Grassland Ecosystem Services: Research Advances and Future Directions for Sustainability: 3rd Edition

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce a Special Issue of Land entitled “Grassland Ecosystem Services: Research Advances and Future Directions for Sustainability: 3rd Edition”.

Grasslands are of paramount importance for the creation of ecosystem services, i.e., supporting, provisioning, regulating, and cultural services. Grasslands sustain economies, from the local to the national levels, in human societies and nature by forming numerous habitat types where exceptional elements of biodiversity flourish. They play a major role in providing high-quality forage for both livestock and wild animals; they support communities of insects with major roles in the pollination process and the recycling of nutrients and organic matter; they sustain apiculture and contribute to the prevention of erosion processes; they contribute to the maintenance of the water cycle. They contribute to climate change mitigation and are large carbon storage tanks. Given their importance, a number of scientific works are scanning, searching for, and promoting structural and functional elements of grasslands in disciplines ranging from the political to the economic and ecological.

From recent scientific developments to future directions, this Special Issue (SI) aims at presenting the world’s grasslands within the framework of sustainable ecosystem management. The theme of the SI fits into the scope of the Land journal, since it seeks to bring to the light the research advances in grassland science and management and, more specifically, the human-made impacts on the creation of ecosystem services related to grasslands.

Suggested themes and article types for submissions include: grassland abandonment, grassland types, uses, management, conservation and restoration, impact of climate change on grassland ecology, grassland condition and health, grassland ecosystem services (i.e., supporting, provisioning, regulating and cultural) and issues related to the monitoring, biodiversity, water provision and hydrology of grasslands.

Prof. Dr. Michael Vrahnakis
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Yannis (Ioannis) Kazoglou
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Land is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.