Downscaled permanent grassland yields in Germany at NUTS 3 level (2018-2023)

Spatially explicit information on grass‑land extent and management is essential for quantifying how grassland use intensity affects ecosystem services and biodiversity outcomes within the SAFE framework. A valuable by‑product of such high‑resolution data is that the count of mowing events can be used as a downscaling variable for the aggregated grass‑land yield statistics that are currently available only at the NUTS 2 level. By linking mowing frequency to yield intensity, we can produce sub‑regional estimates of grass‑land productivity. To downscale NUTS 2 regional permanent grassland yields to NUTS 3 regions, we utilize information on the number of mowing events of permanent grassland at the field level. In addition to the KTBL yields and quantity information at the NUTS 2 regional level, we employ two supplementary datasets: remote sensing-based field-level mowing events numbers and total permanent grassland area. Firstly, the mowing events dataset is generated using remote sensing data from 2023 (https://zenodo.org/records/16941138) and an algorithm that detects mowing events over the course of the season.3 This field-level information is aggregated to the municipality level by calculating the median number of mowing events for all fields within a municipality. Subsequently, this data is further aggregated to the NUTS 3 regional level by calculating the average of the median number of mowing events. Secondly, the total permanent grassland area is obtained from the Agraratlas (https://zenodo.org/records/14197441), aggregated to the NUTS 3 level. It is used to determine the quantity produced in a NUTS 2 region. Thirdly, NUTS 2 yield information of grassland is obtained from KTBL (https://daten.ktbl.de/sdb/source.do). The primary objective of this downscaling process is to vary the yield of permanent grassland at the NUTS 3 level based on the number of mowing events in each region. Specifically, the higher the average number of median mowing events in a NUTS 3 region, the higher the permanent grassland yield in that region. The dataset is a table and has the following headings: Year: the year SGM_ID: NUTS 2 regional identifier crop_type: Only permanent grassland County_ID: NUTS 3 regional identifier name: unit name "yield" of value value: yield in dt/ha -------- Funding acknowledgement Funded by the European Union. Grant Agreement No. 101060075. Views and opinions expressed are those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Commission. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them. Legal notice This document was produced under the terms and conditions of Grant Agreement No. 101060075 for the European Commission. It does not necessary reflect the view of the European Union and in no way anticipates the Commission’s future policy in this area. The European Commission is not liable for any consequence stemming from the reuse of this publication. © BrightSpace, 2025 The reuse of this document is authorised under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CCBY 4.0) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). This means that reuse is allowed provided appropriate credit is given and any changes are indicated. For any use or reproduction of elements that are not owned by the BrightSpace consortium, permission may need to be sought directly from the respective right holders. Project information BrightSpace Horizon Europe project Grant Agreement No. 101060075 https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101060075 CALL: Innovative governance, environmental observations and digital solutions in support of the Green Deal WORK PROGRAMME Topic ID: HORIZON-CL6-2021-GOVERNANCE-01-12 EU agriculture within a safe and just operating space and planetary boundaries BrightSpace Project coordination: Wageningen Economic Research, The Hague, NL Contact: [e-mail] | Website: www.brightspace-project.eu Project duration: 1 November 2022 – 31 October 2027