Transformative management approaches for grasslands

Abstract:

Improved management practices of terrestrial ecosystems can provide the 37% mitigation of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) necessary to hold warming below 2 °C while increasing other ecosystem services including productivity. With 70% of global agricultural area, grasslands make a substantial contribution to food and energy security, and play an important role in GHG mitigation. Synthesizing multi-source field observations and modeling, we examine the potential of five innovative strategies including adaptive multipaddock grazing (AMP), patch burn grazing (PBG), agrivoltaics, agroforestry with inverse phenology species, and enhanced weathering to improve grassland productivity and to mitigate climate change. Further, we identify gaps in knowledge for future research and hypothesize potential unknown effects of these novel strategies. Finally, we explore in-depth how AMP and PBG affect C fluxes and productivity of subtropical grasslands combining eddy covariance and biometric methods. We found that both AMP and PBG management can increase the net CO₂ sink strength and productivity of grasslands and that this impact is regulated by precipitation and grazing intensity. We conclude that adopting these novel strategies to manage grasslands, and the corresponding environmental benefits, would support the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals of Achieving Food and Energy Security and Climate Action, and propose a stimulating new research agenda for achieving enhanced efficiency of grasslands to sustainably provide food and energy by incorporating these emerging strategies to a management portfolio.