DOI: 10.5061/dryad.5qfttdzdg
title: Species richness: a pivotal factor mediating the effects of land use intensification and climate on grassland multifunctionality

description: Temperate semi-natural grasslands harbour unique biodiversity, support
 livestock farming through forage production, and deliver many essential
 ecosystem services (ESs) to human society; they are highly
 multifunctional. However, temperate grassland ecosystems are also among
 the most threatened ecosystems on earth due to land use and climate
 change. Understanding how biodiversity, climate, and land use
 intensification impact grassland multifunctionality through complex direct
 and indirect pathways is critical to better anticipate the future of these
 fragile ecosystems.  Here, we evaluate how local plant species
 richness (SR) modulates the effect of land use intensification and climate
 on grassland multifunctionality (using six key ESs: biomass productivity
 and stability, forage quality, carbon storage, pollination, and local
 plant rarity) in the French Massif Central, the largest grassland in
 Western-Europe. We sampled 100 grassland fields with contrasted
 fertilisation rates, and SR over large elevational and latitudinal
 gradients related to variation in mean annual temperature (MAT), and
 drought severity (DS), two key climate change drivers that are predicted
 to increase in the future. Using a confirmatory path analysis, we found
 that SR was the main driver of multifunctionality. We also found
 significant SR × MAT and SR × fertilization interactions suggesting that
 warm climate and high fertilization rates may alter the
 biodiversity-ecosystem multifunctionality relationships. Furthermore,
 increasing temperature and fertilization indirectly influenced
 multifunctionality by decreasing SR and consequent multifunctionality in
 warm low-land and highly fertilized grasslands compared to colder montane
 grasslands or less fertilised ones. DS only impacted some ES individually
 (e.g. forage quality). Synthesis and applications: we identified SR as a
 pivotal factor mediating the effects of land use intensification and
 climate on multifunctionality through both direct and indirect pathways.
 Failing to account for changes in SR could thus bias any prediction of –
 or aggravate – the effects of land use intensification and climate change
 on ESs delivery in temperate grassland ecosystems. Considering that SR,
 MAT, and fertilization are major proxies of three main global change
 drivers (biodiversity loss, climate change, and land use intensification)
 our study may help to better anticipate the effect of multiple interacting
 global change drivers on grassland ecosystems.
description: This dataset of 100 grasslands in Massif Central displays
 different characteristics of these ecosystems regarding topo-edaphic
 context, climate, species richness, and management practices. A variable
 named "multifunctionality" was also calculated, as the average
 of centered and scaled values of six ecosystem services: biomass
 productivity, fodder quality, carbon stock in the soil, stability, and
 local rarity. This survey across Massif Central took
 place during three sampling campaigns: 2008 & 2009 for the
 Prairies AOP project, 2014 & 2015 for the ATOUS project, and
 2016-2017 for the AEOLE project. A total number of 143 grasslands were
 sampled and led to the "Typologie des prairies du Massif
 Central" or "Typology of the grasslands of Massif
 Central". The present dataset shows a subsample of
 the original database that was completed by climatic data from the SAFRAN
 database, as well as topographic data from the Copernicus dataset. It was
 used to study the complex relationships between management, species
 richness, climate, and multifunctionality in an article currently in
 revision. All variables of the present dataset, except for the year
 corresponding to the sampling campaign, were centered and
 scaled. To respect the anonymity of the farmers who
 participated in the survey, the longitude and latitude of the fields are
 absent from the dataset.
description: # Species richness: a pivotal factor mediating the effects of land use
 intensification and climate on grassland multifunctionality
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.5qfttdzdg](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.5qfttdzdg) This dataset was built to explain the multifunctionality of grassland ecosystems (calculation explained below the table) by the predictors described in the table. The .csv file that contains the data is not comma-delimited, but semicolon-delimited. ## Description of the data and file structure | Variable name | Definition | | :--------------- | :--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Year | Year when the grassland was sampled | | pH | Water pH of the soil | | Sand | Sand data were obtained using the LUCAS topsoil database (2015) | | Slope | Obtained from the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service geographical database (2016, resolution 25 m x 25 m) | | MAT | Mean annual temperature from 2000 to 2019, ranged from 6,7 °C to 12,2 °C | | MAP | The average yearly sum of precipitation from the same period, ranging from 665mm to 1490mm | | drought.severity | Index calculated 10 years before the sampling date in each field ranging from 1000 to 1800 | | Aspect.1 | Cosine of the aspect (from Copernicus Land Monitoring Service geographical database (2016, resolution 25 m x 25 m))was calculated according to a reference frame where the x-axis corresponded to the longitudinal axis and the y-axis corresponded to latitude. | | Aspect.2 | Sine of the aspect (from Copernicus Land Monitoring Service geographical database (2016, resolution 25 m x 25 m))was calculated according to a reference frame where the x-axis corresponded to the longitudinal axis and the y-axis corresponded to latitude. | | SR | Species richness present in each grassland. The species richness value ranged from 12 to 54 species per field | | Herbage.use | The difference between the total number of grazing periods and of cuts along a two-year period | | Fertilization | The total amount of nitrogen fertilization, including both mineral and organic fertilizers.  Ranged from 0 to 316kg N ha-1 | **M** – Multifunctionality assessed by average approach * Calculated using the Z scores of the six measured ESs in each grassland (productivity, fodder quality, carbon stock in the soil, pollination, ecosystem stability, plant local rarity). Each ES was standardised separately using the Z score transformation as follows: Zscore*ij* = ( ES*ij - Mean ES*ij ) / ( SD *i* ) (Eq. 1) where ESij is the value of ES i in grassland field j, MeanESi is the mean value of ES i calculated for the 100 studied grasslands, and SDi is the standard deviation of ESi calculated for the 100 studied grasslands. We then obtained multifunctionality for each grassland field j as the average of the Z scores of the six ES assessed. **T25, T50, T75** – We calculated multifunctionality with threshold approach. The number of ESs that reach or exceed a given threshold (as the percentage of the maximum value of each of ESs; T25 for 25%, T50 for 50%, T75 for 75%). This maximum was taken as the average of the top 5% values for each ES observed across all study sites to avoid giving too much importance to extreme values. Multifunctionality was calculated for three thresholds.