Methodological studies in the field of AgroEnvironmental Indicators
Lot 2. Grassland areas, production and use
Gerard Velthof
Grasslands
Grasslands types, areas, productivity, and nutrient
balances needed for targeting, monitoring and evaluation
of
 Common Agricultural Policy
 Environmental policies
● Climate mitigation targets
● High Nature Value farmland
● Habitats Directive
● Nitrates Directive
General objective of the project
To bring clarity into the issue of defining, classifying,
collecting and disseminating data on European grassland
areas, use and production.
October 2012 – December 2013
Specific objectives
 Create an overview of the different types of grasslands
existing in Europe
 Create possible ways of classifying the grasslands in
coherent manners, allowing different types of analyses
to be made
 Create a set of recommendations on how to collect data
on grasslands, in ways allowing the creation of coherent
European datasets.
Six tasks
 Task 1 Defining and classifying grasslands
 Task 2 Currently used methodologies to estimate
grassland production and biological fixation
 Task 3 Grassland definition and classification
 Task 4 Existing grassland survey
 Task 5 Methods for data collection
 Task 6 Expert/ statistician workshop
Task 1 Defining and classifying grasslands
To make a literature review of existing definitions and
classifications of grasslands that are used in diverse
domains, both statistical, administrative, scientific and
other.
Task 2 Currently used methodologies to
estimate grassland production and
biological fixation
To make a literature review on existing methodologies to
estimate grassland production and to estimate biological
fixation in grasslands
Task 3 Grassland definition and
classification
To make recommendations for
 potential definitions of grasslands and
 classification schemes on grassland
● analysis of the strengths and weaknesses,
● the ease the classifications can be set up,
● the link to FAO and other international
organisations,
● the impact on data use
Task 4 Existing grassland survey
 To collect and analyse data about grassland production in
the EU Member States, Norway and Switzerland
(questionnaire).
 Analysis and synthesis of the results:
● weaknesses and strengths of existing surveys
● recommendations for collection of consistent data
about grasslands
Task 5 Methods for data collection
 To analyse the characteristics of grasslands which need
to be collected
 To identify different methods of collecting these
characteristics in different surveying methods
 To propose several data collection scenarios on how to
bring together the various possible strategies on data
collection into holistic approaches.
Task 6 Expert/ statistician workshop
 To organise a workshop for grassland experts
 Aim: to discuss the results with from the agri-
environmental, grassland community and statistics
communities
Involvement of AEI working group
 Discussion session, based on the short questionnaire
 A detailed questionnaire will be sent in March/April
● Suggestions for topics and questions?
 Please, provide names of experts or contact persons
Contact
Gerard Velthof
Alterra, Wageningen UR
P.O. Box 47, 6700 AA Wageningen
tel +31317 486503
gerard.velthof@wur.nl
This afternoon
further
discussion