Respective influence of habitat conditions and management regimes on prealpine calcareous grasslands

Barbaro, Luc; Dutoit, Thierry; Anthelme, Fabien; Corcket, Emmanuel

doi:10.1016/j.jenvman.2004.05.006

Cited by 29 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…Shift from phosphorous to nitrogen limitation Lime ↑↓ Species richness Kirkham et al 2008;Marusca et al 2007;Schellberg et al 1999;Spiegelberger et al 2006 Soil pH increase Chapin et al 2002;Ellenberg et al 1992 Barbaro et al 2004;Fischer and Wipf 2002;Fleury et al 1994;Jacquemyn et al 2003;Kruess and Tscharntke 2002;Stammel et al 2003 Competition for light Bissels et al 2006;Kohler et al 2004;SelingerLooten and Muller 2001;Stammel et al 2003 ↑ Forbs…”

Section: Seed Bank Expressionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The effects of mowing in permanent grassland vegetation depend on cutting frequency and/or cutting date (especially first cutting date) based on the flowering stage of grasses (Barbaro et al 2004;Fleury et al 1994) and initial floristic composition of grasslands (Smith et al 1996). Moreover, mowing can bring a large amount of seeds into permanent grasslands.…”

Section: Mowingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Plant species diversity in permanent grasslands cannot be explained simply by agricultural management schemes implemented at the local scale (i.e., the field scale). The surrounding landscape also plays an important role (Barbaro et al 2004;Waldhardt et al 2004), affecting seed dispersal (Geertsema et al 2002;Rew et al 1996) and pollen flow (van Geert et al 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Factors and processes affecting plant biodiversity in permanent grasslands. A review

Gaujour¹,

Amiaud²,

Mignolet³

et al. 2011

Agron. Sustain. Dev.

147

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Research has delivered convincing findings on the effect of biodiversity on ecosystem functioning and humankind. Indeed, ecosystems provide provisioning, regulating, supporting, and cultural services. The global value of annual ecosystem services of grasslands and rangelands is about US$ 232 ha −1 year −1 . Nevertheless, the precise evaluation of biodiversity benefits remains challenging. This issue is due to valuation methods, subjective assumptions, and complexity of drivers of plant community dynamics. Here, we review the primary factors that influence plant diversity of permanent grasslands, and we describe underlying processes. These factors must indeed be identified to focus policies meant to preserve and restore plant diversity and to advise farmers about efficient decision rules. We show that plant dynamics of permanent grasslands cannot be explained simply by agricultural management rules, e.g., grazing, fertilization, and mowing, implemented at the field scale. The configuration of the surrounding landscape, e.g., landscape heterogeneity, habitat fragmentation, and connectivity, acts as a species filter that defines the regional species pool and controls seed flow. The regional species pool often contains higher species richness in a heterogeneous landscape, because of a higher diversity of suitable habitats. This regional pool could be a major species sources for permanent grasslands according to the seed flow. We discuss the need to consider all of these factors to understand plant species composition of permanent grasslands and the necessity to study plant communities using both taxonomic and functional approaches. In order to report this integrative approach, we propose a conceptual model based on three ecological challengesdispersal, establishment, and persistence-that are considered to act as filters on plant diversity, and a graphical representation of the complexity of such studies due to the interaction effects between plant dispersal abilities, forage productivity, disturbances induced by farming practices, and landscape heterogeneity on plant diversity. Last, we discuss the ability of farmers to manage each factor and the necessity of such study in the improvement of the current agro-environment schemes efficiency for farmland biodiversity restoration or preservation.

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Section: Seed Bank Expressionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Mowingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Factors and processes affecting plant biodiversity in permanent grasslands. A review

Gaujour¹,

Amiaud²,

Mignolet³

et al. 2011

Agron. Sustain. Dev.

