Bedeutung des Grünlandes für das Klima: Hohe Albedo, Resilienz und Langzeitkohlenstoffspeicherung

Importance of grassland for the climate - High Albedo, resilience and long-term carbon storage: Grasslands, in the form of pastures but also meadows, cover about 40 percent of the world's land area and provide many different ecosystem services such as forage, biodiversity, erosion control, meat, carbon and water storage. Species-rich grasslands are highly resilient systems to extreme weather events, which are becoming more frequent as climate change ramps up. The potential of natural systems to make a significant contribution to climate change mitigation, so-called Natural Climate Solutions (NCS), is now attracting a lot of attention, and forests are currently in the spotlight in science and even more so in politics or in the public, because trees store a particularly large amount of carbon in their trunks. But more carbon does not necessarily lead to climate cooling, and albedo effects and resilience of systems (and carbon storage) to extreme weather events need due attention if we really are aiming for a solid contribution of different habitats, including grasslands, to NCS and climate adaptation. If we duly factor in these different facets of NCS, the potential contribution of biodiverse grasslands, with their belowground carbon storage, high albedo and resilience, is indeed set to be a large one, that we currently ignore with simplistic approaches at own peril.