Schaub, Sergei; Finger, Robert; Leiber, Florian; Probst, Stefan; Kreuzer, Michael; Weigelt, Alexandra; Buchmann, Nina; Scherer-Lorenzen, Michael (2021). Reply to: “Results from a biodiversity experiment fail to represent economic performance of semi-natural grasslands” Nature Communications, 12(1), p. 2124. Nature Publishing Group 10.1038/s41467-021-22310-0
|
Text
Schaub et al_2021_NatCom_Reply.pdf - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons: Attribution (CC-BY). Download (503kB) | Preview |
In Schaub et al., we analyzed plant diversity effects on biomass yield, forage quality, quality-adjusted yield (biomass yield × forage quality) and revenues across different management intensities (extensive to very intensive) within the Jena Experiment (a large-scale grassland biodiversity experiment). For forage quality, we focused especially on metabolizable energy content and milk-production potential, variables rarely assessed economically in a biodiversity context. Our analysis suggested that plant diversity can substantially add to the milk-production potential yield (per unit of area) in semi-natural grasslands. This creates additional revenues from milk production. Our results showed that these plant diversity benefits can be as high as those from increasing management intensities within semi-natural grassland settings. In a recent comment, Tonn et al. challenged our findings, questioned their applicability for real-life systems and our calculation of the milk-production potential. We argue that their calculation offers a perspective on livestock performance, complementing our perspective of marginal benefits of plant diversity, and it shows that our main results for semi-natural grasslands are robust to differences in assessing milk-production potential yield.
Item Type: |
Journal Article (Original Article) |
|---|---|
Division/Institute: |
School of Agricultural, Forest and Food Sciences HAFL School of Agricultural, Forest and Food Sciences HAFL > Agriculture School of Agricultural, Forest and Food Sciences HAFL > Agriculture > Grasslands and Ruminant Production Systems |
Name: |
Schaub, Sergei; Finger, Robert; Leiber, Florian; Probst, Stefan  0000-0003-4703-8789; Kreuzer, Michael; Weigelt, Alexandra; Buchmann, Nina and Scherer-Lorenzen, Michael |
Subjects: |
G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GE Environmental Sciences S Agriculture > SB Plant culture S Agriculture > SF Animal culture |
ISSN: |
2041-1723 |
Publisher: |
Nature Publishing Group |
Language: |
English |
Submitter: |
Stefan Probst |
Date Deposited: |
21 Jun 2021 09:13 |
Last Modified: |
25 Sep 2021 02:18 |
Publisher DOI: |
10.1038/s41467-021-22310-0 |
Uncontrolled Keywords: |
Biodiversity, Ecosystem services |
ARBOR DOI: |
10.24451/arbor.14944 |
URI: |
https://arbor.bfh.ch/id/eprint/14944 |
Actions (login required)
 |
View Item |