Objective
ESPACE-grass is a programme of coordinated experiments and
mathematical modelling at sites across Europe which aims to
establish the impacts of future climatic change and associated
stresses on major components of European grassland vegetation,
both managed and natural.
This project will consist of a series of experiments, at five
different locations throughout Europe, which will investigate the
growth and physiological responses of grasses and legumes
(components of natural and managed grasslands) grown at ambient
(340 ppm) and elevated (520 ppm and 680 ppm) CO2
concentrations.
Four of the centres (TCD - Ireland; ITE - Bangor, U.K.; IGER -
Hurley, U.K. and CESIA - Florence, Italy) will use a standard
design of open-top chambers (OTCs) to expose vegetation to
elevated CO2. These centres have been chosen to give a
geographical spread with associated climatic differences. This
will enable the interactions between climate and elevated CO2
to
be investigated. In addition, two centres (GSF - Munich, Germany
and ITE - Bangor, U.K.) will use more closely controlled
environments while exposing similar plants to elevated CO2
levels. These experiments will provide independent and
reproducible references to the open-top chamber experiments. The
grass or legume species used at each centre will be determined by
the expertise and existing interests at the centre although
ryegrass (Lolium perenne) will be used in addition as a
reference.
Further experiments will be carried out in order to quantify
the competitive interactions between species in response to
changes in atmospheric CO2 concentrations under both cutting
and grazing, to determine the interactions between ambient
temperature and elevated CO2 levels, to determine the
effects
of changes in plant and soil water relations (brought about by
altered rainfall and evapotranspiration) on the growth of grasses
and legumes, to investigate the interactions of growth at
elevated CO2 levels with soil nutrient supply, particularly
nitrogen, to investigate the relative sensitivity of native
lowland and upland grasses to elevated CO2 levels and
temperature
increases, and to investigate the interactions between effects
of elevated CO2 and the anthropogenically imposed stresses of
increasing UVB radiation and ozone.
In order to integrate the information on plant responses to
elevated CO2 and stress obtained at each centre the Hurley
Pasture Model, developed by J.H.M. Thornley, will be expanded
and developed to incorporate responses to increasing CO2,
temperature and other stresses. Mathematical modelling will also
be used to study how the local dynamics of multispecies
communities will be altered by elevated CO2 and other
environmental changes. These models of gap colonisation will
describe changes in the relative abundance of species within a
habitat and will predict the extent to which range expansion or
retraction of particular species is expected.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- agricultural sciences agriculture, forestry, and fisheries agriculture industrial crops fodder
- medical and health sciences basic medicine physiology
- natural sciences earth and related environmental sciences atmospheric sciences climatology climatic changes
- agricultural sciences agriculture, forestry, and fisheries agriculture grains and oilseeds legumes
- natural sciences mathematics applied mathematics mathematical model
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Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Coordinator
2 DUBLIN
Ireland
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.