Wood-pastures in a traditional rural region of Eastern Europe: Characteristics, management and status

Hartel, Tibor; Dorresteijn, Ine; Klein, Catherine; Máthé, Orsolya; Moga, Cosmin Ioan; Öllerer, Kinga; Roellig, Marlene; Wehrden, Henrik von; Fischer, Joern

doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2013.06.020

Cited by 127 publications

(100 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…Compared to other wood-pastures, large Pyrus pyraster trees were absent from our study site (see e.g. [27]). All Pyrus pyraster trees present were smaller than 70 cm DBH.…”

Section: Changing Woodland Usementioning

confidence: 87%

“…As a consequence, traditional forest management gradually waned leading to the reduction of extensive animal husbandry and forest grazing. It is evident that this process eventually precipitated the separation of pasturing and forestry [24,27]. The law for this separation came into force in Hungary in 1853, and applied to those areas within the landlord's forest that were allocated to local farmers for grazing.…”

Section: Changing Woodland Usementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Several studies have addressed the structure and history of Mediterranean and Alpine secondary woodlands that have developed from abandoned wood-pastures [2,25]. However, the information available on such stands in the Central and Eastern European part of the deciduous forest zone is scarce [26,27].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The history and natural regeneration of a secondary oak-beech woodland on a former wood-pasture in Hungary

et al. 2015

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Characteristic features of European woodland include both a reduction in natural forest areas and an increase in former agricultural areas occupied by secondary woodland. The management of these areas is challenging in terms of nature conservation, agricultural and forestry management and policy. The aim of our study was to reconstruct the history and to document the current tree stand structure for a secondary oak-beech woodland in Hungary. Towards the end of the 1800s, this area which was once almost completely occupied by a continuous forest, had been transformed into a wood-pasture. As a result of its gradual abandonment, the closed forest stand of the pasture increased from 10 to 52% between 1963 and 2005. The most characteristic feature of this woodland is the abundance of large trees. Globally, the number of large and ancient trees is rapidly diminishing. Therefore preserving and maintaining such areas, where large trees could live, is an essential management task.

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“…Compared to other wood-pastures, large Pyrus pyraster trees were absent from our study site (see e.g. [27]). All Pyrus pyraster trees present were smaller than 70 cm DBH.…”

Section: Changing Woodland Usementioning

confidence: 87%

Section: Changing Woodland Usementioning

confidence: 99%

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The history and natural regeneration of a secondary oak-beech woodland on a former wood-pasture in Hungary

et al. 2015

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“…368 trees per ha). For example, an average of only eight trees per ha was recorded in Romanian wood-pastures (Hartel et al 2013), while Spanish wood-pastures ranged from *16 trees per ha in old stands and *28 trees per ha in younger stands (Plieninger et al 2003). Even in central Sweden (which has wood-pastures more similar to those in Estonia), a maximum of 200 trees per ha has been reported (Jakobsson and Lindborg 2014).…”

Section: Wood-pasture Structurementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The loss of this management due to the changing social and economic context of farming and forestry has led to their decline throughout Europe over the last century (Bergmeier and Roellig 2014). In the European Union (EU), one major recent driver of changes in European wood-pasture management has been the availability of agricultural support payments under the EU common agricultural policy (CAP) (Hartel et al 2013;Beaufoy 2014). Most wood-pastures are ineligible for single area support payments (SAP) from the first pillar of the CAP because they are too dense (Beaufoy et al 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reviving wood-pastures for biodiversity and people: A case study from western Estonia

Roellig

Sutcliffe

Sammul

et al. 2015

Ambio

Self Cite

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Wood-pastures are associated with high cultural and biodiversity values in Europe. However, due to their relatively low productivity, large areas of wood-pastures have been lost over the last century. In some areas, incentive schemes have been developed to revive wood-pastures. We investigated the effects of one such scheme in western Estonia. We compared the structure of grazed wood-pastures (old and restored) to those of abandoned wood-pastures and ungrazed forest stands to explore the effects of management, and conducted interviews with 24 farmers to investigate their motivations to carry out the management. We found a positive influence of active management on the semi-open structure of wood-pastures. Financial support was vital for management, but personal values related to tradition also played an important role. The interviewees differed widely in their range of motivations, suggesting that other strategies in addition to financial incentives would further improve the management of wood-pastures in the region.

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Distribution models calibrated with independent field data predict two million ancient and veteran trees in England

Nolan

Gilbert

Reed

et al. 2022

Ecological Applications

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Large, citizen-science species databases are powerful resources for predictive species distribution modeling (SDM), yet they are often subject to sampling bias.Many methods have been proposed to correct for this, but there exists little consensus as to which is most effective, not least because the true value of model predictions is hard to evaluate without extensive independent field sampling. We present here a nationwide, independent field validation of distribution models of ancient and veteran trees, a group of organisms of high conservation importance, built using a large and internationally unique citizen-science database: the Ancient Tree Inventory (ATI). This validation exercise presents an opportunity to test the performance of different methods of correcting for sampling bias, in the search for the best possible prediction of ancient and veteran tree distributions in England. We fitted a variety of distribution models of ancient and veteran tree records in England in relation to environmental predictors and applied different bias correction methods, including spatial filtering, background manipulation, the use of bias files, and, finally, zero-inflated (ZI) regression models, a new method with great potential to investigate and remove sampling bias in species data. We then collected new independent field data through systematic surveys of 52 randomly selected 1-km 2 grid squares across England to obtain abundance estimates of ancient and veteran trees. Calibration of the distribution models against the field data suggests that there are around eight to 10 times as many ancient and veteran trees present in England than the records currently suggest, with estimates ranging from 1.7 to 2.1 million trees compared to the 200,000 currently recorded in the ATI. The most successful bias correction method was systematic sampling of occurrence records, although the ZI models also performed well, significantly predicting field observations and highlighting both likely causes of undersampling and areas of the country in which many unrecorded trees are likely to be found. Our findings provide the first robust nationwide estimate of ancient and veteran tree abundance and demonstrate the enormous potential for distribution modeling based on citizen-science data combined with independent field validation to inform conservation planning.

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Wood-pastures in a traditional rural region of Eastern Europe: Characteristics, management and status

Cited by 127 publications

References 29 publications

The history and natural regeneration of a secondary oak-beech woodland on a former wood-pasture in Hungary

The history and natural regeneration of a secondary oak-beech woodland on a former wood-pasture in Hungary

Reviving wood-pastures for biodiversity and people: A case study from western Estonia

Distribution models calibrated with independent field data predict two million ancient and veteran trees in England

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