Abstract
Grasslands play an important role in terms of biodiversity, landscape and agriculture. For 25 years, the Bavarian agri-environment scheme (AES) “Agricultural landscape program” (KULAP) has been funding management practices which are intended to conserve cultural landscapes and enhance biodiversity. The aim of this study was to evaluate the Bavarian AES schemes in terms of plant diversity. As AES is divided into many different, clearly divergent schemes, each of these schemes was evaluated separately. The evaluation focussed not only on species richness but also on other diversity parameters such as the presence of rare and common species, the percentage of species group members and the evenness as well as agronomic values such as forage value, percentage of agronomically desirable species or percentage of weeds. In order to achieve this goal, we selected about 950 pairs of grassland plots with and without AES. Differences in species richness between AES and control plots were most significant in the site related AES schemes and organic farming, whereas plots with other farm related AES schemes hardly differed from their controls. Obviously, schemes which really demand management changes on the part of the farmer have a definite effect on plant species diversity in grasslands compared to those which closely resemble conventional management.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
Abbreviations
- AES:
-
Agri-Environment Scheme
- BGS:
-
Bavarian Grassland Monitoring
- CNP:
-
Contract Nature Protection Scheme
- FGM:
-
Frequency according to German grid maps
- KULAP:
-
Agricultural Landscape Program (“Kulturlandschaftsprogramm”)
- NLU:
-
Natural Landscape Unit.
References
Adler, P.B. and J.B. Bradford. 2002. Compensation: an alternative method for analyzing diversity-productivity experiments. Oikos 96:411–420.
ART. 2005. Aktualisierung der Halbzeitbewertung von Programmen des Plans zur Entwicklung des ländlichen Raums in Bayern im Zeitraum 2000 bis 2006. Bayerisches Staatsministerium für Landwirtschaft und Forsten, München.
Bahmani, I., F. Pervanchon, S. Plantureux and P. Girardin. 2002. Development of an agri-environmental indicator assessing the impact of nitrogen input on grassland biodiversity. Grassland Science in Europe 7:658–659.
Bavarian Climate Research Association (BayFORKLIM). 1996. Klimaatlas von Bayern. München. 57 pp.
Bavarian Ministry for Agriculture and Forestry (eds). 2006. Bayerischer Agrarbericht 2006. http://www.agrarbericht.bayern.de
Bischoff, A. 2002. Dispersal and establishment of floodplain grassland species as limiting factors in restoration. Biol. Conserv. 104:25–33.
Connell, J. H. 1978. Diversity in tropical rain forests and coral reefs. Science 199:1302–1310.
Diemer, M., K. Oetiker and R. Billeter. 2001. Abandonment alters community composition and canopy structure of Swiss calcareous fens. App. Veg. Sci. 4:237–246.
Ellenberg, H., H.E. Weber, R. Düll, V. Wirth, W. Werner and D. Paulißen. 2001. Zeigerwerte von Pflanzen in Mitteleuropa. Scripta Geobot. 18. 262 pp.
Haeupler, H. 1982. Evenness als Ausdruck der Vielfalt in der Vegetation – Untersuchungen zum Diversitätsbegriff. Dissertationes Botanicae 65. Cramer Verlag, Stuttgart. 768 pp.
Haeupler, H. and P. Schönfelder. 1988. Atlas der Farn- und Blütenpflanzen der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Ulmer Verlag, Stuttgart.
Heinz, S., F. Mayer and G. Kuhn. 2008. Agricultural grasslands in Bavaria – Interrelationship of diversity and management.Grassland Science in Europe 13:910–912.
Herzog, F. 2005. Agri-environment schemes as landscape experiments. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 108:175–177.
Herzog, F., S. Dreier, G. Hofer, C. Marfurt, B. Schüpbach, M. Spiess and T. Walter. 2005. Effect of ecological compensation areas on floristic and breeding bird diversity in Swiss agricultural landscapes. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 108:189–204.
Hodgson, J.G., J.P. Grime, P.J. Wilson, K. Thompson and S.R.Band. 2005. The impacts of agricultural change (1963–2003) on the grassland flora of Central England: processes and prospects. Basic App. Ecol. 6:107–118.
Isselstein, J., B. Jeangros and V. Pavlu. 2005. Agronomic aspects of extensive grassland farming and biodiversity management. Grassland Science in Europe 10: 211–220.
