Beskrivning
Agricultural and forest biomass are cornerstones in European strategies to mitigate climate change. However, despite the mitigation potential of energy biomass, its cultivation is associated with indirect land-use changes and negative environmental impacts. Hence, utilization of marginal land or non-managed land have been suggested as alternative sites for biomass cultivation and tree plantation. Based on a spatial analysis of Swedish marginal and non-managed land, we conclude that a large share of land being abandoned in Sweden are pastures. To get a better understanding of the ecological value of marginal land, we have used a space for time substitution approach in a mixed farm-forest landscape in South Sweden to analyze two likely bioenergy scenarios for marginal land. We sampled plant diversity in abandoned pastures, pastures converted to spruce plantations or ley fields, and active pastures. When comparing the two bioenergy scenarios, spruce plantations maintain most of the plant species richness for the early stage of the forest, but as the canopy closed, the alpha diversity is significantly decreased, which is also the case for sown ley fields. Pasture abandonment without any land conversion did however not significantly decrease alpha diversity, indicating that abandoned land may play an important role in preserving farmland biodiversity.Period | 2023 sep. 12 |
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Evenemangstitel | GfÖ Annual Meeting 2023 - 52nd Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of Germany, Austria and Switzerland: The Future of Biodiversity – overcoming barriers of taxa, realms and scales |
Typ av evenemang | Konferens |
Konferensnummer | 52 |
Plats | Leipzig, Tyskland, SachsenVisa på karta |
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