Fifty years of change in Central European grassland vegetation: Large losses in species richness and animal-pollinated plants

Wesche, Karsten; Krause, Benjamin; Culmsee, Heike; Leuschner, Christoph

doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2012.02.015

Cited by 218 publications

(182 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…Ellenberg and Leuschner 2010). Wesche et al (2012) found large changes in grassland community composition in five floodplain regions in northern Germany between the 1950s and 2008 and a decline in species richness at the plot level of 30-50 %. The decline was particularly strong among nectar-producing herbs, which is likely to have had negative effects on pollinators (Wesche et al 2012).…”

Section: Range Shifts and Biodiversitymentioning

confidence: 95%

Environmental Impacts—Terrestrial Ecosystems

Hölzel

Hickler

Kutzbach

et al. 2016

North Sea Region Climate Change Assessment

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The chapter starts with a discussion of general patterns and processes in terrestrial ecosystems, including the impacts of climate change in relation to productivity, phenology, trophic matches and mismatches, range shifts and biodiversity. Climate impacts on specific ecosystem types-forests, grasslands, heathlands, and mires and peatlands-are then discussed in detail. The chapter concludes by discussing links between changes in inland ecosystems and the wider North Sea system. Future climate change is likely to increase net primary productivity in the North Sea region due to warmer conditions and longer growing seasons, at least if summer precipitation does not decrease as strongly as projected in some of the more extreme climate scenarios. The effects of total carbon storage in terrestrial ecosystems are highly uncertain, due to the inherent complexity of the processes involved. For moderate climate change, land use effects are often more important drivers of total ecosystem carbon accumulation than climate change. Across a wide range of organism groups, range expansions to higher latitudes and altitudes and changes in phenology have occurred in response to recent climate change. For the range expansions, some studies suggest substantial differences between organism groups. Habitat specialists with restricted ranges have generally responded very little or even shown range contractions. Many of already threatened species could be particularly vulnerable to climate change. Overall, effects of recent climate change on terrestrial ecosystems within the North Sea region are still limited.

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Section: Range Shifts and Biodiversitymentioning

confidence: 95%

Environmental Impacts—Terrestrial Ecosystems

Hölzel

Hickler

Kutzbach

et al. 2016

North Sea Region Climate Change Assessment

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“…However, contemporaneous environmental data alongside historical data on species records are often lacking, which can hamper attempts to identify drivers of community change. As one solution, Ellenberg Indicator Values (EIVs) are widely used to infer environmental change over time where no data are available for abiotic conditions (Häring, Reger, Ewald, Hothorn, & Schröder, 2014; Krause et al., 2015; McGovern, Evans, Dennis, Walmsley, & McDonald, 2011; Newton et al., 2012; Prach, 1993; Wesche, Krause, Culmsee, & Leuschner, 2012). EIVs score plant species on an ordinal scale based on estimated optimal environmental conditions for moisture, light, soil nutrient levels, reaction (pH), and salt tolerance (F, L, N, R, and S respectively) (Ellenberg, 1988; Hill, Preston, & Roy, 2004).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improving estimates of environmental change using multilevel regression models of Ellenberg indicator values

