Grassland for livestock production is a major form of land use throughout Europe and its intensive management threatens biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in agricultural landscapes. Modest increases to conventional grassland biodiversity could have considerable positive impacts on the provision of ecosystem services, such as pollination, to surrounding habitats.Using a field-scale experime...

Climate change projections anticipate increased frequency and intensity of drought stress, but grassland responses to severe droughts and their potential to recover are poorly understood. In many grasslands, high land-use intensity has enhanced productivity and promoted resource-acquisitive species at the expense of resource-conservative ones. Such changes in plant functional composition could ...

This study investigated the effects of microhabitat characteristics on soil seed bank structure, regeneration strategies, and plant composition in a Mediterranean coastal sand dune in Israel. Three different microhabitats were selected: (a) open patches between shrubs, (b) shrub understorey, and (c) open, disturbed patches in pedestrian trails. In each microhabitat two types of sampling plots w...

BACKGROUND Green roofs perform ecosystem services such as summer roof temperature reduction and stormwater capture that directly contribute to lower building energy use and potential economic savings. These services are in turn related to ecosystem functions performed by the vegetation layer such as radiation reflection and transpiration, but little work has examined the role of plant species c...