Grassland term definitions and classifications adapted to the diversity of European grassland-based systems

Abstract

Grasslands are represented in an unsatisfactory manner in agricultural statistics. The official definition of grasslands does not include vast areas of grazed shrubby and wooded ecosystems. Temporary grasslands are recorded as ‘Leguminous plants’ and ‘Temporary grass’ which induces doubt on the classification of grass-legume mixtures and often leads to the underestimation of temporary grassland areas. Some terms like ‘meadows’ and ‘pastures’ are often used in an imprecise and misleading way. The term ‘rough grazing’ does not include all types of natural and semi-natural grasslands, especially all types of rangelands, forest pastures and traditional hay meadows. It can thus not represent all species-rich grassland types. Improvements of the current situation are proposed. They consist mainly in: (i) better definitions of grassland terms including for pastures and meadows, permanent, agriculturally- improved, semi-natural and natural grasslands; (ii) the classification of temporary grasslands in three categories: pure legume sowings, pure grass sowings and grass-legume mixtures; (iii) the classification of permanent grasslands in three categories: agriculturally-improved, natural and semi-natural, no longer used for production; and (iv) the introduction of a new category for grazed fallow land. The paper presents a comprehensive classification of fodder and grassland types in the agricultural area and a multilingual vocabulary.