Abstract
Abstract. Land use change can affect biodiversity, and this has an impact on ecosystem services (ESs), but the relationships between biodiversity and ESs are complex and poorly understood. Biodiversity is declining due to the abandonment of extensively grazed semi-natural grasslands. We therefore aim to explore relationships between biodiversity and ESs provided by extensively managed semi-natural grasslands. Focusing on vascular plant species richness, as well as the ESs fodder quantity, quality, and stability, allergy control, climate regulation, nutrient cycling, pollination, and aesthetic appreciation, we carried out botanical field surveys of 28 paired extensively grazed and abandoned semi-natural grassland plots, with four subplots of 4 m2 in each plot. The management of the semi-natural grasslands is and has been at low intensity. We calculated the influence of abandonment on the ES indicators, measured the correlation between the biodiversity measure of vascular plant species richness and ES indicators, and finally determined how the relationships between plant species richness and the ES indicators were affected by the cessation of the extensive management. ES indicators are often, but not always, positively correlated with species richness. Cessation of extensive grazing has both negative and positive effects on ES indicators but the relationships between species richness and ES indicators are often different in extensively managed and abandoned semi-natural grasslands. The relationships between species richness and ES indicators are less pronounced in the extensively managed semi-natural grassland than for the abandoned. One possible reason for this outcome is high functional redundancy in the extensively managed semi-natural grasslands.
Highlights
Ecosystem services (ESs) are benefits that people gain from ecosystems (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005)
Five of the ES indicators showed higher ES provision in the extensively managed compared to the abandoned semi-natural grasslands and two showed higher ES provision in the abandoned semi-natural grasslands (Table 2)
The analyses indicated that in addition to influencing the ES indicators directly, land use influenced the relationship between plant species richness and ES indicators
Summary
Ecosystem services (ESs) are benefits that people gain from ecosystems (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005). Biodiversity is the foundation for all ESs as it underpins ecosystem processes and functioning (Mace et al, 2012). One of the greatest threats to biodiversity today is land use change (Pereira et al, 2010). Vegetation in Europe has been influenced by millennia of human land use and is a mosaic of natural, semi-natural, and novel ecosystems such as forests, mires, grasslands, heathlands, parks, and gardens (Dodgshon and Olsson, 2007; Raatikainen et al, 2007; Shoji et al, 2011). Semi-natural grasslands have high biodiversity and are habitats for several threatened species (Doxa et al, 2010; Henriksen and Hilmo, 2015). As economy and technology have developed, low-input agricultural systems have been widely abandoned, which has resulted in the encroachment of shrub and forest into the open semi-natural habitats (Bignal and McCracken, 1996) and degradation and fragmentation of semi-natural grasslands (Emanuelsson et al, 2009; Norderhaug and Johansen, 2011)
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