Eleven years' data of grassland management in Germany.

The 150 grassland plots were located in three study regions in Germany, 50 in each region. The dataset describes the yearly grassland management for each grassland plot using 116 variables.General information includes plot identifier, study region and survey year. Additionally, grassland plot characteristics describe the presence and starting year of drainage and whether arable farming had taken place 25 years before our assessment, i.e. between 1981 and 2006. In each year, the size of the management unit is given which, in some cases, changed slightly across years.Mowing, grazing and fertilisation were systematically surveyed: Investigating the relationship between human land use and biodiversity is important to understand if and how humans affect it through the way they manage the land and to develop sustainable land use strategies. Quantifying land use (the 'X' in such graphs) can be difficult as humans manage land using a multitude of actions, all of which may affect biodiversity, yet most studies use rather simple measures of land use, for example, by creating land use categories such as conventional vs. organic agriculture. Here, we provide detailed data on grassland management to allow for detailed analyses and the development of land use theory. The raw data have already been used for > 100 papers on the effect of management on biodiversity (e.g. Manning et al. 2015).

Juliane Vogt, Valentin H. Klaus, Steffen Both, Cornelia Fürstenau, Sonja Gockel, Martin M. Gossner, Johannes Heinze, Andreas Hemp, Nobert Hölzel, Kirsten Jung, Till Kleinebecker, Ralf Lauterbach, Katrin Lorenzen, Andreas Ostrowski, Niclas Otto, Daniel Prati, Swen Renner, Uta Schumacher, Sebastian Seibold, Nadja Simons, Iris Steitz, Miriam Teuscher, Jan Thiele, Sandra Weithmann, Konstans Wells, Kerstin Wiesner, Manfred Ayasse, Nico Blüthgen, Markus Fischer, Wolfgang W. Weisser.