John Finn

Grassland plant diversity and ecosystem condition assessment in the hen harrier programme, Ireland, a results-based agri-environment scheme High Nature Value farmland (HNVf) supports biodiverse, semi-natural habitats through extensive farming but is increasingly threatened in Ireland by land intensification and abandonment. Results-bas...

This looks interesting:

Grassland plant diversity and ecosystem condition assessment in the hen harrier programme, Ireland, a results-based agri-environment scheme | McMorrow et al.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Congrats Frank! 🥳

So, any other news yesterday?
Anything important?

Scientists no Longer Find Twitter Professionally Useful, and have Switched to Bluesky Synopsis. Social media has become widely used by the scientific community for a variety of professional uses, including networking and public outreach. For

"Scientists no Longer Find Twitter Professionally Useful, and have Switched to Bluesky. Changes to Twitter have made the social media platform no longer professionally useful or pleasant, and that many scientists have abandoned it in favor of Bluesky." academic.oup.com/icb/article-...

Soil, science and stories – Johnstown Castle launches new permanent exhibition The Irish Heritage Trust have unveiled a new permanent exhibition, in the first stage of transforming the visitor experience at the Irish Agricultural Museum, at Johnstown Castle Estate, Museum & ...

m.independent.ie/farming/soil...

📖 Published!

Warming, elevated CO2 and drought in combination accelerates plant phenological shifts in managed montane grassland🌱 🌿

🔎 Find out more buff.ly/VgghbUv

📢 Join our team: Are you interested in the synthesis of ecological data?

We are offering a postdoctoral researcher position on the effects of collaborative agri-environment measures on multiple taxa and ecosystem services.

See #job advert
www.uni-goettingen.de/en/vacancy+f...

Interested in a cross-analysis of how Romanian and French farmers are adapting to climate change? Watch Agroecology-TRANSECT webinar to find out more: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uu4m...

🌱 Necula et al 2024 👉 link.springer.com/article/10.1...

🐮 Allart et al 2024 👉 doi.org/10.1017/S174...

#agroecology

📢Special bonus, check out the *amazing* interactive visualisation by @rishvish07 where you can manipulate i) relative importance of the functions, and ii) relative proportions of the species and functional groups, and see effects on the functions, and trangressive overyielding

A wide range of higher-diversity, lower-nitrogen (150N) mixtures typically had higher multifunctionality than a low-diversity, higher-nitrogen (300N) grass monoculture. (Fig. 1).

Drought reduced multifunctionality, but not as much as changes in diversity. For productive forage grassland plots with lower diversity, increasing diversity enhanced multifunctionality -> drought adaptation option.
Rainfed control, top panel; drought treatment, bottom.

Plant diversity in mixtures increased mean levels of multifunctionality (MF, x-axis) *and* reduced variation in MF (y-axis), leading to higher multifunctional stability (which is highest in the lower right quadrant in the figure)
nature.com/articles/s4159…

Multifunctionality across a range of mixture diversity exceeded that of the best monoculture, under both rainfed and drought conditions (transgressive overperformance). (See Fig. 4)

No single community was best across each of the six individual functions; there was no ‘super-species’ that was best at everything. Thus, there are trade-offs among communities when comparing across single functions. (drought only shown here)

Effects of experimental drought and plant diversity on multifunctionality of a model system for crop rotation - Scientific Reports Scientific Reports - Effects of experimental drought and plant diversity on multifunctionality of a model system for crop rotation

🚨 Plant diversity in 6-species #multispecies mixtures generally increased multifunctionality (MF) (measured as 6 ecosystem functions related to agronomy). We also looked at effect of drought on MF.
short🧵

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

It’s more complex to choose best mixture(s) for multiple responses (yield, forage quality, weed suppression, nutrient use etc.). If same species’ mixtures are the best at everything, then it’s easy (but this is unusual!). If not, one needs to manage the trade-offs.

3: choose (or breed) species that are able to persist in mixtures at reasonable proportions (or have adaptive strategies to achieve this). No matter how high-performing and synergistically interactive a species is, it will not contribute much with a relative abundance of 2%.

'more species is better' is not necessarily correct to maximise a response. Species' identity, richness and relative abundance ALL affect the response. Even at richness = 6 in our example (see scatterplot), these diversity aspects completely determine which community is best.

2: choose species' with traits that maximise synergistic interactions. Positive mixing effects will push the mixture responses higher up the x-axis. When interactions are ++ positive, at least some mixtures can out-perform the best monoculture (or other reference point).

1: choose the best-performing agronomic species (for the response of interest) based on their performance in monoculture = higher starting point on the x-axis. This ensures high performance with fewer species.

Design principles for multi‐species productive grasslands: Quantifying effects of diversity beyond richness We describe approaches that separate plant diversity into its underlying components: species richness, composition and relative abundance. Disentangling these three components facilitates a more nuan....

ICYMI
2024 publication
How can we ‘best’ design multi-species grassland mixtures?
How can we better predict the effect of diversity on mixture performance?
Demonstration of principles and practical examples from Mini Review in J of Ecology

besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Rare butterflies bounce back after landowners in Wales cut back on flailing hedges More than 300 brown hairstreak butterfly eggs discovered near Llandeilo this winter after decade of decline Record numbers of eggs of the rare brown hairstreak butterfly have been found in south-west Wales after landowners stopped flailing hedges every year. The butterfly lays its eggs on blackthorn every summer. But when land managers and farmers mechanically cut hedges every autumn, thousands of the eggs are unknowingly destroyed. Continue reading...

Rare butterflies bounce back after landowners in Wales cut back on flailing hedges

📌 Carbon has a common unit, biodiversity doesn’t; and that makes progress harder to compare.

The upcoming IPBES #BizBiodiversity Assessment arrives at exactly the right moment for clearer methods and signals.

How your county is weighing in on fighting climate change .

Months of work finally unveiled as a major investigation I worked on with the @independent.ie launches.

Every council in Ireland was asked to write a Climate Action Plan identifying local risks and what they plan to do to reduce emissions causing those risks.

We read them all...

bit.ly/3Mf9h8x

A screenshot of what looks like a tweet but I got it off Instagram saying, “don’t let my knowledge get in the way of your confidence.”

As a climate scientist I am quite sure I could use this reply at least two dozen times per week.

Last week a UK national security assessment warned that collapsing ecosystems around the world will trigger conflict and food shortages

Multispecies grasslands produce more yield from lower nitrogen inputs across a climatic gradient High-yielding forage grasslands frequently contain low species diversity and receive high inputs of nitrogen fertilizer. To investigate multispecies mixtures as an alternative strategy, the 26-site in...

After being online for about 5 weeks, over 8,500 downloads already!
Multispecies grasslands produce more yield from lower nitrogen inputs across a climatic gradient | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
#legacynet

A graph showing daily temperature anomalies since the 1940s

Not a single day in 2025 was cooler than the 1991-2020 average, on a global scale. @copernicusecmwf.bsky.social

Calling on all forest disturbance experts: Please consider contributing to our study on global forest disturbance change, and help resolve the nuances of changing forest disturbance regimes. More details and survey here: www.lss.ls.tum.de/edfm/disturb...

👋 Agroecology-TRANSECT YouTube channel www.youtube.com/@agroecology... provides material to learn on the agronomic, social and political dimensions of #agroecology

Next webinar (Jan.22) is on #intercropping and sustainable #pest management

To register 👉 www.agroecology-transect.net/events/boost...