147

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This diagram is a first step to describe the dynamics in terms of adaptive cycles; this highlights that different management regimes may involve interactive and cumulative effects on the maintenance of species coexistence in grasslands (see a short review in Barbaro et al 2004). Figure 2 helped our preliminary structuring of information to identify which system variables are changing and what processes reproduce these changes (see Bennett et al 2005, step 2).…”

Section: Relevant Variables States and Dynamicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring Panarchy in Alpine Grasslands: an Application of Adaptive Cycle Concepts to the Conservation of a Cultural Landscape

Soane¹,

Scolozzi²,

Gretter³

et al. 2012

E&S

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This paper explores approaches of applying the panarchy perspective to a case study of natural resource management in the cultural landscape of upland alpine pastures in northern Italy. The close interaction within the cultural landscape between alpine pasture ecology and the management regimes offers a strong fit with the concept of social-ecological systems and provides insights to appropriate and adaptive management of sites of conservation interest. We examine the limited literature available that offers a resilience understanding of such landscapes and address apparent gaps in the application through our interpretation and use of adaptive cycles and panarchy. We draft conceptual models of adaptive cycles considering ecological and socioeconomic information as acting in separate but interacting domains. Notwithstanding the difficulties in defining and measuring quantitative state variables, we found that a panarchy model can offer a powerful metaphor with practical implications for the maintenance of such alpine cultural landscapes. In effect, our panarchy interpretation of interacting adaptive cycles provides new insights into the description of and the future options for land use in our case study area. Some issues are only partly developed. We hypothesized measurable parameters that could be related to system resilience, such as alternative states, shifting thresholds, and regime stability, which are all dependent on adaptive processes; but we found quantification difficult even at a conceptual level. Nevertheless, we found it helpful to use nature conservation evaluation as a useful surrogate for measures of capital in adaptive cycles of vegetation. However, care is needed to distinguish between the descriptive metaphor using selective surrogate measures and real ecological behavior. Additionally we recognize the need to integrate this ecological understanding with cycles in socioeconomic domains and consider that interactions between the loss of both social and ecological capital would be interesting issues to explore further in our case study. We suggest that resilience theory, through its focus on adaptive cycles interacting at different speeds and across varying geographic scales, offers useful insights into resource management and in particular for nature conservation interest sites, by focusing more on dynamics than on an optimal state of species assemblages. This may help to define sites and to achieve the objectives of Natura 2000 through the European Habitats Directive, offering a basis to guide a conservation of processes, in which cultural tradition and local ecological knowledge are valued

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“…The high conservation priority of arid grasslands, in association with their relatively low extent, underlines the urgency to take all the necessary efforts for their conservation. The actual composition of arid grasslands is the result of different influences related to both the peculiar climatic conditions where arid grasslands occur and to the anthropo-zoogenic impact which has permitted the maintenance of this xerothermic habitat (Barbaro et al 2004;Schwabe and Kratochwil 2004). Accordingly, preservation of plant biodiversity of arid grasslands is at the present a major challenge all over the Europe after the abandoning of traditional management practices as well as the invasion of competitive species favoured by increased nitrogen deposition (Fischer and Stocklin 1997;Schaminée et al 2002;WallisDevries et al 2002;Cremene et al 2005).…”

Section: Conservation Strategiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conservation priority of Italian Alpine habitats: a floristic approach based on potential distribution of vascular plant species

Bragazza

2009

Biodivers Conserv

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In the European Union, the Directive 92/43/EEC defines a number of species and habitats of community interest that are worthy to be preserved because in danger to disappear or because they are representative of the different European bio-geographical regions. In the light of the limited economic resources generally allocated to conservation efforts, there is the necessity to prioritise conservation actions in order to avoid deterioration of protected areas. To this aim, in the present study the most representative habitats of the Italian Alps are compared on the basis of vascular plant biodiversity and a conservation priority index is proposed for each habitat taking into account the potential distribution of 252 threatened vascular plant species. Rocky slopes, screes and alpine grasslands resulted to have the greatest percentage of endemic plant species so reflecting the general distributional pattern of endemic plant species at high altitudes in Eurasian mountains. The relationship between the conservation priority index and the corresponding habitat extent within the Natura 2000 network suggests that peatlands, arid grasslands, wet meadows and freshwater habitats deserve a higher priority in conservation actions. Although vascular plant biodiversity is not necessarily a surrogate of overall biodiversity of Alpine habitats, the results here reported can be used as an initial reference framework for prioritising conservation actions, so as to accomplish the provisions of Article 6 of Habitats Directive.

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Respective influence of habitat conditions and management regimes on prealpine calcareous grasslands

Cited by 29 publications

References 47 publications

Factors and processes affecting plant biodiversity in permanent grasslands. A review

Factors and processes affecting plant biodiversity in permanent grasslands. A review

Exploring Panarchy in Alpine Grasslands: an Application of Adaptive Cycle Concepts to the Conservation of a Cultural Landscape

Conservation priority of Italian Alpine habitats: a floristic approach based on potential distribution of vascular plant species

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