Lunch seminar “Impact of extreme flooding and drought on ecosystem service delivery” - 21th October

Abstract:

Grasslands dominate the UK landscape. Unlike most other crops, grasslands are multifunctional; in addition to providing low-cost, healthy and nutritious forage for livestock they provide important ecosystem services including their critical role as components of catchments for major rivers where they regulate water acquisition, water quality and its later release from soils. Climate change will inevitably lead to changes in agroecosystem functioning. Against a backdrop of increasing atmospheric CO₂, ground-level O₃ and temperature, the UK and many areas of Europe have recently witnessed unprecedented extreme weather patterns impacting on the capacity of agricultural grasslands to deliver a range of ecosystem services (e.g. food security, carbon and water storage, biodiversity). These atypical weather events include extreme floods, high levels of ground-level O₃, wildfires, prolonged periods of heat stress and drought. This talk will present progress from the on-going Climate-Smart Grass project. Specifically, it will present information on ‘tipping points’ where environmental stressors cause irreversible negative changes in grassland ecosystem functioning (soil and vegetation). It will also present information on a range of novel Festulolium-based mitigation strategies which provide increased resistance to extreme weather events.

Additional info:

Register for lunch (free of charge) by e-mail to Katrin no later than the 19^th
of October at 15:00. Please inform if you wish to
have vegetarian or vegan food, or have any kind of allergies or dietary
restrictions. Lunch is
served at 11.30 and the seminar starts at 12.00.
Lunch will be served in the MVM lunchroom adjacent to where the seminar will be
held.

Welcome! 
Katrin Rychel, Minh Anh Nguyen and Jenna Senecal