Summary 1.Agricultural intensification poses a serious threat to biodiversity as a consequence of increased land-use intensity, decreased landscape heterogeneity and reduced habitat diversity. Although there is interest in the preservation of total species richness of an agricultural landscape ( γ diversity), the effects of intensification have been assessed primarily by species richness at a local scale ( α diversity). This ignores species richness between local communities ( β diversity), which is an important component of total species richness. 2. In this study, measures of land-use intensity, landscape structure and habitat diversity were related to γ , α and β diversity of wild bees (Apoidea), carabid beetles (Carabidae), hoverflies (Syrphidae), true bugs (Heteroptera) and spiders (Araneae) within 16 local communities in 24 temperate European agricultural landscapes. 3. The total landscape species richness of all groups was most strongly affected by increased proximity of semi-natural habitat patches. Bees also decreased in landscapes with a high intensity of farmland management, demonstrating additive effects of both factors. 4. Separating total species diversity into components, the decrease in total species richness could be attributed primarily to a decrease in species diversity between local communities. Species richness of the local communities of all investigated groups decreased with increasing land-use intensity and, in the case of spiders, decreasing proximity of the semi-natural habitat patches. 5. The effect of increased habitat diversity appeared to be of secondary importance to total species richness but caused a shift in the relative contribution of α and β diversity towards the latter. 6. Synthesis and applications . This study demonstrates that the effects of agricultural change operate at a landscape level and that examining species diversity at a local level fails to explain the total species richness of an agricultural landscape. The coincidence of patterns of β diversity with those of γ diversity emphasizes that such information is of crucial importance for the implementation and evaluation of restoration programmes aiming to restore sustainable countryside diversity. As local extinction processes in highly fragmented landscapes shape biodiversity, priority should be given to the conservation of diverse agricultural landscape remnants in Europe.

Summary 1.In landscapes influenced by anthropogenic activities, such as intensive agriculture, knowledge of the relative importance and interaction of environmental factors on the composition and function of local communities across a range of spatial scales is important for maintaining biodiversity. 2. We analysed five arthropod taxa covering a broad range of functional aspects (wild bees, true bugs, carabid beetles, hoverflies and spiders) in 24 landscapes (4 × 4 km) across seven European countries along gradients of both land-use intensity and landscape structure. Species-environment relationships were examined in a hierarchical design of four main sets of environmental factors (country, land-use intensity, landscape structure, local habitat properties) that covered three spatial scales (region, landscape, local) by means of hierarchical variability partitioning using partial canonical correspondence analyses. 3. Local community composition and the distribution of body size classes and trophic guilds were most affected by regional processes, which highly confounded landscape and local factors. After correcting for regional effects, factors at the landscape scale dominated over local habitat factors. Land-use intensity explained most of the variability in species data, whereas landscape characteristics (especially connectivity) accounted for most of the variability in body size and trophic guilds. 4. Synthesis and applications. Our results suggest that management effort should be focused on land-use intensity and habitat connectivity in order to enhance diversity in agricultural landscapes. Since these factors are largely independent, specific conservation programmes may be developed with regards to socio-economic and agri-environmental requirements. Changes in either of these factors will enhance diversity but will also result in specific effects on local communities related to dispersal ability and the resource use of species.

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Observed patterns of species richness at landscape scale (gamma diversity) cannot always be attributed to a specific set of explanatory variables, but rather different alternative explanatory statistical models of similar quality may exist. Therefore predictions of the effects of environmental change (such as in climate or land cover) on biodiversity may differ considerably, depending on the chosen set of explanatory variables. Here we use multimodel prediction to evaluate effects of climate, land-use intensity and landscape structure on species richness in each of seven groups of organisms (plants, birds, spiders, wild bees, ground beetles, true bugs and hoverflies) in temperate Europe. We contrast this approach with traditional best-model predictions, which we show, using cross-validation, to have inferior prediction accuracy. Multimodel inference changed the importance of some environmental variables in comparison with the best model, and accordingly gave deviating predictions for environmental change effects. Overall, prediction uncertainty for the multimodel approach was only slightly higher than that of the best model, and absolute changes in predicted species richness were also comparable. Richness predictions varied generally more for the impact of climate change than for land-use change at the coarse scale of our study. Overall, our study indicates that the uncertainty introduced to environmental change predictions through uncertainty in model selection both qualitatively and quantitatively affects species richness projections.

In this paper, the proof of concept of a smart rotor is illustrated by aeroelastic simulations on a small-scale rotor and comparison with wind tunnel experiments. The application of advanced feedback controllers using actively deformed flaps in the wind tunnel measurements is shown to alleviate dynamic loads leading to considerable fatigue load reduction. The numerical method for aeroelastically simulating such an experiment is described, together with the process of verifying the methods for accurate prediction of the load reduction potential of such concepts. The small-scale rotor is simulated using the aeroelastic tool, load predictions are compared with the wind tunnel measurements, and similar control concepts are compared and evaluated in the numerical environment. Conclusions regarding evaluation of the performance of smart rotor concepts for wind turbines are drawn from this threefold research investigation (simulation, experiment and comparison).