Biodiversity-rich European grasslands: Ancient, forgotten ecosystems

Feurdean, Angelica; Ruprecht, Eszter; Molnár, Zsolt; Hutchinson, Simon M.; Hickler, Thomas

doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2018.09.022

Cited by 137 publications

(109 citation statements)

References 72 publications

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“…They were indeed found, and we interpret them as follows: The forest‐steppe legacy . In Eurasia, the species‐richest local communities occur in the forest‐steppe zone (Chytrý et al, ; Dengler, Janišová, Török, & Wellstein, ; Feurdean et al, ) rather than in dry steppes (Horsák & Chytrý, ; Palpurina et al, ). Hence, plant species richness usually increases with humidity within the steppe biome (Palpurina et al, ; Polyakova et al, ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the regions where dark coniferous forests have been rare or are even of modern origin, specialized taiga species are missing. Beech became dominant in mountain regions of the study area during the Late Holocene (Dudová, Hájek, Petr, & Jankovská, 2018;Feurdean et al, 2018;Jamrichová et al, 2017). Heavily changed environmental conditions (e.g.…”

Section: Conceptual Background Underlying the Individual Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is hence of prime importance to identify areas of high species richness and their ecological determinants (Kreft & Jetz, ; Palpurina et al, ; Zobel, ). While tropical rainforests and Mediterranean‐type vegetation are commonly reported as global hotspots of plant species richness (Archibold, ; Kreft & Jetz, ), exceptionally species‐rich communities have also been identified in the temperate zone, in particular in the forest‐steppe biome (Feurdean, Ruprecht, Molnár, Hutchinson, & Hickler, ; Večeřa et al, ). They include steppe grasslands (Chytrý et al, ; Roleček, Čornej, & Tokarjuk, ), light hemiboreal forests (Chytrý et al, ), and open deciduous forests and wooded grasslands (Chytrý et al, ; Roleček, Vild, Sladký, & Řepka, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some authors (Feurdean et al, ; Novák, Roleček, Dresler, & Hájek, ) explained the distribution of exceptionally species‐rich grasslands and open forests by the existence of Middle‐Holocene refugia of steppe grasslands. Palaeoecological studies indeed confirmed higher Middle‐Holocene representation of steppe grasslands in those regions where hotspots of grassland species richness occur today (Feurdean et al, ) in comparison to nearby regions with less species‐rich grasslands (Hájek et al, ; Jamrichová et al, ). Jamrichová et al () also showed that the occurrence of rare species of boreal coniferous forests in the Western Carpathians coincides with the persistence of these forests during the Late‐Holocene beech expansion.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, Holocene effects have been suggested as equally important. Some authors (Feurdean et al, 2018;Novák, Roleček, Dresler, & Hájek, 2019) (Feurdean et al, 2018) in comparison to nearby regions with less species-rich grasslands (Hájek et al, 2016;Jamrichová et al, 2017). Jamrichová et al (2017) also showed that the occurrence of rare species of boreal coniferous forests in the Western Carpathians coincides with the persistence of these forests during the Late-Holocene beech expansion.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Holocene matters: Landscape history accounts for current species richness of vascular plants in forests and grasslands of eastern Central Europe

Divíšek

Hájek

Jamrichová

et al. 2020

Journal of Biogeography

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Aim Current species‐richness patterns are sometimes interpreted as a legacy of landscape history, but historical processes shaping the distribution of species during the Holocene are frequently omitted in biodiversity models. Here, we test their importance in modelling current species richness of vascular plants in forest and grassland vegetation. Location Western Carpathians and adjacent regions. Taxon Vascular plants. Methods Numbers of all species and of habitat specialists were extracted from plot records of forest and grassland vegetation. For each plot, environmental and historical data were derived from thematic maps. Historical data related to the persistence of (a) temperate taxa during the Late Glacial and Early Holocene, (b) open‐landscape taxa during the Middle Holocene and (c) taiga taxa during the Late Holocene were based on 112 fossil pollen profiles. Boosted regression trees were used to model spatial patterns in species richness. Results Historical variables always appeared among the best predictors of current species richness. In light forests, species richness highly mirrored both the Late Glacial (12.5% contribution) and Middle‐Holocene (8.6%) landscape history. The latter factor became an important predictor also for species richness of steppe grasslands (8.3%) along with temperature seasonality (11.9%). Species richness of dark coniferous forests was best predicted by the Late‐Holocene occurrence of taiga forests (14.8%), which had an even stronger effect on the richness of habitat specialists (20.5%). Main conclusions Landscape changes since the Last Glacial Maximum are important predictors of current plant species richness. The historical effects were found to be habitat specific and, because they may interact with recent environmental conditions and anthropogenic pressures, they often show a nonlinear relationship with species richness. We provide one possible direction of incorporating past landscape changes to the models of species richness.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Conceptual Background Underlying the Individual Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Holocene matters: Landscape history accounts for current species richness of vascular plants in forests and grasslands of eastern Central Europe

