Land-use sustainability and species diversity (DFG 2010-2013)

Transfer project in cooperation with the Dachverband Deutscher Avifaunisten e.V. founded by the German Research Foundation (DFG)

 

The aim of the project is to explore realistic options of farmland management to increase species diversity in Germany. Therefore the official national sustainability indicator for species diversity will be used. This indicator is one of 21 indicators of Germany's National Sustainability Strategy, against which the proposed aim of sustainable development in Germany shall be assessed. At the moment, the indicator shows that current land-use in Germany is not sustainable and no trend is recognisable regarding the target values for 2015. To explore sustainable farmland management options we generate land-use scenarios at a national scale by changing environmental variables, such as landscape or crop diversity, percent cover of spring cereals or hedge density (Fig. 1). To evaluate the effects of those changes on species diversity we generate species distribution models (SDM) to analyse potential population changes of the 10 indicator bird species for farmland (Bar-tailed Godwit, Lapwing, Red Kite, Little Owl, Skylark, Woodlark, Whinchat, Red-backed Shrike, Corn Bunting and Yellowhammer). To facilitate nation-wide SDMs on a high resolution we developed the GIS tolls GEPARD (Geographically Explicit Prediction of Animal Richness Distributions) and SLICER. These tools will be further developed during this project.