Landscape changes, traditional ecological knowledge and future scenarios in the Alps: A holistic ecological approach

Past and future impacts of land-use changes on ecosystem services in Austria

Environmental and socio-economic developments induce land-use changes with potentially negative impacts on human well-being. To counteract undesired developments, a profound understanding of the complex relationships between drivers, land use, and ecosystem services is needed. Yet, national studies examining extended time periods are still rare. Based on the Special Report on land use, land management and climate change by the Austrian Panel on Climate Change (APCC), we use the Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) framework to (1) identify the main drivers of land-use change, (2) describe past and future land-use changes in Austria between 1950 and 2100, (3) report related impacts on ecosystem services, and (4) discuss management responses. Our findings indicate that socio-economic drivers (e.g., economic growth, political systems, and technological developments) have influenced past land-use changes the most. The intensification of agricultural land use and urban sprawl have primarily led to declining ecosystem services in the lowlands. In mountain regions, the abandonment of mountain grassland has prompted a shift from provisioning to regulating services. However, simulations indicate that accelerating climate change will surpass socio-economic drivers in significance towards the end of this century, particularly in intensively used agricultural areas. Although climate change-induced impacts on ecosystem services remain uncertain, it can be expected that the range of land-use management options will be restricted in the future. Consequently, policymaking should prioritize the development of integrated land-use planning to safeguard ecosystem services, accounting for future environmental and socio-economic uncertainties.

Digitalization and Classification of Cesare Battisti’s Atlas of 1915

The paper deals with an automated methodology for the digital acquisition of thematic information from historical maps in order to use them for spatial analysis in a GIS software. This methodology has been applied to an early XIX c. map in order to assess the historical changes in the forest coverage in Trentino. Specifically, a tailored Object Based Image Analysis (OBIA) and filtering procedure has been applied to digitize and georeference Cesare Battisti’s map of forest density published in his atlas “Il Trentino. Economic Statistical Illustration” from 1915. According to the historical ecology approach, forest history can be analyzed and evaluated with the use of historical documentary sources. Following this approach, historical cartography is a precious information tool, and in many respects unique, through which it is possible to reconstruct the evolution of the forest cover of a given territory. Trentino, in particular, has a rich heritage of historical maps from which to draw useful information for the construction of a qualitative and quantitative diachronic picture of the evolutionary dynamics of wooded areas. In these territories, forest management is a topic of great importance both for its socio-economic implications and for the more strictly environmental ones, connected to the increasingly urgent need to implement mitigation and adaptation policies towards climate change. Thus, the paper presents the historical maps and illustrates the methodology used for the digitisation. Data extracted by the historical sources have been compared with the current one in order to identify changes in forest density in the last century.

Land Use Modeling Predicts Divergent Patterns of Change Between Upper and Lower Elevations in a Subalpine Watershed of the Alps

The synergic influence of land use and climate change on future forest dynamics is hard to disentangle, especially in human-dominated forest ecosystems. Forest gain in mountain ecosystems often creates different spatial–temporal patterns between upper and lower elevation belts. We analyzed land cover dynamics over the past 50 years and predicted Business as Usual future changes on an inner subalpine watershed by using land cover maps, derived from five aerial images, and several topographic, ecological, and anthropogenic predictors. We analyzed historical landscape patterns through transition matrices and landscape metrics and predicted future forest ecosystem change by integrating multi-layer perceptron and Markov chain models for short-term (2050) and long-term (2100) timespans. Below the maximum timberline elevation of the year 1965, the dominant forest dynamic was a gap-filling process through secondary succession at the expense of open areas leading to an increase of landscape homogeneity. At upper elevations, the main observed dynamic was the colonization of unvegetated soil through primary succession and timberline upward shift, with an increasing speed over the last years. Future predictions suggest a saturation of open areas in the lower part of the watershed and stronger forest gain at upper elevations. Our research suggests an increasing role of climate change over the last years and on future forest dynamics at a landscape scale.

