Abstract
Agricultural intensification has led to dramatic diversity losses and impoverishment of the arable vegetation in much of Europe. We analyzed the status of farmland phytodiversity and its determinants in 2016 in northwest Germany by surveying 200 conventionally managed fields cultivated with seven crops. The study was combined with an analysis of edaphic (soil yield potential), agronomic (crop cover, fertilizer and herbicide use) and landscape factors (adjacent habitats). In total, we recorded 150 non-crop plant species, many of them nitrophilous generalist species, while species of conservation value were almost completely absent. According to a post-hoc pairwise comparison of the mixed model results, the cultivation of rapeseed positively influenced non-crop plant species richness as compared to winter cereals (wheat, barley, rye and triticale; data pooled), maize or potato. The presence of grassy strips and ditch margins adjacent to fields increased plant richness at field edges presumably through spillover effects. In the field interiors, median values of non-crop plant richness and cover were only 2 species and 0.5% cover across all crops, and at the field edges 11 species and 4% cover. Agricultural intensification has wiped out non-crop plant life nearly completely from conventionally managed farmland, except for a narrow, floristically impoverished field edge strip.
Highlights
In recent decades, agricultural production has been greatly intensified in industrialized countries, with the consequence of dramatic biodiversity losses [1,2,3]
We tested the following hypotheses: (i) decades of intensive agriculture have resulted in greatly impoverished arable plant communities with much the same composition across crop types and related management regimes; (ii) the field edges are richer than the field interior, partly due to enrichment by plants from neighboring habitats, while the interior is nowadays nearly free of weeds; (iii) non-crop plant species richness is more influenced by agricultural management than by the nature of adjacent habitats and soil factors
All 150 species were found at the field edges, while only 41 of them occurred in the field interior (Table S4)
Summary
Agricultural production has been greatly intensified in industrialized countries, with the consequence of dramatic biodiversity losses [1,2,3]. We conducted a survey of arable plant diversity and species composition in an intensively managed farmland region in northwest Germany in fields of seven abundant crop species, including cereal (wheat, barley, rye and triticale), oil (rapeseed) and root crops (maize and potato). This survey was combined with an analysis of edaphic (soil yield potential), agronomic (crop cover, herbicide and fertilizer use) and landscape factors (type of adjacent habitat), which might influence species richness and composition. We tested the following hypotheses: (i) decades of intensive agriculture have resulted in greatly impoverished arable plant communities with much the same composition across crop types and related management regimes (e.g., autumn-sown vs. spring-sown); (ii) the field edges are richer than the field interior, partly due to enrichment by plants from neighboring habitats, while the interior is nowadays nearly free of weeds; (iii) non-crop plant species richness is more influenced by agricultural management (crop cover, herbicide treatment intensity) than by the nature of adjacent habitats and soil factors
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