Effect of drought on grasslands: Soil core reciprocal transplantation experiment

Grassland ecosystems are challenged to meet the growing demand for ecosystem services and providing human goods. The expected increase in extreme climatic events will cause significant constraints on grassland systems that are particularly sensitive to drought. Identifying potential interactive effects of different factors, such as altitude and management, with different water availability scenarios is therefore a major challenge to anticipate the performance of grasslands and the reliability of production at a regional scale under future climate variability. The current project is part of the study of the response of pastures to simulated spring and summer droughts along an altitudinal gradient and according to two management schemes. It focuses on disentangling the soil effect from the drought treatment effect with a reciprocal transplantation experiment.