Interactive effects of altitude and management on resistance and resilience of permanent grasslands to drought: combining agronomic, functional and ecophysiological approaches
Project
Funding : Swiss National Science Foundation
Year : 2015-2017
Description :
Grassland ecosystems are challenged to meet the growing demand for ecosystem services and providing human goods. Grasslands are at the core of the Jura agriculture and justify financial support of the government, whose agricultural policy supports forage autonomy of herbivore herds. The expected increase in extreme climatic events will cause significant constraints on grassland systems that are particularly sensitive to drought. As a result, farmers must adapt grassland management, as well as their breeding objectives. Identifying potential interactive effects of different factors, such as altitude and management, with different water availability scenarios is therefore a major challenge to anticipate the performance of grasslands and the reliability of production at a regional scale under future climate variability. The current project will focus on the response of pastures to simulated spring and summer droughts along an altitudinal gradient and according to two management schemes. The objective of the project is twofold: i) provide agronomical references and management clues for forage production under altered precipitation regimes to anticipate potential yield losses and to adapt to future climate extremes, ii) identify ecological mechanisms that drive grassland responses to understand grassland resistance and resilience to drought events and predict their evolution under future climate. To achieve both applied and fundamental goals, agronomical monitoring will be combined with ecological approaches. A plant functional approach will be implemented to address changes in species and functional compositions of grasslands in response to altered environmental conditions. Moreover, relevant and innovative ecophysiological measurements will be developed to assess drought resistance mechanisms at the plant species level. Through the development of knowledge, the proposed project will significantly add in our understanding of the response of grassland communities to future climate variability, and will contribute to ecological theories. Further, the proposed project includes an effective integration of fundamental ecological principles into an agronomic issue, and will lead to the development of references directly relevant to agriculture.
Keywords :
Grasslands, climate change, drought, rainshelter experiment, altitudinal gradient, plant traits, water stress, agronomy, fodder, management
Internal collaborators :
Prof. Alexandre Buttler, EPFL-WSL-ECOS – PI
Dr. Constant Signarbieux, EPFL-WSL-ECOS
Dr. Pierre Mariotte, EPFL-WSL-ECOS
Amarante Vitra, PhD, EPFL-WSL-ECOS
Timothée Lottaz, EPFL-WSL-ECOS
Eric Mosimann, Agroscope, co-PI
Marco Meisser, Agroscope
Dr Claire Deléglise, Agroscope
Luc Stevenin, Agroscope
Anita Risch, WSL, co-PI
Prof. Richard Splivallo, EPFL-WSL-ECOS and Goethe Univ. Frankfurt, Germany
MSc and semester students
Partnership :
Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland
Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, Switzerland
Agroscope, Changins, Switzerland
Goethe University Frankfurt
Study site :
Altitudinal gradient in the Jura (transect) : Chéserex, St-Georges, Trois-Chalet Marchairuz
Links :