The Landscape Change in the Alps—What Postcards Have to Say about Aesthetic Preference

Land use changes in the Alps over the last few decades have been characterised by a significant increase in forest coverage as a result of the abandonment of marginal agricultural sites. Natural afforestation and species protection laws affected the ecosystem, and therefore the services provided by the mountain environment, including landscape structure and aesthetics, changed. This work assess the changes in the ecosystem services offered by forests since 1954 in a region of the Italian Alps. Some ES were estimated in this work with GIS, and others were taken from the literature or the authors’ previous works. Since the 1950s, forest ecosystem services such as growing stock, protection from hydro-geological hazards and carbon storage have increased. Deer and other forest species have risen in number. On the other hand, there has been a depletion of open space for priority habitats and species such as black grouse and capercaillie. Old postcards were used to understand land use change and people’s aesthetic preferences. To determine people’s preferences for the landscape, we used records of over 300,000 postcards, sold during nearly two decades. The most often chosen postcard portrayed a landscape of the 1970s with a mix of forest and open space, different from the scenario that the buyers could observe. The sales records for over 20 years of postcard business and the dates of the postcards that we obtained in this research allowed us to perform a quantitative analysis of landscape preferences. The main subject of the photo was a good predictor of the number of postcards sold, according to generalised linear models (GLM); and postcards of overly exploited landscapes, dense forest coverage or buildings were significantly less likely to be chosen. Artificially reinstating open areas will boost biodiversity and could recreate a landscape that resembles the historical agro-ecosystem without interfering with the forest’s other functions. These findings will help managers and policy makers evaluate cultural ecosystem resources in the face of changing mountain landscapes.

Determinants of Bird Species Literacy-Activity/Interest and Specialization Are More Important Than Socio-Demographic Variables

Simple Summary

Biodiversity is declining around the world and knowledge about biodiversity declines in a similar way. In this study, we addressed predictors of species knowledge, i.e., the question of what influences or causes species knowledge. The focus was knowledge about common bird species in Germany. Data were collected from July to October 2020 via an online questionnaire, containing demographic data, engagement in birdwatching, interest/activity, and images of 28 bird species native to Germany. Data were collected from adult students, lecturers and administrative staff of the Eberhard Karls University Tübingen. Men identified more species than women, garden owners more than non-owners. Hometown size had no influence. Employees scored higher than students. However, we found that birding specialization was the most important predictor, followed by bird-related interest/activity. We suggest including such questions in addition to conventional demographic questions in the future.

Abstract

Biodiversity is declining, and knowledge about biodiversity declines in a similar way. Previous studies have already addressed predictors of species knowledge. Here, we studied bird species knowledge related to demographics, but also to individual differences in affinity to nature, by including (i) birding specialization and (ii) bird-related activities/interest. Data were collected from July to October 2020 via an online questionnaire, containing demographic data, birding specialization, interest/activity, and images of 28 bird species native to Germany. Participants were adult students, lecturers and administrative staff of the Eberhard Karls University Tübingen. A total of 1967 questionnaires were returned in this study (35.3% male, 53.8% students, 69% had access to a garden). Mean identification score was 16.31 ± 6.38. Thus, participants were able to identify more than half of the species (total species n = 28). Men identified more species than women, garden owners had higher identification scores than non-owners, while hometown size was not significant. A distance to the next forest patch >10 km was related to lower identification scores. Employees scored higher than students. Correlation between species knowledge and birding specialization was high, as was the correlation with bird interest/activity. Higher scores were found in older people. In the linear univariate model, birding specialization and bird interest were the most influential predictors of species knowledge, followed by distance to next forest patch and occupation (student vs employees). Other variables were not significant. We suggest including such measures (interest, attitude, etc.) into further studies and move forward from the urban–rural narrative to more complex analyses of living circumstances.

Traditional medicinal plants in South Tyrol (northern Italy, southern Alps): biodiversity and use

BACKGROUND

Worldwide mountain regions are recognized as hotspots of ethnopharmacologically relevant species diversity. In South Tyrol (Southern Alps, Italy), and due to the region's high plant diversity and isolated population, a unique traditional botanical knowledge of medicinal plants has flourished, which traces its history back to prehistoric times. However, changes in rural life and culture may threaten this unique biodiversity and cultural heritage. Our study aims to collect and analyze information on native plants used in traditional folk medicine, focusing on the preservation of botanical and cultural diversity.

