How to classify permanent grasslands? Conclusions from a French national network
2011
Michaud, Audrey, | Plantureux, Sylvain | Baumont, René
Since agronomists and ecologists began to study permanent grasslands, they have set various classifications to describe the variety of grasslands or to suggest clear interpretations of their functioning. First classifications due to phytosociologists described the structures of plant communities, and their relations with environment. Recent advances in plant ecology introduced typologies based on life plant traits. It is now clearly established that ecosystemic services provided by grasslands (ie grass production or red list species protection) cannot be predicted by the same characteristics of vegetation. We aimed to compare these contrasted ways of classifying grasslands, estimating the redundancy of vegetation characteristics. Therefore, a national network of 178 grasslands was studied in 2009 with a common experimental protocol to determine the botanical composition. The main result is the low redundancy between taxonomical and functional (i.e. life traits) characteristics of vegetation, despite a dependence between these variables. Single criterion based classifications must thus be avoided for the full prediction of grassland ecosystem services.
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