Simplified and still meaningful: assessing butterfly habitat quality in grasslands with data collected by pupils

Rüdisser, Johannes; Tasser, Erich; Walde, Janette; Huemer, Peter; Lechner, Kurt; Ortner, A; Tappeiner, Ulrike

doi:10.1007/s10841-017-0010-3

Cited by 11 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 58 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In managed grasslands, successful citizen science projects already engage farmers in monitoring of vegetation [14], insects [15], ecosystem services [16] and yield [10], but not livestock behaviour. In the past, tracking technology has been quite expensive, so that telemetry studies are usually conducted on few individuals.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using a Citizen Science Approach with German Horse Owners to Study the Locomotion Behaviour of Horses on Pasture

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Engaging farmers as citizen scientists may be a cost-efficient way to answering applied research questions aimed at more sustainable land use. We used a citizen science approach with German horse farmers with a dual goal. Firstly, we tested the practicability of this approach for answering 'real-life' questions in variable agricultural land-use systems. Secondly, we were interested in the knowledge it can provide about locomotion of horses on pasture and the management factors influencing this behaviour. Out of 165 volunteers, we selected 40 participants to record locomotion of two horses on pasture and provide information on their horse husbandry and pasture management. We obtained complete records for three recording days per horse from 28 participants, resulting in a dataset on more individual horses than any other Global Positioning System study published in the last 30 years. Time spent walking was greatest for horses kept in box-stall stables, and walking distance decreased with increasing grazing time. This suggests that restrictions in pasture access may increase stress on grass swards through running and trampling, severely challenging sustainable pasture management. Our study, involving simple technology, clear instructions and rigorous quality assessment, demonstrates the potential of citizen science actively involving land managers in agricultural research.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using a Citizen Science Approach with German Horse Owners to Study the Locomotion Behaviour of Horses on Pasture

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…More than half of the farmers interviewed were certain that they were capable to conduct the proposed assessment on their farms if supported by regional advisory services (Wezel et al, 2018). This is furthermore reinforced by the outcomes of other monitoring and citizen science projects involving laypeople (Follett and Strezov, 2015;Kullenberg and Kasperowski, 2016;Rüdisser et al, 2017).…”

Section: Applicability Of the Indicator Setmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Butterflies are excellent indicators for biodiversity assessments in the cultural landscape (Thomas, 2005, Hilpold et al, 2018 and serve as flagship species and help to communicate conservation goals to the general public (Feest et al, 2011). In order to survey the butterflies in this study, we applied a methodology for non-experts based on the work of Rüdisser et al (2017). For surveys a predefined and visualised list of 13 characteristic butterfly species and 10 species groups was used.…”

Section: Butterfly Abundancementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Usually, all surveys on a farm could be completed in 1 day. Due to logistical constraints, butterfly surveys were conduct only once per patch and not repeated during the season, as recommended by Rüdisser et al (2017). Therefore, we did not analyse butterfly surveys at patch level, but pooled them by phytosociological patch type and region.…”

Section: Fieldworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Survey forms for fieldwork. (1) Diurnal butterflies (adapted fromRüdisser et al, 2017) with Melanargia galathea added, (2) flower colours: 0 to > 20 represent the number of individuals counted within a survey plot (16 m −2 ) in which plant species have also been recorded; (3) structuring degree (modified fromTasser et al, 2009).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

A simple biodiversity assessment scheme supporting nature-friendly farm management

Tasser

Rüdisser

Plaikner

et al. 2019

Ecological Indicators

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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.

show abstract

Standardized butterfly surveys: comparing transect counts and area-time counts in insect monitoring

et al. 2023

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The observed insect decline, which threatens agricultural productivity and ecosystem stability, calls for comprehensive international insect monitoring. Monitoring implementation demands standardisation and the integration of new and innovative methods. Therefore, we compared two quantitative butterfly survey methods – the commonly applied transect counts (or ‘Pollard walks’) and more extensive area-time counts. We evaluated the influence of the two methods on the estimation of biodiversity variables such as species richness and species abundance to examine whether they could be applied alternatively for the calculation of butterfly trend indicators. During 576 surveys we conducted 5-minute transect counts and 25-minute area-time counts simultaneously at 144 different sites in Western Austria. The estimated relative butterfly abundance of the two methods for 119 observed species showed a strong linear relationship. While we found 2.4 times more species per site with the more extensive area-time counts than with the transect counts, we also observed a strong correlation between estimates of local abundance (Pearson’s r = 0.85) and observed species richness (Pearson’s r = 0.81) based on the two methods. Area-time counts provide thorough assessments on a given location, enabling a close connection to specific habitat types and facilitating comparability with other plot-based biodiversity assessments. They are more suitable than transect counts when aiming to analyse the drivers of temporal and spatial variability in butterfly occurrence. Furthermore, area-time counts can be used synergistically for the calculation of international butterfly abundance trends (e.g., European butterfly indicators), as we found strong linear relationships for all applied indicators with both methods.

show abstract

Simplified and still meaningful: assessing butterfly habitat quality in grasslands with data collected by pupils

Abstract: method in a citizen science context with laypeople could support both the long term monitoring of butterfly habitat quality, as well as the efficient selection of sites for professional in-depth assessments.

Cited by 11 publications

References 58 publications

Using a Citizen Science Approach with German Horse Owners to Study the Locomotion Behaviour of Horses on Pasture

Using a Citizen Science Approach with German Horse Owners to Study the Locomotion Behaviour of Horses on Pasture

A simple biodiversity assessment scheme supporting nature-friendly farm management

Standardized butterfly surveys: comparing transect counts and area-time counts in insect monitoring

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About