Changes in Alpine grassland of Grand Paradiso National Park (Italy): first results from CO2 fluxes monitoring programme

The alpine grassland of Gran Paradiso National Park (Italy) resulted from centuries of human activities that created high biodiversity semi-natural areas below the timberline. The progressive abandonment of management practices as well as climate change lead to variations in species diversity. In order to apply active management actions for maintaining such ecosystem, a long-term monitoring programme started in 2016 in selected sites of the Park, 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. Together with CO2 fluxes, monitoring includes also plant community, invertebrates, soil properties. We present the first results of spatial and temporal variability of CO2 fluxes from grasslands in relation to air temperature, radiance and soil properties.