The impact of climate change on the profit-maximising timing of grassland use and conservation costs

Grasslands make up a large part of cultural landscapes, for example in Europe, and provide an important habitat for many species. Climate change impacts grasslands directly by influencing the climatic conditions that determine grass growth. This may lead to changes in the profit-maximising timing of grassland use by farmers. Additionally, by influencing the yield of the grassland, climate change may have an impact on the opportunity costs of conservation. We have developed a model to investigate these two factors: 1) How does climate change impact the profit-maximising timing of grassland use and 2) How does it impact selected opportunity costs of conservation? The model includes a climate model and a vegetation model to assess the changes in a case study region in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. We consider two RCP scenarios. Results show that the timing of the first cut is expected to occur increasingly early under climate change and costs of conservation measures are larger under more profound climate change.