Journal
BASIC AND APPLIED ECOLOGY
Volume 14, Issue 2, Pages 126-136Publisher
ELSEVIER GMBH
DOI: 10.1016/j.baae.2012.12.003
Keywords
Biodiversity exploratories; Functional groups; Land use type; Livestock type; Shannon diversity
Categories
Funding
- DFG Priority Program 1374 Infrastructure- BiodiversityExploratories [FI1246/6-1, FI1246/9-1]
- University of Bern
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The relationship of different types of grassland use with plant species richness and composition ( functional groups of herbs, legumes, and grasses) has so far been studied at small regional scales or comprising only few components of land use. We comprehensively studied the relationship between abandonment, fertilization, mowing intensity, and grazing by different livestock types on plant diversity and composition of 1514 grassland sites in three regions in North-East, Central and South-West Germany. We further considered environmental site conditions including soil type and topographical situation. Fertilized grasslands showed clearly reduced plant species diversity (-15% plant species richness, -0.1 Shannon diversity on fertilized grasslands plots of 16m(2)) and changed composition (-3% proportion of herb species), grazing had the second largest effects and mowing the smallest ones. Among the grazed sites, the ones grazed by sheep had higher than average species richness (+27%), and the cattle grazed ones lower (-42%). Further, these general results were strongly modulated by interactions between the different components of land use and by regional context: land-use effects differed largely in size and sometimes even in direction between regions. This highlights the importance of comparing different regions and to involve a large number of plots
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