Grasslands and Climate Change

David J. Gibson FRSB is Distinguished Professor of Plant Biology, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. He is the Executive Editor of the Journal of Ecology, the Editor-in-Chief of Oxford Bibliographies in Ecology, and has written two books, Grasses and Grassland Ecology (2008) and Methods in Comparative Plant Population Ecology (2nd edition, 2014). Jonathan A. Newman is Dean of the College of Biological Science, University of Guelph, Ontario, where he was also the founding Director of the School of Environmental Sciences and Chair of the Department of Environmental Biology. He is the lead author of Climate Change Biology (2011) and Defending Biodiversity (Cambridge, 2017) and has published more than 100 scientific journal articles.

'Grasslands and Climate Change highlights the many uncertainties around changes we will witness. There are unknowns at every level, including how much greenhouse gas will be released, what climatic changes this creates, and how plants animals and humans will respond. None of these factors exist in isolation, and we need many more studies of the interactions between climate variables in order to make accurate predictions … This book points out … [that] there have been many botched policy decisions for traditional grassland, and these must be understood if climate related interventions are to succeed.' Rebecca Nesbit, The Biologist

• Introduction: 1. Grasslands and climate change: an overview David J. Gibson and Jonathan A. Newman; 2. Methodology I: detecting and projecting grassland change from plots to the landscape Heather Hager and Jonathan A. Newman; 3. Methodology II: remote sensing and modelling Geoffrey Henebry; Part I. Grassland Dynamics and Climate Change: 4. Projected climate change in global grasslands Mike B. Jones; 5. Production changes in response to climate change Lauchlan Fraser; 6. Will climate change push grasslands past tipping points? Zak Ratajczak and Laura Ladwig; 7. Biochemical cycling in grasslands under climate change Hugh Henry; 8. Climate change effects on grassland ecosystem services Sandra Lavorel; Part II. Species Traits, Functional Groups, and Evolutionary Change: 9. Grassland invasion in a changing climate Jane A. Catford and Lizzie P. Jones; 10. How global change drives demography in grasslands Johan Ehlrén; 11. Impacts of climate change on trophic interactions in grasslands Sue E. Hartley and Colin Beale; 12. Grassland belowground feedbacks and climate change Richard D. Bardgett and Marina Semchenko; 13. Keeping up: climate driven evolutionary change, dispersal, and migration Kathryn A. Yurkonis and William Harris; 14. The future biogeography of C3 and C4 grasslands Elisabeth J. Forrestel and Erika J. Edwards; Part III. Dealing with Climate Change Effects: 15. Altered grazing systems: pastoralism to conventional agriculture Phillip K. Thornton, Mario Herrero and Randall B. Boone; 16. Climate change and the politics and science of traditional grassland management Michael R. Dove; 17. Assessing rangeland health under climate variability and change John Bradford, Mike Duniway and Seth Munson; 18. Restoring grassland in the context of climate change Sara G. Baer, David J. Gibson and Loretta C. Johnson; 19. Grasslands in the Anthropocene: research and conservation needs David J. Gibson and Jonathan A. Newman; Index.