Floodplain management in temperate regions: is multifunctionality enhancing biodiversity?

Abstract

Background: Floodplains are among the most diverse, dynamic, productive and populated but also the most threatened ecosystems on Earth. Threats are mainly related to human activities that alter the landscape and disrupt fluvial processes to obtain benefits related to multiple ecosystem services (ESS). Floodplain management therefore requires close coordination among interest groups with competing claims and poses multi-dimensional challenges to policy-makers and project managers. The European Commission proposed in its recent Biodiversity Strategy to maintain and enhance European ecosystems and their services by establishing green infrastructure (GI). GI is assumed to provide multiple ecosystem functions and services including the conservation of biodiversity in the same spatial area. However, evidence for biodiversity benefits of multifunctional floodplain management is scattered and has not been synthesised. Methods/design: This protocol specifies the methods for conducting a systematic review to answer the following policy-relevant questions: a) what is the impact of floodplain management measures on biodiversity; b) how does the impact vary according to the level of multifunctionality of the measures; c) is there a difference in the biodiversity impact of floodplain management across taxa; d) what is the effect of the time since implementation on the impact of the most important measures; and e) are there any other factors that significantly modify the biodiversity impact of floodplain management measures? Within this systematic review we will assess multifunctionality in terms of ESS that are affected by an implemented intervention. Biodiversity indicators included in this systematic review will be related to the diversity, richness and abundance of species, other taxa or functional groups. We will consider if organisms are typical for and native to natural floodplain ecosystems. Specific inclusion criteria have been developed and the wide range of quality of primary literature will be evaluated with a tailor-made system for assessing susceptibility to bias and the reliability of the studies. The review is intended to bridge the science-policy interface and will provide a useful synthesis of knowledge for decision-makers at all governance levels.

Multifunctional floodplain management and biodiversity effects: a knowledge synthesis for six European countries

“…The research question 'Impact of multifunctional floodplain management on biodiversity and ecosystem services' was tackled by several methodological approaches in the frame of the trial assessment 'conservation case' for testing functionality and performance of the science-policy interface BiodiversityKnowledge, (Schindler et al 2013a(Schindler et al , b, 2014. The focus of the trial assessment was on temperate Europe, because floodplains under other climatic regimes, such as boreal or Mediterranean, have basic differences in their floodplain ecology and dynamics.…”

“…However, European-wide systematic reviews could only be framed and initiated in the frame of the 'BiodiversityKnowledge'-trial assessments (Araújo et al 2013;Schindler et al 2013a, b), but had to be finalized with additional resources afterwards (Bertocci et al 2015). Despite significant interest at the beginning, efficient implementation of the systematic review on biodiversity impacts of floodplain management was hindered by the experts' lack of familiarity with the approach and the need for an intensive and time consuming examination of the methodological demands (CEE 2013) and the specific settings developed for the particular systematic review on effects of floodplain management (Schindler et al 2013a). …”

The network BiodiversityKnowledge in practice: insights from three trial assessments

“…(Schindler et al 2013a) and a systematic map including 70 articles addressing this topic ( Fig. 3a; Schindler et al 2013b).…”

“…We found that the knowledge synthesis process works in general for the implementation of assessments. In collaboration with requesters and knowledge holders, a number of relevant assessments were produced (Araújo et al 2013Schindler et al 2013aSchindler et al , b, 2014Bertocci et al 2015;Dicks et al 2016). The process is user friendly and flexible, though the methods to be applied are subjected to the constraints of financial resources and time frame .…”

Effectiveness of management interventions for control of invasive Common ragweed Ambrosia artemisiifolia: a systematic review protocol

“…For studies assessing the management efficiency of several management options, the scoring might be different for each conducted analysis, because sampling effort might vary across considered taxa or some of the primary analyses and results may be presented incompletely. The particular system developed for the purpose of this review considers the features recommended by Bilotta et al [61] and was adapted from the quality assessment system developed by Schindler et al [62]; it will be based on an evaluation of the following criteria (cf. i.…”