Diversity patterns in high‐latitude grasslands

Abstract

Aim Grasslands of varying land‐use intensity and history were studied to describe and test species richness and compositional patterns and their relationships with the physical environment, land cover of the surrounding landscape, patch geometry, and grazing. Location The mainland of Norway. Methods We utilized data from the Norwegian Monitoring Programme for Agricultural Landscapes, which recorded vascular plants from 569 plots, placed within 97 monitoring squares systematically distributed throughout agricultural land on the Norwegian mainland. We identified four grassland types: (i) moderately fertilized, moist meadows; (ii) overgrown agricultural land; (iii) cultivated pastures and disturbed ground; and (iv) natural/unfertilized and outfield pastures. Results Soil moisture and grazing measures were found to be important in explaining species compositional variation in all grassland types. Richness patterns were best explained by complex and differing combinations of environmental indicators. Nevertheless, negative (nitrogen and light level) or unimodal (pH) responses were similar across grassland types. Vegetation plots adjacent to areas historically and/or currently dominated by mires, forests, or pastures, as well as abandoned and overgrown grasslands, had a slightly higher species richness. Larger grasslands surrounding the vegetation plots had slightly less species than smaller grasslands. Conclusions This study demonstrates that data from a national monitoring programme on agricultural grasslands can be used for plant ecological research. The results indicate that climate‐change‐related shifts along moisture and nutrient gradients (increases) may alter both species composition and species richness in the studied grasslands. It is likely that large and contiguous managed (grass)land might affect areas perceived as remnants, probably caused by the transformation to homogeneous (agri)cultural landscapes reducing edge zones, which in turn may threaten the species pool and richness. The importance of land use and land‐cover composition should be considered when planning management actions in extensively used high‐latitude grasslands.

Environmental impact accounting of organic agricultural production systems: advancing inventory and biodiversity modelling approaches in life cycle assessment

“…CFs were available at country level for Norway in Knudsen et al (2017), though it is in the same biome. Vascular plant species richness in Norway may be higher than those found in Knudsen et al (2017) for grassland pastures and in forested areas and the difference between the two are also similar (Kapfer et al, 2022;Myklestad and Saetersdal, 2004), thus the CFs for PDF may be lower in Norway. In the future, more data would be needed to develop CFs at ecoregion and biome level with higher certainty.…”

“…In all the models analyzed, the reference situation was either semi-natural woodland (Knudsen et al, 2017) or natural area before human intervention (Chaudhary and Brooks, 2018;Kuipers et al, 2021), however, as stated above extensive grazing is needed to promote grassland biodiversity and suppress forest succession (Kapfer et al, 2022;Wilson et al, 2012). Therefore, natural grassland or meadows may be a better reference situation than forest, for example, if the goal and scope of the study is to conserve natural grassland.…”