grasslands or flooded areas and rocky areas with bare soil. In Argentina, six species are known for this genus. In the present work, we describe a new species of Jollas for the north of the country, with unique beetle mimi...

Understanding human activity and global climate change requires an understanding of the impact of land-use change on carbon storage. Nevertheless, the number of studies examining carbon storage in complex terrain areas remains relatively limited. This study quantified land use shifts and carbon storage variations from 2010 to 2030 in the Sichuan–Ch...

Permafrost thaw in warming Arctic landscapes alters hydrology and saturation-driven biogeochemical processes. Models assume that aerobic respiration occurs in drained soils while saturated soils support methanogenesis; however, saturated soils maintain redox gradients that host a range of anaerobic metabolisms. We evaluated how redox potential and...

Exploring land use evolution and its impact on carbon storage is crucial for mitigating climate change in resource-based cities and promoting green, low-carbon development. This study constructs a GMOP-PLUS-InVEST coupled model and utilizes remote sensing data from five phases of land use from 2000 to 2020. Four scenarios are established to simulat...

Landsat images were extracted using Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform and optimized by Savitzky-Golay (SG) filtering. The Remote Sensing Ecological Index (RSEI) method was used to analyze the eco-environmental quality in Sichuan Province in recent 20 years. In addition, Theil-Sen median method and Mann–Kendall (MK) test were used to test the chang...

Studying the response of runoff to climate change and land use/cover change has guiding significance for watershed land planning, water resource planning, and ecological environment protection. Especially in the Yellow River Basin, which has a variable climate and fragile ecology, such research is more important. This article takes the Huangfuchuan...

As a consequence of both climate and land‐use change, open alpine habitats are shrinking. Snow avalanches are a natural disturbance that create habitat mosaics which host unique bird communities, but their frequency and severity will probably be influenced by climate change. Ski‐pistes can be considered the artificial counterpart of avalanches, and...

Plateau pika (Ochotona curzoniae) is crucial to soil organic carbon (SOC) storage in the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau (QTP), but its role in bacterial SOC metabolisms across different degraded alpine grasslands remains unclear. In this study, we investigated the soil physicochemical properties and the composition and function of the bacterial communitie...

Increasing the fertilizer dose from N100P80K40 kg/ha to N140P120K60 kg/ha did not contribute to an increase in mobile phosphorus in the soil, which indicates the property of phosphorus: when interacting with the soil, it forms poorly accessible compounds of phosphoric acid and is bound by the soil.During the growing season, some increase in the con...

Understanding how land use and land cover (LULC) changes affect soil erosion is essential for effective management of watershed areas. This study used Geographic Information Systems (GISs) and the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) model to analyze the impact of LULC changes on soil erosion in the Dondor Watershed. Remote sensing data, in...

The study of litterfall dynamics is of particular relevance in the forest-steppe zone, where forest ecosystems are characterized by high variability of climatic conditions and soil characteristics. The aim of this study was to analyze the seasonal dynamics of litterfall in pine and oak forests. Litterfall was collected during the seasonal maximum i...

Soil erosion is a major issue in the Indian Himalayan region, affecting both mountainous areas and the Terai. In the Terai, significant surface soil loss is driven by factors such as sandy soils, shallow soil depth, high rainfall, and the erosive force of young rivers. Human activities, including the conversion of forests and grasslands to cropland...

Populations of species living at the edge of their range need long-term and constant monitoring to analyze the number and condition of individuals of the species. When populations fall out of natural phytocenoses in conditions of regulated nature management, it is possible to restore these cenopopulations by repopulation. For optimization of work o...

The article presents the results of the effect of different norms of UzDEF defoliant, depending on the characteristics of the cotton variety C- 8286, to different irrigation regimes and norms of mineral fertilizers. Currently, preparations with a gentle effect on the gout, the composition of which is part of the phenylmochevina group, is made up of...

Rodent infestation has become one of the important factors in grassland degradation on the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau, one of the hindrances to ecological and environmental protection, and a threat to the balance and development of the ecosystem in the Sanjiangyuan region. Based on the need for the scientific planning for ecological protection, this pap...

Over the past two decades, large-scale ecological restoration in the Loess Plateau has significantly transformed land use and land cover (LULC) in the Wuding River Basin (WRB), improving ecological governance and environmental conditions. This study examines the spatiotemporal evolution of LULC and its driving factors from 2000 to 2020, employing m...

An assessment of the biodiversity and abundance of the herbaceous ground cover of the subori pine cenoses in the Voronezh Region was carried out in the long term (1990 to 2023) under the influence of the factor of reducing forest areas and identifying the most resistant species. Over the observation period from 1990 to 2020, the species composition...

