Grasslands cover approximately 16% of the EU-28 surface and represent the third most dominant ecosystem of our continent after woodland and forest (40%) and croplands (29%). Grasslands habitat is widely present in mountains where it is delivers many public goods and ecosystem services of great added value to the EU, including quality food, risk reduction of natural disasters, carbon storage, and biodiversity.
Better understanding the role of grasslands in mountain ecosystems is fundamental to address the environmental degradation of this habitat, which has to cope with climate change impacts, on one side, and unsustainable human practices, on the other side.
For this reason, the EU-funded project OREKA MENDIAN established an open database which collects scientific articles related to mountain grasslands. Up to now, approximately 400 entries have been selected and included, ranging across Products Quality, Animal Behaviour and Performance, Pasto-cultural Production and Quality, Socioeconomics and Ecosystem Services, Soils and Biodiversity, and Vegetation types. For each scientific article, you will able to find out its objectives, methodology and key results.
If you wish to enrich EUs knowledge on mountain grasslands and add your article to the database, do not hesitate to get in touch with Javier Perez.
OREKA MENDIAN is a five-year project (2016-2021) funded by the European Unionโs LIFE Programme. It aims to develop a preservation strategy in mountain pasturelands in the Basque country (covering both the French and Spanish regions), seeking out to create a sustainable balance between the environmental preservation and socio-economic uses of Basque mountain grasslands.
