Climate change: grasses are particularly at risk – steiermark.ORF.at

In 54 four-by-four meter plots, a so-called ClimGrass facility is being used to research how future climate will affect plant numbers and productivity. With the help of infrared heaters, the temperature rises by three degrees and the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air increases.

Deeper Roots: Replacing weeds with herbs

“In the eight to ten years that we have been observing it, we have noticed that plant numbers are changing, and that grasses are increasingly falling out of the clumps and being replaced by grasses,” explains project manager Andreas Schomberger. “The grasses have slightly deeper roots. You can also use it in deeper soil layers. The upper layers are very dry, the grasses increasingly suffer and some fall.

This has a huge impact on grasslands: “An effective grassland is about 50 to 70 percent grasses and 10 to 20 percent grasses and legumes. If things then change with these groups of species, and grasses become increasingly absent, this leads to Substantial decrease in return.

Huge effect

Schomberger says this is a serious problem, in addition to periods of drought. Therefore, a dozen plots of land could be blocked from rainfall in order to simulate future droughts: “As a general rule, future rising temperatures, combined with drought, will lead to enormous changes in yield as well as in soil life.” This is already being implemented, and is particularly important for agriculture – because irregular feed yields are not only a problem for livestock farming, but also have an impact on milk and meat production, says Schomberger.