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Plant Species Diversity and Traditional Management in Eastern Carpathian Grasslands

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Plant Species Diversity and Traditional Management in Eastern Carpathian Grasslands Plant species diversity and traditional management in Eastern Carpathian grasslands Commissioned by: Authors:Anna Mária Csergő, László Demeter Acknowledgements : We are grateful for the help of Kelemen Alpár, Péter Gabriella, Babai Dániel, Molnár Ábel and Jakab Gusztáv for participation and help during the field work. Thanks to Molnár Zsolt for useful discussions on the methodology, to Roy Turkington, Valerie Lemay and Abdul-Azim Zumrawi from the University of British Columbia for support on methodology and data analysis, and to Gwyn Jones from EFNCP for improving an earlier version of this report. We owe huge amount of gratitude to Barbara Knowles for mentoring this (and other) research in our study area. Sources of funding: This study was funded by EFNCP through DG Environment and the Barbara Knowles Fund, in collaboration with the Pogány-havas Association. Views expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect those of the European Commission (EC). For more information on this report and other work of the European Forum on Nature Conservation and Pastoralism (EFNCP), please contact [email protected] EFNCP brings together ecologists, nature conservationists, farmers and policy makers. This non-profit network exists to increase understanding of the high nature conservation and cultural value of certain farming systems and to inform work on their maintenance. EFNCP is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales No 3150755. Registered office: 97 Oakwell Court Hamsterley Vale Derwentside County Durham England NE17 7BE TABLE OF CONTENTS Page 1 Executive Summary ........................................................................................ 4 2 Introduction / Background .............................................................................. 5 3 Methods ........................................................................................................... 8 3.1 Site description .................................................................................................. 8 3.2 Sampling procedure ........................................................................................ 12 3.3 Data analysis................................................................................................... 14 4 Results ........................................................................................................... 16 4.1 Species composition ....................................................................................... 16 4.2 Species diversity ............................................................................................. 18 4.3 Relationship of environmental and biotic conditions to diversity ...................... 23 5 Discussion ..................................................................................................... 24 5.1 Species diversity ............................................................................................. 24 5.2 Effect of management ..................................................................................... 24 5.3 Effect of abandonment .................................................................................... 28 5.4 Effect of abiotic conditions ............................................................................... 31 5.5 Effect of dominant species .............................................................................. 32 5.6 Effect of management systems and conservation efforts ................................. 34 6 Conclusions................................................................................................... 36 7 References ..................................................................................................... 37 8 Annex 1 .......................................................................................................... 41 4 Plant species diversity and traditional management in Eastern Carpathian grasslands 1 Executive Summary Agri-environment payments have been available in Romania since 2007. Payment is available for farmers living in zones classified as High Nature Value Areas in two packages: HNV grasslands and non-mechanized farming. While the system is functioning administratively, affecting hundreds of thousands of farmers and large areas of land, the biodiversity benefits are not fully understood. No distinction is made in the scheme, for example, in the amount of payment for pastures and meadows, while the management criteria are clearly different. Also in 2007, implementation of the Natura 2000 system started in Romania. Natura 2000 sites have so far been designated in two waves, and as a result, more than 20% of the country is now designated as part of the network. Several managed grassland habitats are listed as priority habitats including mountain hay meadows. Compensatory payments related to the Natura 2000 network are available in Romania, as the elaboration of management plans is under progress. The management of Natura 2000 grassland habitats is currently done for free by rural communities over large areas of the country. In the mountainous areas of Transylvania, abandonment of grasslands is a serious threat to biodiversity. Secondary succession towards forests may result in massive loss of meadow species. Yet, no quantitative biodiversity assessment has been conducted so far to document the plant species diversity of these traditionally managed grasslands. Abandonment is a delicate issue for biodiversity management, because it is very difficult for either government or NGOs to deal with the problem. Another threat to biodiversity is an increase in the number of sheep and the conversion of former hay meadows to sheep pastures. While we acknowledge that mismanagement (e.g., use of hay meadows as pastures) may result in species loss or structural changes in the vegetation, there is no comparative biodiversity data in the region on which we can build conservation arguments. The present study addresses this issue by assessing the effect of two land use types - grazing and mowing - on plant diversity. The results show important species loss following abandonment. The severity depends on the vegetation type, being higher in vegetation dominated by tor-grass (Brachypodium pinnatum ). Clear differences in plant diversity patterns were revealed between hay meadows and pastures, hay meadows being richer and more evenly structured. Moreover, high altitude hay meadows are more diverse than the low altitude meadows. It is noteworthy that other abiotic conditions (moisture, slope, heat load) are additional modulators of floristic diversity in this area. In the light of our results, maintenance of traditional land-use practices is likely the most effective tool of biodiversity conservation in the area. On the basis of plant diversity patterns (an ecological deliverable from land management), we therefore recommend that a distinction be made between hay meadows and pastures in agricultural policies, i.e. that higher payments are available for hay meadows. Otherwise there is a risk of conversion from hay meadows to pastures. On the other hand, the problem of abandonment should be addressed directly by agri-environment policies, with a shift in payment logic away from compensation for loss towards the additional cost of continuing management. 5 Plant species diversity and traditional management in Eastern Carpathian grasslands 2 Introduction / Background The abandonment of traditional management on European mountain meadows over the last decades has triggered rapid species loss and an increased interest in understanding biodiversity maintenance processes (MacDonald et al. 2000, Lemaire et al. 2005, Taff et al. 2010). It is now generally accepted that management-maintained grasslands are in dynamic equilibrium, and that changing the management regime introduces important shifts in nutrient conditions, disturbance and stress regimes (Grime 2001), which modulate competition-colonisation processes (Tilman 1990) and ultimately alters functional composition (Kahmen and Poschlod 2008, Drobnik et al. 2011) and species diversity (Jacquemyn et al. 2011). Grazing is considered as an important form of disturbance (Grime 2001), being one of the best evaluated types of land use in terms of effect on species richness (Olff and Ritchie 1998) and plant traits (Diáz et al. 2007). The effect of herbivory on plant diversity boils down to the modulation of colonisation and extinction processes, caused primarily by disturbance. Colonisation is enhanced by the higher availability of regeneration microsites after trampling and higher propagule dispersal rates through zoochory, and is counteracted by the removal of reproductive structures of plants or mechanical damage to seedlings. Extinction is prevented by the relaxation of competitive exclusion processes through the defoliation of dominant species and increased environment heterogeneity (soil disturbances, selective grazing) (Olff and Ritchie 1998, Adler et al. 2001), but is enhanced under high grazing pressure (lower survival chances of species that lack mechanisms of herbivory avoidance or tolerance). Moreover, nutrient deposition may enhance localised but frequent competitive exclusion processes (Adler et al. 2001). Added to that, grazing animals cause a series of additional disturbances which are often overlooked in models of grazing impact on diversity. For instance, trampling by animals can destroy soil porosity and increase soil density through compaction and homogenisation (Abdel-Magid et al. 1987,
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