Human activity is having a huge impact on natural world, and we need to understand the limits of what different species can endure and what can be done to improve their chances of survival and persistence under changing climate. European grasslands have been shaped by millennia of low-intensity management and are unique cultural and biodiversity hotspots providing critical ecosystem services. However, the area of traditionally-managed grassland has declined dramatically during the last century, with land-use intensification on productive soil and abandonment of unfertile land both causing species loss and deterioration of ecosystem services. Recent evidence suggests that land-use change also leads to genetic changes in plant populations. How such changes cascade to ecosystem functions and affect adaptive potential to future perturbations is entirely unknown. Filling this knowledge gap is urgent as grasslands face additional pressure from climate change, particularly an increasing frequency of droughts. PlantSoilAdapt project aims to reveal the consequences of land use change for grassland plants with particular focus on plant characteristic that shape the movement of carbon and nutrients within ecosystems. Conversion of grasslands to arable land, fertilisation of grasslands with mineral fertilisers, and tree and shrub encroachment in abandoned grasslands, can disrupt co-evolved mutualistic plant-microbial interactions, with cascading effects on essential ecosystem services provided by soils and their resilience to droughts. This project uses a range of study systems across Europe, representing different histories and contrasting management regimes, to reveal the pressures imposed on plant-soil systems by human land use and will inform future policies for sustainable land management and maintenance of adaptive potential in the face of climate change.
