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A comprehensive introduction to the biology of native and non-native grasslands which now cover approximately 50% of the terrestrial environment, providing essential ecosystem services and some of the most important areas for the production of food and fibre worldwide.
List of contents
- 1: Grasslands of the world
- 2: Biodiversity of grasslands
- 3: Factors maintaining and regulating grassland structure and function
- 4: Nutrient cycling and energy flow in grasslands
- 5: Trophic cascades in grasslands
- 6: Biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in grasslands
- 7: Response of grasslands to global change
- 8: Conservation and restoration of grasslands
- 9: Conclusions, future research needs, and issues
About the author
Brian J. Wilsey is a professor at Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA. He has studied grassland ecology for the past 25 years, on topics ranging from global change effects on plant-grazer interactions, relationships between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, species diversity maintenance, carbon and nutrient cycling, and community assembly. He has visited and worked in grassland systems around the world, including the tall and midgrass prairies of the central U.S., savannah grasslands in Tanzania, steppe in China, and flooding Pampa of Argentina. He has published more than 80 scientific papers in peer reviewed journals on these and other topics.
Summary
A comprehensive introduction to the biology of native and non-native grasslands which now cover approximately 50% of the terrestrial environment, providing essential ecosystem services and some of the most important areas for the production of food and fibre worldwide.
Additional text
Scientists and other professionals working in grasslands will find The Biology of Grasslands a superb quick reference for everything grassland related. Those readers will especially like the tables listing species that negatively affect grasslands and experiments exploring grassland restoration. Students or anyone seeking an introduction to ecology or grassland ecology should also read this book. Wilsey effectively covers many central concepts to ecology, making this book, in a sense, an introduction to ecology through the lens of the grassland biome. Achieving these 2 disparate goals of reference and introduction is no easy task, but Wilsey accomplished it with aplomb.
