The current status of orchard meadows in Central Europe: Multi-source area estimation in Saxony (Germany) and the Czech Republic

Abstract

Orchard meadows are appreciated as an integrated land use of high cultural and biological value. While such meadows are typical habitats for temperate Europe, they experienced a decline in their total area during the second half of the 20th century, both in Western and Eastern Europe. In this contribution, we compare their current area and status in terms of semantics, law, public support in general, and the efficiency of public support in both Saxony and the Czech Republic. We estimated the area in Saxony on the basis of three public mapping projects. In the Czech Republic, where no recent mapping included orchard meadows as a specific land-use type, we carried out our own mapping. Hence, we mapped 124 randomly selected plots of 1 km2. To cross-reference results from both countries, we used the pan-EU project LUCAS (Land Use/Cover Area frame Survey). According to various different sources, the orchard meadows cover 0.09–0.55% of Saxony and 0.01–0.72% of the Czech Republic. Interestingly, the results of the three mapping projects conducted in Saxony vary from each other. Although orchard meadows are supported by financial incentives of the respective governments in both countries, the Saxon approach concentrating more on individual activities (sanitation of old trees, planting, grassland management), seems more focused than the single measure practised in the Czech Republic. One key to a greater public awareness of the orchard meadow problematic can lie in the promotion of a simple expression referring to this specific landscape feature in Czech, similar to the phrase common in the German language: ‘Streuobstwiese’. Our suggestion for the Czech language is: ‘luční sad’.

Selected Good Practices in the Hungarian Agricultural Heritage

“…The presented natural values related to orchard grasslands (meadows, pastures, and mixed-use) also proved that food production is possible with the protection of natural values (and almost zero pressure on the environment). Their importance is highlighted in many other types of research in Europe [32,36,50].…”

“…The orchard grassland is also a type of traditional agroforestry, as well as a historical structure of agricultural landscape [30], with not only high historic heritage and biocultural values [31], but also an ecosystem with potentially high resilience towards climate change, which is linked to species and genetic diversity [32]. These orchards host species-rich plant and animal communities, originated by continuous evolution over centuries [33].…”

Agroforestry in the Czech Republic: What Hampers the Comeback of a Once Traditional Land Use System?

“…On the other hand, a low sampling density used by LUCAS also likely underestimates the extension of grazed orchards (our estimation was 5720 ha), as such AF is usually practiced on rather small plots, often not detected by this method. It has been recently estimated [50] that the extension of the traditional grazed orchards or orchard meadows in the Czech Republic could be between 10 and 55 thousand hectares, depending on the used methodology and definition. As such, all the estimations of the extent of AF depend on the methodology used and the nature of the wide variety of AF systems makes those estimations difficult.…”

Anaerobic Digestion of Cuttings from Grassland in Protected Landscape Areas

“…The orchard meadows have high biodiversity, provide ecosystem services, and have been part of UNESCO's immaterial cultural heritage since 2021 [2][3][4]. The high biodiversity of contiguous orchard meadows is based on the combination of the two habitats' open land and forest, creating semi-open and semi-natural tree savannas.…”