As part of the BIOTA SOUTH Project (Subproject 09, Workpackage 5) and in collaboration with the Research Group Plant Ecology & Nature Conservation at the Institute for Biochemistry and Biology of the University of Potsdam, Wolfgang Siewert developed a functional type model for herbaceous plants to assess their response to grazing.
A relation between plant traits and response to grazing is already known on a large scale: Woody plants (namely shrubs) increase whereas herbaceous plants decrease, an effect called shrub encroachment. This model works on a smaller scale and examines herbaceous plants. Therefore a Plant Functional (Response) Type (PFT) approach was chosen. A PFT represents plants with a certain combination of traits and the model will investigate how a PFT reacts to the simulated grazing.

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