5.14.24
Peter Rüegg
Like forests, grassland provides numerous ecological, economic and social benefits. Researchers have investigated ways to maintain and improve these benefits in the Swiss canton of Solothurn.
Meadows on which cows graze provide more than just agricultural production benefits – they delight hikers too. (Photograph: Valentin Klaus / ETH Zurich)
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In brief
-Grassland provides many services for humans, animals and nature, such as feed production, carbon storage and recreation.
-Researchers spent two years investigating permanent grassland, its utilization, soils and plant communities in order to quantify the resulting ecosystem services.
-Grassland performs best when different types of use such as meadows, pastures and unfertilized extensive grassland exist together in a mosaic landscape.
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Grass, clover and herbs are the foundation of Swiss agriculture: two-thirds of Switzerland’s agricultural land is grassland, much of which is barely suitable for arable farming. Vast areas of grassland are to be found primarily in the foothills of the Alps, in the Alps themselves and in the Jura Mountains. And grassland, in turn, is the basis for Swiss dairy and meat production.
However, in contrast to forests, whose ecosystem services such as timber production, water regulation, climate and recreation are firmly anchored in the public consciousness, grassland is rarely mentioned in terms of the diverse and numerous ecosystem services it provides for people. Yet it plays an even more important role in our food supply.
Grassland is an important carbon store and a haven for biodiversity. It protects against erosion and provides cultural services such as an attractive landscape with grazing animals that delights hikers and tourists. These are just a few examples of the many different benefits or functions that researchers attribute to grassland.
Services and farming practices are tightly connected
But which type of farming is especially well-suited to promoting the services that grassland provides? Researchers at ETH Zurich and the agricultural research institute Agroscope have tackled this question, and the resulting study was recently published in the journal Nature Communications.
See the science paper for instructive material with images.
In their study, the researchers took a close look at 90 permanent grassland areas on over 30 farms in the canton of Solothurn in the north of Switzerland. In their study, they considered three grassland farming practices: fertilization (use of fertilizer or unfertilized extensive grassland, so-called biodiversity promotion areas), type of use (meadow or pasture) and farming system (conventional IP Suisse, or organic).
To understand how farming practices influence various ecosystem services, the researchers analyzed the soils and plant communities of all the permanent grassland involved. Because different stakeholder groups prefer different ecosystem services, the researchers split their analysis into three groups for analysis: provisioning services, regulating services and cultural services.
“We’ve observed that farming practices have a significant effect on many ecosystem services,” says Valentin Klaus, co-author of the study and senior scientist at ETH Zurich’s Institute of Agricultural Sciences. “However, there’s no one ‘Swiss army knife’ of farming practice that delivers all ecosystem services.”
More aesthetics, less feed in extensive grassland
The greatest effect on ecosystem services was achieved by extensive farming without fertilizer. This includes, for example, semi-natural pastures and meadows. Such areas greatly enhance the benefits of biodiversity, soil protection and landscape aesthetics. On the other hand, extensive grassland farming significantly reduces the quantity and quality of feed production for farmers.
“This trade-off between feed production and cultural or regulating services is well known. However, we were able to clearly show that extensive grassland farming produces not only biodiversity benefits but also many societaly relevant ecosystem services,” Klaus says.
Meadows and pastures are very different
The researchers also found a pronounced effect on ecosystem services when grassland was used as pasture or meadow; in other words, depending on whether the area was predominantly grazed or mowed. But there were still trade-offs between services, Klaus says: “Pastures are richer in plant species, have a higher quality of animal feed and are beautiful because of the livestock that enrich the landscape. Meadows, on the other hand, produce a higher amount of animal feed, which is important to farmers.” In addition, the plant communities in meadows are more aesthetic, because unfertilized meadows in particular contain the most flowering herbs.
Grassland dominates the landscape, which is also a key ecosystem service. (Photograph: Valentin Klaus / ETH Zurich)
As for why meadows and pastures provide such different services, Klaus attributes that to how the frequent mowing of meadows favours certain plant species while suppressing others. Meadows are also fertilized more intensively on average than pastures, which has an additional impact on many ecosystem services.
Organic grassland with few benefits
To Klaus’s surprise, organic farming had only a slight positive effect on the grassland’s ecosystem services. “Although we found more symbiotic fungi and a lower risk of nitrogen leaching in such areas, conventionally and organically farmed grassland performs roughly equally well in terms of all ecosystem services,” Klaus says. He assumes the reason for this weak effect of organic farming to be due to the high similarity in how conventionally and organically farmed grassland is managed. Both can be relatively intensively used with ample fertilizer.
As a result, it’s clear to Klaus that no one type of grassland management provides all ecosystem services at the same time. “To specifically increase and promote grassland ecosystem services in our landscapes, we need a mosaic of the farming practices mentioned; in other words, a combination of areas with and without fertilization as well as meadows and pastures next to each other,” Klaus says. “As there’s no one ideal type of grassland, we always have to weigh up the pros and cons. We have to ask ourselves: Who’s benefiting the most from what kind of management and in what location?”
