A simple biodiversity assessment scheme supporting nature-friendly farm management

Abstract

Farmers are important actors for regional development and biodiversity protection. Agri-environment-climate measures (AECM) are therefore a central tool of the European Union to support its biodiversity conservation policy. AECM generally reward farmers for fulfilling predefined management actions or avoiding specific practices. In contrast, result oriented AECM are intended to reward farmers for the outcome of nature friendly management practices. This approach gives more flexibility in management and hence promotes farmers engagement and autonomy. Besides educational activities and agricultural advisory services farmers need user friendly tools to assess biodiversity in order to meet result oriented AECM. Thus, we present a biodiversity assessment scheme for farmland using a set of indicators, which covers different aspects of biodiversity (flower colour index, butterfly abundance, landscape structuring degree, patch diversity index, aggregated biodiversity index) and can be applied at different spatial scales. The assessment scheme is applied on 44 farms in five countries (France, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, and Austria). To evaluate its appropriateness the relationship between the indicators and land-use intensity and plant species richness is investigated. Grasslands with low land-use intensity are more colourful grasslands, have significantly more butterflies and a higher aggregated biodiversity index than moderately and intensively used grasslands. The influence of management intensity on the landscape structuring degree is not significant. All indicators correlate with plant species richness at all spatial scales. The proposed assessment scheme serves as a tool for the detection of differences in biodiversity resulting from land-use practices, and can assist the monitoring of ROMs.

Geodiversity inclusiveness in biodiversity assessment

“…For example, Alam et al (2020) assessed fish biodiversity in Korean 'rivers' using eDNA metabarcoding approaches. Soil components were mentioned secondmost commonly (Drummond et al, 2015;Tasser et al, 2019;Nørgaard et al, 2021), followed by geological components (Coops et al, 2009;Kitching and Ashton, 2013;Lindqvist et al, 2016), and geomorphological components (Reyers et al, 2007;Mohapatra et al, 2019;Ge et al, 2021). Biodiversity assessments infrequently mentioned all definition components (Gioia and Pigott, 2000;Burke et al, 2008;Coops et al, 2009;Graham et al, 2010;Sosa et al, 2014;Gatti and Notarnicola, 2018), with most cases before 2010, supporting the above increasing trending value in recent years (Figure 1).…”

Good Pastures, Good Meadows: Mountain Farmers’ Assessment, Perceptions on Ecosystem Services, and Proposals for Biodiversity Management

“…Regarding biodiversity management of grassland for increased species diversity, one fifth of the interviewed farmers stated that their current practices are, in their opinion, well adapted for good biodiversity management. On some of the farmers' grasslands, this statement was supported by results from surveys of plant and animal species richness, which often confirmed that these famers implemented measures to enhance species richness [43]. Many others mentioned moving towards extensive management during the last decade, although one quarter of farmers stated no change in practices.…”

Deliverable D3.8 A review of existing citizen science approaches to monitoring farmland biodiversity

“…Based on this study, emphasise the need for farmers to receive extensive training in order to carry out the data collection in such an assessment scheme, and potentially, for some aspects of the data collection to be done by professionals. Tasser, E., Rüdisser, J., Plaikner, M., Wezel, A., Stöckli, S., Vincent, A., Nitsch, H., Dubbert, M., Moos, V., Walde, J. and Bogner, D., 2019 2020) detail a citizen science project developed specifically for their study, in which data collection was carried out by volunteers with existing specialist knowledge, on farms across Michigan. There is no mention of farmer involvement in data collection, although presumably there was some communication with farmers in order to set up the study.…”

“…and Jiguet, F., 2012. Mapping from heterogeneous biodiversity monitoring data sources. Biodiversity and Conservation,21(11) Tasser, E., Rüdisser, J., Plaikner, M., Wezel, A., Stöckli, S., Vincent, A., Nitsch, H., Dubbert, M., Moos, V., Walde, J. and Bogner, D., 2019…”