The overlooked diversity of dry grasslands in Ticino (Switzerland) – with impressions from the 19th EDGG Field Workshop

Ticino, covering 2,800 km 2 , is the southernmost canton of Switzerland.Ticino deviates not only by the Italian language from the rest of Switzerland, but also by being entirely located south of the main alpine chain.With mainly North-South oriented valleys, it experiences an extraordinary climate compared to the regions further north.Both the annual precipitation (for a given elevation) and the number of sunshine hours are higher than elsewhere, and the lowlands are also the warmest places in the country.This combination of features has been called "insubric climate", albeit this refers in the strict sense only to the regions around two large glacial lakes, Lago Maggiore and Lago Lugano.The elevation in the canton ranges from 193 to 3402 m a.s.l.The bedrock is predominantly acidic with a few limestone areas in the southernmost parts of the canton.However, due to the complex geological history of the region, dry calcareous soils also form locally in the northern part of the canton, for instance around metamorphic dolomite outcrops.Despite the high precipitation dry grasslands occur in Ticino, but usually the areas are rather small and isolated compared to the Valais or the Jura Mountains.Dry grasslands can be found mainly on steep rocky outcrops (where they are natural), as mostly small relics of pastures and hay meadows in the lower mountain ranges and, as a peculiarity compared to the other regions in Switzerland, in the floodplains and deltas of the larger Alpine rivers (Ticino, Brenno, Maggia, Melezza and Verzasca).Despite the influence of dams and reservoirs, the Maggia river remains one of the