From intensively cultivated meadows to pastures and grassland: a mosaic of different farming practices increases the number of ecosystem services provided by grassland. (Photograph: Valentin Klaus / ETH Zurich)
If a meadow is used mainly to produce feed, biodiversity and other important services suffer. In extensive unfertilized meadows, meanwhile, farmers must reckon with considerable production losses. “If we want to sustain and facilitate the provision of all ecosystem services, we need a combination of different grassland types at the farm and landscape level,” Klaus says.
The researchers will now use these findings to support farmers, land cooperatives and cantonal authorities. The study also helps to balance the various demands and interests and to achieve a high level of ecosystem service multifunctionality at the landscape level.
See the full article here .
Comments are invited and will be appreciated, especially if the reader finds any errors which I can correct.
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The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich [ETH Zürich] [Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich] (CH) is a public research university in the city of Zürich, Switzerland. Founded by the Swiss Federal Government in 1854 with the stated mission to educate engineers and scientists, the school focuses exclusively on science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Like its sister institution The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne [EPFL-École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne](CH) , it is part of The Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology Domain (ETH Domain)) , part of the The Swiss Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research [EAER][Eidgenössisches Departement für Wirtschaft, Bildung und Forschung] [Département fédéral de l’économie, de la formation et de la recherche] (CH).
The university is an attractive destination for international students thanks to low tuition fees of 809 ₣ per semester, PhD and graduate salaries that are amongst the world’s highest, and a world-class reputation in academia and industry. There are currently students from over 120 countries, many of which are pursuing doctoral degrees. In the QS World University Rankings ETH Zürich is ranked very highly in the world and very highly by the Times Higher Education World Rankings. In the QS World University Rankings by subject it is ranked very highly in the world for engineering and technology, earth & marine science.
Nobel laureates, Fields Medalists, Pritzker Prize winners, and Turing Award winners have been affiliated with the Institute, including Albert Einstein. Other notable alumni include John von Neumann and Santiago Calatrava. It is a founding member of the IDEA League and the International Alliance of Research Universities (IARU) and a member of the CESAER network.
ETH Zürich was founded on 7 February 1854 by the Swiss Confederation and began giving its first lectures on 16 October 1855 as a polytechnic institute (eidgenössische polytechnische schule) at various sites throughout the city of Zurich. It was initially composed of six faculties: architecture, civil engineering, mechanical engineering, chemistry, forestry, and an integrated department for the fields of mathematics, natural sciences, literature, and social and political sciences.
It is locally still known as Polytechnikum, or simply as Poly, derived from the original name eidgenössische polytechnische schule, which translates to “federal polytechnic school”.
ETH Zürich is a federal institute (i.e., under direct administration by the Swiss government), whereas The University of Zürich [Universität Zürich ] (CH) is a cantonal institution. The decision for a new federal university was heavily disputed at the time; the liberals pressed for a “federal university”, while the conservative forces wanted all universities to remain under cantonal control, worried that the liberals would gain more political power than they already had. In the beginning, both universities were co-located in the buildings of the University of Zürich.
From 1905 to 1908, under the presidency of Jérôme Franel, the course program of ETH Zürich was restructured to that of a real university and ETH Zürich was granted the right to award doctorates. In 1909 the first doctorates were awarded. In 1911, it was given its current name, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule. In 1924, another reorganization structured the university in 12 departments. However, it now has 16 departments.
ETH Zürich, EPFL (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne) [École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne](CH), and four associated research institutes form The Domain of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology (ETH Domain) [ETH-Bereich; Domaine des Écoles polytechniques fédérales] (CH) with the aim of collaborating on scientific projects.
Reputation and ranking
ETH Zürich is ranked among the top universities in the world. Typically, popular rankings place the institution as one of the best universities in continental Europe and ETH Zürich is consistently ranked among the top universities in Europe, and among the best universities of the world.
Historically, ETH Zürich has achieved its reputation particularly in the fields of chemistry, mathematics and physics. Nobel laureates are associated with ETH Zürich, the most recent of whom is Richard F. Heck, awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2010. Albert Einstein is perhaps its most famous alumnus.
The QS World University Rankings placed ETH Zürich very high in the world. ETH Zürich has ranked very highly in the world in Engineering, Science and Technology, just behind The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University and The University of Cambridge (UK). ETH Zürich also ranked very highly in the world in Natural Sciences, and in Earth & Marine Sciences.
The Times Higher Education World University Rankings has ranked ETH Zürich very highly in the world in the field of Engineering & Technology, just behind
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, The California Institute of Technology, Princeton University, The University of Cambridge (UK),
Imperial College London (UK) and
The University of Oxford (UK).
In a comparison of Swiss universities by swissUP Ranking and in rankings published by CHE comparing the universities of German-speaking countries, ETH Zürich traditionally is ranked very highly in natural sciences, computer science and engineering sciences.
In the survey CHE Excellence Ranking on the quality of Western European graduate school programs in the fields of biology, chemistry, physics and mathematics, ETH Zürich was assessed as one of the institutions to have excellent programs in all the considered fields, the other two being Imperial College London (UK) and the University of Cambridge (UK), respectively.