Biodiversity and Ecosytem Functions in Grasslands

BIOLOG

How does different levels of biodiversity influence the functions of an ecosystem?

To take a closer look at this questions, many research projects all over the world were initiated in the last years.For grassland is a common, easily to establish ecosystem, many of these studies were concentrated on such grassland ecosystems. In Central-Europe locally whole landscapes are dominated by more or less intensively used meadows. So grassland studies here are, besides the study of plant communities and single species, of special interest in a landscape ecological context.The conditions in the grasslands may have strong influences on ecosystem services provided to humankind by the landscape, such as biomass production und groundwater.

The center of the BIOLOG-Bayreuth project is build up by experimental grassland communities which were established in 1996 for the European-Union-funded BIODEPTH-project and newly established communities on 28 Lysimeters in the Ecological-Botanical Garden of the University of Bayreuth. Here, different topics of the relationship between taxonomical and functional phytodiveristy and ecosystem functioning are addressed.