Stockholm university

Research project Landscape indicators for biological diversity

The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency's call "Indicators for biodiversity at landscape level" aims to increase our knowledge about the effects of fragmentation on biological diversity, important ecological structures, functions at a landscape level and proposals on how this can be measured.

Land use changed over the past 200 years
Land use changed over the past 200 years. A historical map from 200 years ago and the landscape today show that grasslands have decreased drastically whereas production forest and arable land has increased. Figure and photo: Sara Cousins

Landscape indicators must be able to report on how changes in land use of natural and cultural environments affect the ecological context of different species, their habitats, structures and functions in the landscape in a Nordic context.

Landscape and habitat fragmentation cause losses in biodiversity. There is a need to follow up on the effects of fragmentation and to develop measures and thresholds that can show the effects within different habitats. The project focuses on grasslands and remnant grassland habitats in different biogeographical zones with agricultural landscapes in Sweden.

Project description

Harebell
Harebell (Campanula rotundifolia). The genetic variation is studied in harebells in 48 different landscapes in Sweden. Photo: Jessica Lindgren

In this project, we will use easily accessible databases of historical and contemporary agricultural statistics and geodata to develop indicators of high landscape biodiversity.

Semi-natural grasslands are very species-rich habitats. Both the number and proportion of semi-natural grasslands have decreased drastically throughout Europe over the past 200 years due to intensification of agriculture, abandonment or planting of production forest. Semi-natural grasslands in Sweden's different biogeographical regions have throughout the ages had different prerequisites to benefit diversity (productivity, climate change, land uplift, demography, exploitation pressures, etc.). Differences between the regions still exist today, but there are also how the landscapes have changed and the degree of fragmentation within the regions. In some parts of the landscape, there are only a few or no semi-natural grasslands left. However, different amounts of remnant grassland habitat and old dispersal pathways can still remain where grassland species can grow e.g. roadsides, arable islands and forest edges.

The study covers four of Sweden's five vegetation zones and is carried out in the counties of Skåne, Södermanland, Hälsingland and Norrbotten. Today's landscape patterns and landscape changes over the past 200 years have been analysed and modelled together with soil data, historical and contemporary statistics, as well as inventories present plant species richness. Historical land use through maps and statistical data are analysed to investigate how much in the past that can have an impact on the species richness in the landscape today and to find fragmentation thresholds. Present land use in the landscapes is also important for diversity, among other things through the ability of species to spread between different patches in the landscape.

Genetic diversity is fundamental for biodiversity and the ability to disperse between patches is important to obtain viable populations in the long term. We have carried out genetic analyses of the grassland specialist Harebell (Campanula rotundifolia) to understand of how the landscape in the past and today will affect diversity in the future.

Project members

Project managers

Sara Cousins

Professor i naturgeografi

Department of Physical Geography
Sara Cousins

Members

Ian Brown

Universitetslektor, docent

Department of Physical Geography
IAB Profile

Sara Cousins

Professor i naturgeografi

Department of Physical Geography
Sara Cousins

Jessica Lindgren

Forskningsingenjör

Department of Physical Geography
Jessica Lindgren

Jan Plue

Svenska miljöinstitutet

Jenny Marika Wennbom

Forskningsingenjör

Department of Physical Geography
MWennbom

More about this project

Cows on the beach

Film:

Green infrastructure - research - Functional connectivity in grasslands.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtrXXn2cZTA&ab_channel=Naturv%C3%A5rdsverket