Kampmann, D., F. Herzog, Ph. Jeanneret, W. Konold, M. Peter, T. Walter, O. Wildi and A. Lüscher. 2008. Mountain grassland biodiversity: impact of site conditions versus management type. J. Nature Conserv. 16:12–25.
Klapp, E. and A. Stählin. 1936. Standorte, Pflanzengesellschaften und Leistungen des Grünlandes. Ulmer Verlag, Stuttgart. 122 pp.
Klapp, E., P. Boeker, F. König and A. Stählin. 1953. Wertzahlen der Grünlandpflanzen. Das Grünland 5. Beilage der Zeitschrift ‘Der Tierzüchter’, Schaper, Hannover.
Kleijn, D. and W. J. Sutherland. 2003. How effective are European agri-environment schemes in conserving and promoting biodiversity? J. App. Ecol. 40:947–969.
Kleijn, D., F. Berendse, R. Smit and N. Gilissen. 2001. Agri-environment schemes do not effectively protect biodiversity in Dutch agricultural landscapes. Nature 413:723–725.
Kleijn, D., R.A. Baquero, Y. Clough, M. Diaz, J. De Esteban, F. Fernández, D. Gabriel, F. Herzog, A. Holzschuh, R. Jöhl, E. Knop, A. Kruess, E.J.P. Marshall, I. Steffan-Dewentner, T. Tscharntke, J. Verhulst, T.M. West and J.L. Yela. 2006. Mixed biodiversity benefits of agri-environment schemes in five European countries. Ecol. Lett. 9:243–254.
Knop, E., D. Kleijn, F. Herzog and B. Schmid. 2006. Effectiveness of the Swiss agri-environment scheme in promoting biodiversity. J. App. Ecol. 43:120–127.
Köbler, M. 2001. Evaluierung des bayerischen Kulturlandschaftsprogrammes – Stand und Perspektiven. Landbauforschung Völkenrode, FAL Agricultural Research 231:49–53.
Körner, C. 2002. Grassland in a CO2-enriched world. Grassland Science in Europe 7:611–616.
Marriott, C.A., M. Fothergill, B. Jeangros, M. Scotton and F. Louault. 2004. Long-term impacts of extensification of grassland management on biodiversity and productivity in upland areas. A review. Agronomie 24:447–462.
Meynen, E. and J. Schmithüsen. 1953. Handbuch der naturräumlichen Gliederung Deutschlands. Verlag der Bundesanstalt für Landeskunde, Remagen. 1339 pp.
Pfisterer, A.B. and B. Schmid. 2002. Diversity-dependent production can decrease the stability of ecosystems. Nature 416:84–86.
Pielou, E.C. 1969. An Introduction to Mathematical Ecology. Wiley, New York.
Pielou, E.C. 1975. Ecological Diversity. Wiley, New York.
Poschlod, P. and W. Schumacher. 1998. Rückgang von Pflanzen und Pflanzengesellschaften des Grünlandes – Gefährdungsursachen und Handlungsbedarf. Schriftenreihe für Vegetationskunde 29:83–99.
Scherer-Lorenzen, M., C. Palmborg, A. Prinz and E.-D. Schulze. 2003. The role of plant diversity and composition for nitrate leaching in grasslands. Ecology 84:1539–1552.
Tallowin, J.R.B., R.E.N. Smith, J. Goodyear and J.A. Vickery. 2005. Spatial and structural uniformity of lowland agricultural grassland in England: a context for low biodiversity. Grass Forage Sci. 60:225–236.
Tilman, D., P.B. Reich and M.H. Knops. 2006. Biodiversity and eco-system stability in a decade-long grassland experiment. Nature 441:629–632.
van der Maarel, E. 1997. Biodiversity: from Babel to Biosphere Management. Opulus Press, Uppsala.
Wisskirchen, R. and H. Haeupler. 1998. Standardliste derFarn- und Blütenpflanzen Deutschlands. Ulmer Verlag, Stuttgart. 765 pp.
Zechmeister, H.G., I. Schmitzberger, B. Steurer, J. Peterseil and T. Wrbka. 2003. The influence of land-use practices and economics on plant species richness in meadows. Biol. Conserv. 114:165–177.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
About this article
Cite this article
Mayer, F., Heinz, S. & Kuhn, G. Effects of agri-environment schemes on plant diversity in Bavarian grasslands. COMMUNITY ECOLOGY 9, 229–236 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1556/ComEc.9.2008.2.12
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1556/ComEc.9.2008.2.12