Diversity of Pasture-Woodlands of North-Western Germany

Abstract

Prehistoric and historic man has not only turned the original landscape into a cultural one (by clearances, land reclamations, and specific cultivation procedures); he has also indirectly influenced the site-differentiating and vegetation-dynamic processes by acting on the natural environmental conditions, mainly on the soil to a small or large degree. Today’s distribution pattern of habitat factors probably still largely corresponds to that of former times, however, in individual cases, there may be considerable anthropogenic deviations, so that the previous and the current potential natural vegetation in the same habitats cannot in every case be compared. When investigating this problem, the respective degree of reversibility of the anthropogenic habitat modifications plays a decisive part; it depends on the entirety of human influence with its present and former utilizations, as well as on the habitat-specific regenerative power.

This is especially true for the pasture-woodlands, relics of which have been preserved up to this day in some national nature reserves in north-western Germany.

Originally a mainly closed woodland cover could be found in Central Europe; in prehistoric times and in the Middle Ages, this was being changed by man into a mosaic of highly varying, half-natural and half-open vegetation structures, like meadows, hedges, shrubs, heathlands interspersed with juniper, and a large number of different woodland types. The increase in structural variety also led to a distinct enrichment of flora and vegetation. Today, these forests are of extraordinary importance as biological reservation landscapes; they serve as refuges for numerous plant and animal species. In our landscape, some witnesses of the old utilization forms can still be found; however, since their number is continually decreasing, it can be foreseen when they will have disappeared, too. The exemplary protection and preservation of these last witnesses is therefore to be recommended, using all possibilities of and all the knowledge gathered in the fields of landscape and forest planning. Corresponding programmes have to be developed by an ecological management, under the guidance of qualified biologists and ecologists.