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Project properties |
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| Title | How do grazers affect soil carbon storage? |
| Group | Plant Ecology and Nature Conservation Group |
| Project type | thesis |
| Credits | 36 |
| Supervisor(s) | |
| Examiner(s) | Fons van der Plas |
| Contact info | fons.vanderplas@wur.nl |
| Begin date | 2023/01/01 |
| End date | 2026/12/31 |
| Description | Temperate grasslands store large amounts of carbon, and the vast majority of this carbon is stored belowground. Thereby, they can play a key role in mitigating climate change. But how can we maximize their carbon sequestration potential?
Various studies have investigated how forms of grassland management, including grazing, can influence soil carbon storage. However, so far results are highly mixed, with grazed areas storing both larger or smaller amounts of carbon than ungrazed areas, depending on the study. How to reconcile this? Here, you will use a grazing experiment to investigate the role of changes in plant communities in determining how soil carbon storage responds to grazing. Specifically, you will test to which extent changes in the root traits (e.g. their thickness, or ability to collaborate with mycorrhiza) of grassland species can help explaining how soil carbon storage responds to grazing. |
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