COST Terrabites Workshop:The role of grazing in global vegetation dyn...

Context: : Livestock grazing plays a key role in national and regional economies, for food security and poverty alleviation, as well as for the Earth system and its components, such as the climate system, biodiversity and biogeochemical cycles of carbon, nitrogen, water etc.

Despite the central role of livestock and grazing in the Earth System as well as for human wellbeing, many knowledge gaps and uncertainties related to this land use. Only scarce datasets are available that allow to depict the role of grazing in the Earth system, and the scientific understanding on the interaction of e.g. herbivory and vegetation dynamics is patchy. Livestock grazing is currently the “neglected child” of land change science.

Scope: This workshop aims to identify knowledge gaps, explore challenges and opportunities in closing them in order to improve modelling capacities and advance our understanding of vegetation-grazing dynamics as a component of the Earth system. In order to contribute to improving the representation of grazing in large-scale DGVMs, the workshop will identify the current knowledge and data gaps, discuss promising options and next steps, based on interdisciplinary knowledge from different disciplines and research strands that will be present at the workshop.

Outcomes: Possible outputs of the workshop include e.g. a thematic bibliography and a discussion/review paper.

Focus: Plant ecology and livestock grazing. The workshop is organized as cross-cutting theme within the Terrabites working groups, with a focus on Plant ecology and Land use.