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

Abstract

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.

Landscape Is the Main Driver of Weed Assemblages in Field Margins but Is Outperformed by Crop Competition in Field Cores

“…The spatial extent of the effects was, however, different: the number of meadows increased weed species richness in field margins at a lower scale (138 m) than weed abundance (266 m). Meadows are seminatural elements of agricultural landscapes that contribute to the maintenance of biodiversity in the agroecosystem by providing food and nesting habitats [43]. Meadows, acting as source habitats, can thus increase weed diversity in field margins.…”

Species and genetic diversity patterns show different responses to land use intensity in central European grasslands

“…Moreover, management differs more strongly in hay meadows. Especially the timing and frequency of mowing (Sullivan et al., 2018) can have strong effects on the occurrence of grassland species (Milberg et al., 2017). Overall, however, we interpret our findings as suggesting that community composition of hay meadows is more strongly driven by habitat filtering, while community composition of dry grasslands depends more strongly on a mix of dispersal and possibly spatially autocorrelated habitat diversity.…”

Determination of terrestrial EUNIS habitat types of Mount Ganos (Işıklar), Tekirdağ, Türkiye

“…Grass-dominated hay meadows are characterized by their highly diverse vegetation (Rodríguez-Rojo et al, 2017). However, it has decreased significantly since the mid-20th century (Sullivan et al, 2018) due to the damage caused by agricultural activities (especially the disposal of the area for agricultural land) and grazing pressure in Mount Ganos and its surroundings.…”