Session

Extensively managed grasslands are recognized globally for their high biodiversity and deliver multiple ecosystem services (ESs). Understanding how the relations between ecological factors and management practices condition the delivery of ESs allows for optimizing the spatial arrangement of grassland management practices within a multifunctional pastoral system. The research questions were: i) How do environmental conditions constrain ESs? ii) What is the effect on ESs of the interaction between current management and environmental conditions? iii) How does the interplay between current management and environmental conditions impact ESs in different management units? We used Redundancy analysis to analyse the variation of forage quantity (community’s plant height) and quality (pastoral value, specific leaf area), the abundance of insect-pollinated species, abundance and diversity of eye-catching flowering species, species diversity, richness in protected species and species of conservation, alimentary, and pharmaceutical interest in 12 malghe (summer pastures) and five meadows in the Eastern Alps (Parco di Paneveggio-Pale S. Martino, Trentino-Alto Adige, Italy). We related them to environmental and management variables. Our results showed that: (1) environmental conditions played an important role in enhancing provisioning ESs (South-facing slopes were the most productive and with higher-quality fodder); (2) there were synergies between forage provision and taxonomic diversity and between entomophilous pollination and touristic attractiveness; (3) there were trade-offs between forage provision/diversity and entomophilous pollination/touristic attractiveness, as well as between protected species and the other ESs. These trade-offs underlay differences partly in management (mowing vs grazing) and partly in environmental conditions (conservative landforms with more acid soil pH vs. non-acid soil pH, valley bottoms, and steeper slopes). This observation implies that to restore ESs in overgrazed and abandoned grasslands, it is necessary to plan different management strategies in the different management units, based on the spatial arrangement of the most suitable conditions to foster more ESs simultaneously.