Identifying general relationships between semi-natural habitats, on-farm
management and biodiversity
Biodiversity in agricultural ecosystems has been studied
in several past and ongoing projects at a European scale but an overall
synthesis of these data is currently lacking. Existing data cover a broad range
of functional groups from above- and below-ground ecosystem compartments. Thus,
data are available for major bio-geographical regions in Europe representing areas with different
soil and climate conditions, farming intensity, landscape composition and
configuration, and regional species pools.
In Work package 1 of LIBERATION, we
will search for general trends in agricultural biodiversity and ecosystem
services in relation to multiple environmental drivers while taking into
account large-scale geographic variation. In order to do so, standardized data
will be compiled in close collaboration with original data holders to characterise large-scale variation in environmental conditions (climate, soil
type) regional variation in landscape heterogeneity and land cover and local
management impacts (e.g. pesticide and fertilizer application). The subdivision
of work and contributing partners within the three tasks for data compilation
and data analyses are described below.
Objectives:
- To characterise the general relationships between semi-natural
habitats and on-farm management on above-ground biodiversity of different
functional species groups in Europe
- To characterise the general
relationships between semi-natural habitats and on-farm management and
below-ground biodiversity of different functional species groups in Europe
- To identify synergies and
trade-offs between drivers promoting above- and below-ground biodiversity
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