Temperate grasslands: Out of sight, out of mind? Conservation and research priorities for one of the world's most threatened ecological communities

This chapter reviews the influence of land-use change and predicted climate change on temperate grasslands – an overlooked ecological community at the global scale - and identifies future research strategies to halt the further loss of biodiversity in temperate grasslands. We discuss how previous research has contributed to our understanding of grassland ecology and describe how two threats to native temperate grasslands might affect the ecological integrity of these grasslands. Based on a consideration of research conducted in three native temperate grassland regions - North America, South Asia and South-eastern Australia - it is concluded that increasing legal protection, a wider public appreciation and more research is required to reverse the current trend of biodiversity loss and to improve the current lack of appreciation of temperate grasslands. In particular, there is a need for more detailed inventory surveys of the temperate grasslands biota and increased autecological research on the invertebrate fauna. The establishment of long term monitoring is required to provide a measurement of the success of conservation action and to relate the effects of historical and current threats to native grassland and component biodiversity.