Set-up of a long-term study on the changes in Alpine grasslands owing to climate and grazing pressure modifications

This poster has been presented at the First ILTER Open Science Meeting in Skukuza, South Africa, in October 2016. It describes the set up of a new Long term experiment on the abandonment of Alpine Grasslands The open areas of Gran Paradiso National Park (GPNP), in the western Italian Alps, are the result of centuries of human activities that determined a lowering of the treeline ecotone, creating peculiar seminatural areas below the timberline, characterised by high biodiversity values. The progressive abandonment of management practices as well as climate change lead to variations in species diversity with respect to extensively used meadows, with fragmentation of semi-natural grassland due to increase of forests and woodlands. GPNP would like to apply active management actions for maintaining such semi-natural grassland and their high biodiversity. In particular, a long-term monitoring programme started in 2016 in selected sites of GPNP aimed to: 1) evaluate the effects of a well managed grazing system on animal and plant biodiversity; 2) compare the evolution of managed and non-managed areas, the latter obtained by excluding a portion of the meadows from grazing. Monitoring includes plant community, invertebrates, soil properties and CO2 fluxes, related also to meteo-climatic conditions. Measures are planned to continue in the next 10 years at least.