A meadow is an open habitat, or field, vegetated by grass, herbs and other non-woody plants[9]. they'll be sparsely covered with trees or shrubs, as long as they maintain an open character. they're 'semi-natural grasslands', meaning that they're largely composed of species native to the region, with only limited human intervention. Meadows can occur naturally under favorable conditions (see perpetual meadows)[9]. But they're often maintained by humans for the assembly of hay. Fodder and livestock[9]. They attract a mess of wildlife and support flora and fauna that would not thrive in other habitats. They supply areas for courtship displays, nesting, food gathering, pollinating insects[9]. And sometimes sheltering, if the vegetation is high enough, making them ecologically important[9]. There are multiple sorts of meadows, like agricultural, transitional, and perpetual, each important to the ecosystem. Meadows could also be present or artificially created from cleared shrub or woodland.
Agricultural meadows.
In agriculture, a meadow is grassland which isn't regularly grazed by domestic livestock. But rather allowed to grow unchecked so as to supply hay[2]. Their roots go way back to the Iron Age when appropriate tools for the hay harvest emerged[2]. the power to supply livestock fodder on meadows had a big advantage for livestock production, as animals might be kept in enclosures, simplifying the control over breeding. Surpluses in biomass production during the summer might be stored for the winter, preventing damages to forests and grasslands as there was not the necessity for livestock grazing during the winter.
Especially within the UK and Ireland, the term meadow is usually utilized in its original sense to mean a hay meadow, signifying grassland mow annually within the summer for creating hay. Agricultural meadows are typically lowland or upland fields upon which hay or pasture grasses grow from self-sown or hand-sown seed[2]. Traditional hay meadows were once common in rural Britain, but are now in decline[2]. Ecologist Professor John Roswell states that over the past century, England and Wales have lost about 97% of their hay meadows. Fewer than 15,000 hectares of lowland meadows remain within the UK and most sites are relatively small and fragmented. 25% of the UK's meadows are found in Worcestershire, with Foster's Green Meadow managed by the Worcestershire Wildlife Trust being a serious site.
A similar concept to the hay meadow is that the pasture, which differs from the meadow therein it's grazed through the summer, instead of being allowed to grow out and periodically be cut for hay. A pasture also can ask any land used for grazing, and during this wider sense the term refers not only to grass pasture but also to non-grassland habitats like heath land, moorland and wood pasture. The term, grassland, is employed to explain both hay meadows and grass pastures.
The specific agricultural practices in reference to the meadow can combat various expressions. As mentioned, this might be hay production or providing food for grazing cattle and livestock but also to offer room for orchards or honey production. Meadows are embedded and hooked in to a posh web of sociology-cultural conditions for his or her maintenance. Historically, they emerged to extend agricultural efficiency when the required tools became available. Today, agricultural practices have shifted and meadows have largely lost their original purpose. Yet, they're appreciated today for his or her aesthetics and ecological functions. Consequently, the ecu Union's Common Agricultural Policy subsidizes their management, mostly through grazing.
Transitional meadows
A transitional meadow occurs when a field, pasture, farmland, or other cleared land is not any longer cut or grazed[1]. and starts to display luxuriant growth, extending to the flowering and self-seeding of its grass and wildflower species[1]. The condition is however only temporary, because the grasses eventually become shaded out when scrub and woody plants become well-established, being the forerunners of the return to a totally wooded state. A transitional state are often artificially-maintained through a double-field system[1]. During which cultivated soil and meadows are alternated for a period of 10 to 12 years each[1].
In North America before European colonization, Algonquians, Iroquois and other Native Americans peoples regularly cleared areas of forest to make transitional meadows where deer and game could find food and be hunted. for instance , a number of today's meadows originated thousands of years ago, thanks to regular burning by Native Americans.
Perpetual meadows
A perpetual meadow, also called a natural meadow, is one during which environmental factors[1]. like climatic and soil conditions, are favorable to perennial grasses and restrict the expansion of woody plants indefinitely[1]. sorts of perpetual meadows may include:
- Alpine meadows occur at high elevations above the timber line and maintained by harsh climate .