Carroll

Gillingham

Stafford

et al. 2018

Ecology and Evolution

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Ellenberg indicator values (EIVs) are a widely used metric in plant ecology comprising a semi‐quantitative description of species’ ecological requirements. Typically, point estimates of mean EIV scores are compared over space or time to infer differences in the environmental conditions structuring plant communities—particularly in resurvey studies where no historical environmental data are available. However, the use of point estimates as a basis for inference does not take into account variance among species EIVs within sampled plots and gives equal weighting to means calculated from plots with differing numbers of species. Traditional methods are also vulnerable to inaccurate estimates where only incomplete species lists are available.We present a set of multilevel (hierarchical) models—fitted with and without group‐level predictors (e.g., habitat type)—to improve precision and accuracy of plot mean EIV scores and to provide more reliable inference on changing environmental conditions over spatial and temporal gradients in resurvey studies. We compare multilevel model performance to GLMMs fitted to point estimates of mean EIVs. We also test the reliability of this method to improve inferences with incomplete species lists in some or all sample plots. Hierarchical modeling led to more accurate and precise estimates of plot‐level differences in mean EIV scores between time‐periods, particularly for datasets with incomplete records of species occurrence. Furthermore, hierarchical models revealed directional environmental change within ecological habitat types, which less precise estimates from GLMMs of raw mean EIVs were inadequate to detect. The ability to compute separate residual variance and adjusted R 2 parameters for plot mean EIVs and temporal differences in plot mean EIVs in multilevel models also allowed us to uncover a prominent role of hydrological differences as a driver of community compositional change in our case study, which traditional use of EIVs would fail to reveal. Assessing environmental change underlying ecological communities is a vital issue in the face of accelerating anthropogenic change. We have demonstrated that multilevel modeling of EIVs allows for a nuanced estimation of such from plant assemblage data changes at local scales and beyond, leading to a better understanding of temporal dynamics of ecosystems. Further, the ability of these methods to perform well with missing data should increase the total set of historical data which can be used to this end.

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“…Factors which have been shown to influence diversity in grasslands include: levels of soil nutrients and moisture (Hejcman et al 2014;Timmermann et al 2015); the timing of mowing, and the timing and intensity of grazing (Smith et al 1996); and the isolation of species-rich sites from sites supporting similar species (Krauss et al 2004;Reitalu et al 2009). The impacts of changes in nutrient levels, management regimes or fragmentation could be reflected in a reduction in species richness, a change in particular types of species or functional groups, or a loss of local distinctiveness in grassland vegetation (Čámská and Skálová 2012;Homburger and Hofer 2012;Wesche et al 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In previous re-visitation studies the focus has often been the substantial change in grassland community composition in regions where more intensive farming practices have replaced low input management (Prince et al 2012;Wesche et al 2012;Krause and Culmsee 2013). Some studies of vegetation in meadows which have a long history of extensive management have investigated particular aspects of change such as the homogenization of meadow vegetation (Bühler and Roth 2011) and the loss of rare meadow species (Bradshaw 2009).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Long-term hay meadow management maintains the target community despite local-scale species turnover

2018

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Hay meadows, which are managed using a low-intensity regime, are characterized by highly diverse vegetation but have declined significantly since the mid twentieth century. Remaining species-rich meadows are often protected by statutory designations and conservation management agreements. However, long-term studies of change in the composition of meadow vegetation, and investigations of the success of conservation over the long-term are rare. Fourteen sites, which had a long history of being managed for field dried hay, were resurveyed after 25 years and redundancy analysis was undertaken to investigate changes in community composition. Investigations of the effect of soil conditions, site size and spatial distribution of the meadow sites were carried out. Although overall community composition had changed significantly, the suite of species representative of the meadow community had been maintained, and species usually associated with more intensively managed grasslands had declined. However, there were losses of particular species of conservation importance such as Alchemilla glabra and Conopodium majus, and losses and gains of species varied from site to site. There was a significant increase in the homogeneity of the meadow vegetation between the two survey years. Comparisons of indicators of soil conditions suggested that there had been no significant change for the community as a whole but analyses of the species showing the most change indicated a decrease in soil fertility. Low-intensity management has been successful in maintaining the meadow community but consideration of changes in key species and losses at the site level is needed. More research is needed to establish whether fragmentation is starting to have an impact on diversity.

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Fifty years of change in Central European grassland vegetation: Large losses in species richness and animal-pollinated plants

Cited by 218 publications

References 55 publications

Environmental Impacts—Terrestrial Ecosystems

Environmental Impacts—Terrestrial Ecosystems

Improving estimates of environmental change using multilevel regression models of Ellenberg indicator values

Long-term hay meadow management maintains the target community despite local-scale species turnover

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