This article introduces a Special Issue on biodiversity of Palaearctic grasslands and
provides a synthesis of the current knowledge on this topic. Four major categories of …

Human-driven global change is causing ongoing declines in biodiversity worldwide. In order
to address these declines, decision-makers need accurate assessments of the status of and …

Soils are the foundation of all terrestrial ecosystems. However, unlike for plants and animals,
a global assessment of hotspots for soil nature conservation is still lacking. This hampers our …

Abstract Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs) consolidate information from varied
biodiversity observation sources. Here we demonstrate the links between data sources …

Aims Vegetation‐plot records provide information on the presence and cover or abundance
of plants co‐occurring in the same community. Vegetation‐plot data are spread across …

Motivation Assessing biodiversity status and trends in plant communities is critical for
understanding, quantifying and predicting the effects of global change on ecosystems …

Over the last two decades, macroecology–the analysis of large‐scale, multi‐species
ecological patterns and processes–has established itself as a major line of biological …

Conservation planning requires extensive amounts of data, yet data collection is expensive,
and there is often a trade‐off between the quantity and quality of data that can be collected …

A general understanding of grazing effects on plant diversity in drylands is still missing,
despite an extensive theoretical background. Cross‐biome syntheses are hindered by the …

Aims Understanding fine‐grain diversity patterns across large spatial extents is fundamental
for macroecological research and biodiversity conservation. Using the GrassPlot database …