- Coastal meadows maintained by salt sprays.
- Desert meadows restricted by low precipitation or lack of nutrients and humus[1].
- Prairies maintained by periods of severe drought or subject to wildfires.
- Wet meadows (a semi-wetland area) saturated with water throughout much of the year[1].
Urban Meadow
Recently, urban areas are thought of as potential biodiversity conservation sites. The shift from urban lawns, that are widely spread habitats in cities, to urban meadows is assumed to market greater refuges for plant and animal communities. Urban lawns require intensive management that puts the life there in danger of losing their habitat, especially thanks to the mowing frequency. Cutting that mowing frequency has demonstrated to induce a transparent positive effect on the plant community's diversity, which allows the switch from urban lawns to urban meadows. [10]
Urban Meadow at Botaniska Trädgården, Upscale, Sweden
Due to increased urbanization, the EU Biodiversity Strategy 2017 decreed that there's a requirement to guard all ecosystems thanks to global climate change . the bulk of the folks that sleep in the urban regions of any country usually get their plant knowledge from visiting parks and or public green infrastructure. Local authorities have the duty of providing the green spaces for the general public , but these departments are constantly suffering major budget cuts, making it harder for people to admire natural wildlife within the urban sectors and also impairing the local ecosystem. In line with the increasing acceptance of a "messier urban aesthetic", the perennial meadows are often seen as a more realistic alternative to the classic urban lawns as they might even be more cost-efficient to take care of . Factors that managers of urban spaces list as important to take are:
- Aesthetics and public reaction
- Locational context
- Human Resources and economic sustainability
- Local politics
- Communication
- Biodiversity and existing habitat
- Physical factors.
Human intervention.
Artificially or culturally conceived meadows emerge from and continually require human intervention to persist and flourish[1]. In many places, the natural, pristine populations of free-roaming large grazers are either extinct or very limited thanks to human activities. This reduces or removes their natural influence on the encompassing ecology and leads to meadows only being created or maintained by human intervention. Existing meadows could potentially and gradually decline, if unmaintained by agricultural practices. Humankind has influenced the ecology and therefore the landscape for millennia in many parts of the planet , so it can sometimes be difficult to discern what's natural and what's cultural. Meadows are one example. However, meadows seem to possess been sustained historically by present large grazers, which kept plant growth in checked and maintained the cleared space.
As extensive farming like grazing is diminishing in some parts of the planet , the meadow is endangered as a habitat. variety of research projects plan to restore natural meadow habitats by reintroducing natural, large grazers.[12][14][15] These includes deer, elk, goat, horse , etc. counting on the situation . A more exotic example with a wider scope is that the European Taurus Programmer.
Some environmental organization recommend converting lawns to meadows by stopping or reducing mowing. They claim that meadows can better preserve biodiversity, water, reduce the utilization of fertilizers.[16] for instance , in 2018 environmental organizations with the support of the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs of England, concerned by the decline within the number of bees worldwide, within the first day of Bees' Needs Week 2018 (9-15 July) give some recommendation the way to preserve bees. The recommendations include 1) growing flowers, shrubs, and trees, 2) letting the garden grow wild, 3) cutting grass less often, 4) leaving insect nest and hibernation spots alone, and 5) using careful consideration with pesticides.
Impact of Tourism
The impact of act has been noted to extend degradation of meadow soil. E.g thanks to skiing activities and urbanization, the meadows of the town of Pancake, Poland, were noted to possess altered soil compositions. The soil's organic material had faded away and was affected thanks to the chemicals from the synthetic melting water from the snow and skiing machinery.
Meadows and climate change.