Divíšek

Hájek

Jamrichová

et al. 2020

Journal of Biogeography

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Post‐restoration grassland management overrides the effects of restoration methods in propagule‐rich landscapes

Tölgyesi

Vadász

Kun

et al. 2021

Ecological Applications

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Grassland restoration is gaining momentum worldwide to tackle the loss of biodiversity and associated ecosystem services. Restoration methods and their effects on ecological community reassembly have been extensively studied across various grassland types, while the importance of post‐restoration management has so far received less attention. Grassland management is an important surrogate for natural disturbances, with which most ancient grasslands have coevolved. Thus, without the reintroduction of management‐related disturbance, restoration targets are unlikely to be achieved in restored grasslands. In this study, we aimed to explore how 20 yr of management by mowing once a year or light cattle grazing affects restoration success in Palearctic meadow‐steppe grasslands restored by either sowing native grasses (sown sites), applying Medicago sativa as a nurse plant (Medicago sites), or allowing spontaneous succession (spontaneous sites). We found that, following mowing, sown sites maintained long‐lasting establishment limitation, while Medicago sites experienced a delay in succession. These limitations resulted in low total and target species richness, low functional redundancy, and distinct species and functional composition compared to reference data from ancient grasslands. Spontaneous sites that were mowed reached a more advanced successional stage, although they did not reach reference levels regarding most vegetation descriptors. Sown and Medicago sites that were grazed had higher total and target species richness than those that were mowed, and showed restoration success similar to that of spontaneous sites, on which grazing had only moderate further positive effects. Grazed sites, irrespective of the restoration method, were uniformly species rich, functionally diverse, and functionally redundant, and thus became important biodiverse habitats with considerable resilience. We conclude that an optimally chosen post‐restoration management may have an impact on long‐term community reassembly comparable to the choice of restoration method. Restoration planners may, therefore, need to put more emphasis on future management than on the initial restoration method. However, our findings also imply that if local constraints, such as potentially high invasive propagule pressure, necessitate the application of restoration methods that could also hinder the establishment of target species, the long‐term recovery of the grassland can still be ensured by wisely chosen post‐restoration management.

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Changes in reproduction mediate the effects of climate change and grassland management on plant population dynamics

Andrzejak,

Knight,

Plos

et al. 2024

Ecological Applications

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Climate change is one of the largest threats to grassland plant species, which can be modified by land management. Although climate change and land management are expected to separately and interactively influence plant demography, this has been rarely considered in climate change experiments. We used a large‐scale experiment in central Germany to quantify the effects of grassland management, climate change, and their joint effect on the demography and population growth rate of 11 plant species all native to this temperate grassland ecosystem. We parameterized integral projection models with five years of demographic data to project population growth rate. We hypothesized that plant populations perform better in the ambient than in the future climate treatment that creates hotter and drier summer conditions. Further, we hypothesized that plant performance interactively responds to climate and land management in a species‐specific manner based on the drought, mowing, and grazing tolerances as well as the flowering phenology of each species. Due to extreme drought events, over half of our study species went quasi extinct, which highlights how extreme climate events can influence long‐term experimental results. We found no consistent support for our expectation that plants perform better in ambient compared with future climate conditions. However, several species showed interactive responses to the treatments, indicating that optimal management strategies for plant performance are expected to shift with climate change. Changes in population growth rates of these species across treatments were mostly due to changes in plant reproduction. Experiments combined with measuring plant demographic responses provide a way to isolate the effects of different drivers on the long‐term persistence of species and to identify the demographic vital rates that are critical to manage in the future. Our study suggests that it will become increasingly difficult to maintain species with preferences for moister soil conditions, and that climate and land use can interactively alter demographic responses of the remaining grassland species.

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Biodiversity-rich European grasslands: Ancient, forgotten ecosystems

Cited by 137 publications

References 72 publications

Holocene matters: Landscape history accounts for current species richness of vascular plants in forests and grasslands of eastern Central Europe

Holocene matters: Landscape history accounts for current species richness of vascular plants in forests and grasslands of eastern Central Europe

Post‐restoration grassland management overrides the effects of restoration methods in propagule‐rich landscapes

Changes in reproduction mediate the effects of climate change and grassland management on plant population dynamics

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