Pollinator species such as butterflies and bees are declining globally primarily due to habitat loss. This is especially concerning within the tallgrass prairie ecoregion of North America, where the land area comprised of native vegetation has declined by an estimated 99%. Thus, tallgrass prairie restoration and management is imperative. The control of invasive plant species such as tall fescue...

Grasslands cover 40% of the earth’s surface and support animal-based industries; maintain soil cover, watersheds and biodiversity; sequester atmospheric carbon for storage in the soil; and provide tourism and leisure income. Diseases continue to decrease herbage and seed yield and reduce nutritive value and palatability of grasslands to impact on animal health and productivity but realistic dat...

Distinguishing organic and conventional products is a major issue of food security and authenticity. Previous studies successfully used stable isotopes to separate organic and conventional products, but up to now, this approach was not tested for organic grassland hay and soil. Moreover, isotopic abundances could be a powerful tool to elucidate differences in ecosystem functioning and driving m...

This chapter deals with the challenge to reduce nitrogen (N) excretion and the amount of N able to leach under pasture. N inputs need to be adjusted while limiting adverse effects on animal nutrition and milk production per cow and per hectare. The chapter starts with discussing the origin and variation of N flow in dairy cows. N intake is divided into N exported in milk and N excreted in faece...

Changes in land use and management have been strongly affecting mountain grassland, however, their effects on the net ecosystem exchange of CO(2) (NEE) and its components have not yet been well documented. We analysed chamber-based estimates of NEE, gross primary productivity (GPP), ecosystem respiration (R) and light use efficiency (LUE) of six mountain grasslands differing in land use and man...

Patch-burn grazing is a management framework designed to promote heterogeneity in grasslands, creating more diverse grassland structure to accommodate the habitat requirements of many grassland species, particularly grassland birds. Published studies on the effects of patch-burn grazing on passerines have been conducted on relatively large (430–980 ha pastures), contiguous grasslands, and only ...

Populations of many grassland birds in North America have declined significantly during the last 30 years (Knopf 1994, Peterjohn and Sauer 1999). Although population trends of many groups of breeding birds vary across geographic regions (James et al. 1992, Herkert 1995, Sauer et al. 1997), the declining trend for grassland birds is consistent across much of North America, including the Northeas...

Intensified grasslands are usually the dominant type of grassland in many countries in Europe but are generally of poor ecological value. Several management factors may affect biodiversity of these grasslands including fertilisation, grazing and cutting management. Their effects on grassland biodiversity are described in this paper. In most cases, intensive and profitable grass production from ...