Ecological consequences
Climate changes impact temperature precipitation patterns worldwide. the consequences are regionally very different but generally, temperatures tend to extend , snow packs tend to melt earlier and lots of places tend to become drier. Many species answer these changes by slowly moving their habitat upwards. The increased elevation decreases mean temperatures and thus allows for species to largely maintain their original habitat. Another common response to changed environmental conditions are phonological adaptations. These include shifts within the timing of germination or blossoming. Other examples include for instance changing migration patterns of birds of passage. These adaptations are primarily influenced by three drivers:
- Increased temperature
- Changing precipitation patterns
- Reduced snow pack and earlier melting
- Effects of upper temperatures
In response to temperature changes, flowering plants can respond through either spatial or temporal shifts. Spatial shifts refers to the migration towards colder areas, often on higher altitudes. A temporal shift means a plant may alter its penology to blossom at a special time of the year. By moving towards the first spring or late autumn they will restore their previous temperature conditions. These adaptations are limited through. Spatial shifts could also be difficult if the areas are already inhabited by other species, or when the plant is reliant on specific hydrology or soil type. Other authors have shown that higher temperatures can increase total biomass, but temperature shocks and instability seem to possess negative impacts on biodiversity. This even appears to be the case for multiyear species, which were previously considered to possess a buffering effect on extreme weather events.
Effects of adjusting precipitation patterns
There is a spread of hydro logical regimes for meadows, starting from dry to humid, each yielding different plant communities adapted to the respective provider of water. A shift in precipitation patterns has very different effects, counting on the sort of meadow. Meadows that are either dry or wet appear to be rather resilient to vary , as a moderate increase or decrease in precipitation doesn't radically alter their character. Meanwhile, medic meadows, with a moderate supply of water do change their character because it is simpler to tip them into a special regime. Dry meadows especially are threatened by the invasion of shrubs and other woody plants and a decreasing prevalence of flowering fobs, whereas hydraulic sites tend to lose woody species.
Due to the dryer upper soil layers, fobs with shallow roots have difficulties obtaining enough water. Woody plants in contrast with their lower-reaching root systems can still extract water stored in lower soil layers and are ready to sustain themselves through longer drought periods with their stored water reserves. within the long run , changing hydro logic regimes can also facilitate the establishment of invasive species which will be better adapted to the new conditions. the consequences are already quite visible, an example is that the substitution of Alpine meadows within the southern Himalayas through shrub land. global climate change appears to be a crucial driver of this process. Wetter winters in contrast might increase total biomass, but favor already competitive species.By harming specialized plants and promoting the prevalence of more generalist species, more unstable precipitation patterns could also reduce ecological biodiversity.
Effects of reduced snow packs
Snow covers are directly associated with changes in temperature, precipitation and cloudiness . Still, changes within the timing of the snow melt seem to be, particularly in alpine regions, a crucial determinant for phonological responses.[26] there's even data suggesting that the impact of snow melt is even above the warming alone. Earlier aren't uniformly positive for plants though, as moisture injected through snow-melt could be missing later within the year. Additionally, it'd leave longer periods of seed depredation. Problematic is additionally the shortage of the insulating snow cover, springtime frost events may need a bigger negative impact.
Effects on ecological communities
All the drivers mentioned above produce to complex, non-linear community responses. These responses are often disentangled by watching multiple climate drivers and species together. As different species show varying degrees of phonological responses, the consequence may be a so-called phonological reassembly, where the structure of the ecosystem changes fundamentally. Phonological responses in blossoming periods of certain plants might not coincide with the phonological shifts of their pollinators or growing periods of plant communities counting on one another may start to diverge. A study of meadows within the Rockies revealed the emergence of a mid-season period with little floral activity. Specifically, the study identified that the standard mid-summer floral peak was composed out of several consecutive peaks in dry, medic and wet meadow systems. Phonological responses to global climate change let these distinct peaks diverge, resulting in a niche during mid-summer. This poses a threat to pollinators counting on endless supply of floral resources. As ecological communities are often highly adapted to local circumstances which may not be reproduced at higher elevations, Deerskin ET AL. describe the short-term changes observed on meadows "as a shift within the mosaic of the landscape composition". Therefore, it's important to watch not only how specific species answer global climate change , but to also investigate them within the context of various habitats they occur in.
