Speaker
Description
Grasslands cover 20-40% of Earth’s land and provide important ecosystem functions. While grassland productivity matters for fodder or bioenergy supply, biodiversity is also relevant, e.g. for stability and for support of animal species, such as pollinators. Hence, the relations between these functions, and their responses to climate and land use change, need to be well understood to promote adequate human action. We develop a prototype digital twin of grassland ecosystems that allows comprehensive investigation of grassland dynamics under various environmental and management conditions. Our approach facilitates frequent interplay between real-world ecosystems and their digital counterparts. The process-based model Grassmind lets us simulate how individual plants of different species compete for light, space and other resources as they establish, grow and die. These dynamics are driven by weather conditions, soil properties and management. Therefore, the digital twin infrastructure includes access to and preprocessing of open data on these drivers so that realistic present and future scenarios can be simulated and predictions of grassland biodiversity and productivity made for different locations. Grassland observation data are integrated to validate and improve model results. End-users can explore the digital twin through a graphical interface, provide feedback or their own data to be taken into account, and gain valuable scientific insight for use in policy or management.
| Status Group | Senior Scientist |
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