Refugia or refuges are a concept that can contribute to an understanding of survival in the Anthropocene at different levels of abstraction. Urban green spaces are areas where interactions between human and non-human nature can occur. They serve as refuges in the city and can be beneficial for both biodiversity and human well-being. Over 70 % of th...

Understanding how land use and land cover (LULC) changes affect soil erosion is essential for effective management of watershed areas. This study used Geographic Information Systems (GISs) and the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) model to analyze the impact of LULC changes on soil erosion in the Dondor Watershed. Remote sensing data, in...

Successful restoration of forests after disturbances is important for the global carbon cycle. In this study, the CO2FIX V3.2 model was used for predictive estimates of carbon sequestration. The results show that both pine plantations and mixed pine-birch forests accumulate similar amounts of carbon in biomass and soil. Mixed stands of pine and bir...

The current sanitary condition of trees and stands of forest-steppe and steppe ecotypes of Scots pine is considered in relation to responses to climate change. Based on wood cores taken from 96 model trees in 62-year-old seed progenies of pine of different geographical origin on 32 sample plots, trends in the change in the width of annual rings and...

Protective stands of the forest fund are one of the most important components of environmental safety and sustainable development of the territory. They perform important functions: protecting soils from erosion, regulating the microclimate, improving air and water quality, and ensuring biological diversity. Dzhankoy district is one of the regions...

Grassland carrying capacity is an indicator for measuring the stability of grassland ecosystems and can provide a basis for formulating regional sustainable grazing strategies. However, most previous studies on this have only considered annual fluctuations, but seasonal changes were ignored. In this study, the herbage yield and nutrient value of tw...

The article provides information on the influence of the Tashkent-Termiz M-39 highway of the Republic of Uzbekistan on the amount of copper, zinc and lead in the irrigated meadow soils around the road. The total amount of copper, zinc and lead in the soil has increased due to the emissions of motor vehicles traveling on the highway. Heavy metal pol...

The purpose of our research was to study the digestibility of dry matter of lucerne and meadow clover, to develop methods for selecting highly digestible plants and to create a starting material with increased digestibility of dry matter. This paper presents data on the study of the digestibility of drymatter of lucerne and meadow clover, which dec...

Entosthodon hungaricus is a rare moss species of the salty grasslands in Serbia. It is threatened with extinction due to habitat destruction and loss, although it reproduces sexually. In this study, we tested different models predicting its distribution under several climate scenarios over the next 8 decades. All models tested indicated a reduction...

Alternative habitats to predominant corn and soybean fields may help to stem declines of native lady beetles in central North America, but their relative values to native lady beetles have not been directly compared. The goal of this 2-year study was to compare the abundance and species composition of native agrobiont lady beetles among habitats su...

The Insect Calculator is based on many data sets compiled from various studies. In all studies, the biocenometer was used as a method in which arthropods are sampled from one m² using a suction sampler – a modified leaf blower. The aim is to provide an online tool that predicts the number of insects in a meadow. This prediction depends on the gree...

Although ex situ conservation programs are increasingly valuable support tools for in situ conservation measures, success depends on these captive individuals to be genetically representative of the recipient population. The Eurasian stone-curlew (Burhinus oedicnemus) inhabit steppes that represent some of the most degraded and exploited habitats w...

This article presents the results of a study on the fauna of the entomological reserve «Urochysche Sontsevyky», established in 2024 in Sumy Region. Natural complexes with meadow-steppe areas prevail in the reserve. A significant number of rare animal species listed in the Red Book of Ukraine, the Bern Convention, the European Red List, and other co...

The effectiveness of agro-reclamation techniques for preserving the fertility of chernozem soils of fruit plantations under conditions of irrigation with mineralized waters in the conditions of the steppe zone of fruit growing in the Krasnodar Territory in irrigated intensive plantations of apple varieties of winter ripening on a low-growing rootst...

This article describes the effect of various bio-stimulants on the grain yield and quality indicators of Crotalaria juncea in the cultivation of the non-traditional leguminous plant Crotalaria juncea in the conditions of the meadow gray soils of the Jizzakh region. In order to obtain a high-quality grain yield from Crotalaria, it should be sown at...

Plain Language Summary The roots of most (>80%) grassland plants are colonized by endogenous microbes, in particular arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF). However, the direct contribution of root‐borne microbial necromass carbon (MNC) to grassland soil organic carbon (SOC) remains unknown. Here we conduct a benchmark quantification of root‐borne MNC...

Urban growth (UG) in the Chinese Loess Plateau has increased rapidly, impacting regional ecosystem services (ESs). Accurate evaluations of UG-ESs have become a challenge for the development of simulation models. To address long-term spatiotemporal dependencies in grid neighborhood interactions, this study enhances land-use simulation accuracy using...