Phonological Reassembly
Animals also as plants are changing rapidly to the anthropocentric heating , and therefore the number of people , habitat occupancy, changing reproductive cycles are the strategies to adapt to the present sever and unpredictable environment alterations. the various sorts of meadows all round the planet are different communities of plants (perennial and annual plants) that constantly are interacting with one another to remain alive and reproduce. Timing and duration of flowering is one among the phen😂ological reassembly driven by many various factors like snow melt, temperature and soil moisture to say a couple of . All of the changes that a plant or an animal may undergo are depending in habitat’s topography, altitude, and latitude of a selected organism. it's important to monitored properly the plants because they're one among the simplest bio indicators of how climate changes affects the earth.
Flowering phenology is one among the foremost important features of plant so as to survive any sort of adversity. because of different modern techniques and constant monitoring we will assure which ecological strategy the plants are using so as to multiply their specie. In alpine meadow of the eastern Tibet notorious variances and similarities were observed between annual and perennial plants. Where perennial plants flowering peak date was directly proportional to the duration and inversely proportional in annuals plants. This are just a limited quantity of the many relationships on phenology and functional traits interacting with the environment to survive.
Extreme weather
Climate change is increasing temperatures everywhere the planet , and boreal regions are more vulnerable to suffer noticeable changes. An experiment was conducted to watch the reaction of alpine arctic meadow plants to different patterns of increased temperatures. This experiment was supported vascular plants that sleep in arctic and subarctic environments within three different levels of vegetation: canopy layer, bottom layer and functional groups. it's crucial to stay on mind that these plants are usually sharing the space and constantly interacting with bryophytes, lichens, arthropods, animals and lots of other organisms. The result was a transparent adaptation of a continuing pattern that plants recognized and had time to succeed in thermal acclimation meaning that they got a net carbon gain by intensifying photosynthesis and slightly increasing respiration because of a hotter climate for an inexpensive period of time . However plants that suffer changes of any kind ( not only temperature rising and falling) during a short period of your time are more likely to die because they didn't have enough time to succeed in thermal acclimation.
Meadow restorations
Carbon storage in meadows
Meadows can act as substantial sinks and sources of organic carbon, holding vast quantities of it within the soil. The fluxes of carbon depend mainly on the natural cycle of carbon uptake and efflux, which interplays with differences due to the season (e.g non-growing vs growing season). The wide selection of meadow subtypes have successively differing attributes (like plant configurations) affecting the area's ability to act as sinks; seagrass meadows are for fast identified as a number of the more important sinks within the global carbon cycle. within the instance of seagrass meadows, enhanced production of other greenhouse gases (CH4 and N2O) does occur but the estimated overall effect leads to an offset of the entire emission. Meanwhile, a usual driver of meadow loss (except for direct alterations thanks to human development) is global climate change , consequently increasing carbon emissions and mentioning the subject of restoration projects which in some cases have prompted initiated meadow restorations (e.g eelgrass meadow in Virginia U.S.A).
Grassland degradations
Where grassland degradation has occurred, significant alterations to the CO2 efflux during the non-growing season may happen . Both global climate change and overgrazing factor into the degradation. As exemplified by the alpine wetland meadow on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, there's the potential of being a moderate source of CO2 and a carbon sink, thanks to high soil organic content and low decomposition. The more the dynamics are quantified, however, the consequences of degradation become more tangible. a robust connection between grassland degradation and soil carbon loss has been seen, pinpointing that CO2 release is being stimulated by this event. This subsequently indicates a global climate change mitigation potential by restoring degraded grassland.
Cap-and-trade
Being a market-based regulation of emissions, the cap-and-trade system can in some instances be found incorporating restoration projects for climate mitigation. for instance , the cap-and-trade program in California is watching how meadow restorations are often incorporated into their system of reducing carbon emissions. The preliminary studies are, as depicted by Audubon, pointing at the potential of storing a substantially increased amount of soil carbon compared to degraded meadows, while boosting the local biodiversity. last though, during the COVID-19 pandemic, difficulties with restoration are starting to show: During the primary years, areas under restoration are susceptible to outside disruption, like meadow management placed on hold when the ecosystem is most sensitive, for instance to invasive species.
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