What is it about?
Grasslands feed livestock and store carbon in their soils, but global computer models of vegetation have not captured the variety of plant types that grow in them. In this paper, we added plants with different growth strategies to a global vegetation model, compared grasslands with and without this variety under two climate change scenarios, and measured the effects on productivity and soil carbon.
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Why is it important?
Grasslands support the livelihoods of at least a billion people, and how well they cope with climate change depends on which plants grow there. Experiments on small plots show that diverse plant communities do better, but at the scale of the whole planet this was unclear. In our simulations, grasslands that lose most of their plant diversity are less able to adapt. They produce less forage, take up less CO₂ and store less carbon in the soil. This happens even under moderate climate change. In some regions, productivity is up to 50% lower by the end of the century. We assumed an extreme loss of diversity, so the numbers show what is at stake rather than a forecast.
Perspectives
Our results suggest that preventing the loss of plant diversity helps keep grasslands productive as the climate changes. The model is a simplification: it lets new plants arrive instantly, so it may overestimate how well diverse grasslands can adapt, and the exact numbers are uncertain. We hope this encourages grazing management that supports plant diversity and brings plant diversity into future climate impact studies.
Stephen Wirth
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Global grassland productivity and carbon storage benefit from functional diversity under climate change, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, October 2026, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2528067123.
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