METHODS

Data were collected through a review of published material that documents traditionally used medicinal plants of South Tyrol in order to capture the total diversity of plants and their usage. We evaluated different parameters, comprising the ethnobotanicity index (EI), ethnophytonomic index (EPI), relative frequency of citation (RFC), red list status, and regional legislation with regard to the plant species.

RESULTS

A total of 276 species, including 3 mushrooms and 3 lichens, were identified. These belonged to 72 families, most frequently to the Asteraceae, Rosaceae, and Lamiaceae. The most frequently cited species were Hypericum perforatum L., Urtica dioica L., and Plantago lanceolata L. According to 12 ICPC-2 disease categories, the most frequently treated human health symptoms were from the digestive and respiratory systems as well as the skin. A total of 27 species were listed as endangered, of which 16 are not protected and two are now already extinct. Among the 59 predominantly alpine species, 11 species are restricted to the high altitudes of the Alps and may be threatened by global warming.

CONCLUSIONS

Our research revealed that the ethnobotanical richness of South Tyrol is among the highest in Italy and throughout the Alps. Nevertheless, it is evident that biodiversity and traditional knowledge have been heavily eroded. Furthermore, we point out particularly sensitive species that should be reconsidered for stronger protections in legal regulations.

Consistent population declines but idiosyncratic range shifts in Alpine orchids under global change

Mountains are plant biodiversity hotspots considered particularly vulnerable to multiple environmental changes. Here, we quantify population changes and range-shift dynamics along elevational gradients over the last three decades for c. two-thirds of the orchid species of the European Alps. Local extinctions were more likely for small populations, after habitat alteration, and predominated at the rear edge of species’ ranges. Except for the most thermophilic species and wetland specialists, population density decreased over time. Declines were more pronounced for rear-edge populations, possibly due to multiple pressures such as climate warming, habitat alteration, and mismatched ecological interactions. Besides these demographic trends, different species exhibited idiosyncratic range shifts with more than 50% of the species lagging behind climate warming. Our study highlights the importance of long-term monitoring of populations and range distributions at fine spatial resolution to be able to fully understand the consequences of global change for orchids.

Many mountain species are threatened by climate change and habitat loss. Here, the authors investigate population declines and range shifts of orchids in an alpine region in NE Italy over 28 years. For most species, population size decreased, while range shifts were idiosyncratic with over half of the species lagging behind climate change.

New Integrated Approaches to Climate Emergency Landscape Strategies: The Case of Pan-European SATURN Project

The landscape has been described as a ‘blind spot’ when examined in light of regional strategies. The immense potential of peri-urban and rural hinterlands to counter the climate emergency is therefore also overlooked. The European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT)Climate-KIC’s (Knowledge and Innovation Community) System and sustainable Approach to virTuous interaction of Urban and Rural LaNdscapes (SATURN) aims to address this short-sightedness. The reason why we do not see or value the landscape is complex, but part of the problem relates to its multiple ownership, numerous types and scales of conflicting designations, governance structures, policy requirements, and regulatory frameworks. This leads to an approach that is fragmented and sectoral and, therefore, fails to see the bigger picture or recognise the value that the territory has in order to deal with current environmental challenges. With partners from across Europe, the pan-European Orchestrated Ecosystem research project co-funded by EIT Climate-KIC, SATURN aims to develop new integrated strategies which will increase awareness of the capacity of the landscape, which is seen is seen as a vital way to address the deepening climate emergency. SATURN anticipates that the outputs will build capacity across Europe to help nation-states meet the 2030 UN Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs) and respond to the environmental challenges. This paper, reporting on interim findings, sets out the next phase of the project and concludes with lessons learned so far, including an initial identification of processes that can be applied in regions across Europe and an evaluation of the significance of exchanging knowledge between different countries.

Mapping the Recreational Value of Coppices’ Management Systems in Tuscany

In recent decades the growing interest in forested areas has led to a higher level of appreciation and consideration regarding the various benefits and services provided by forests. Despite this, when it comes to acknowledging their economic value and their capacity to produce income, the production of timber seems to be the main or even the only function that is considered. However, by adopting a sustainable forest management approach, the value related to non-market forest functions could also be considered. The present paper aims to quantify the potential income related to the recreational value of coppice forest by considering three different management systems: traditional coppice, active conversion to high forest and the natural evolution of forest. In order to do so, a contingent valuation method was used, and 248 forest users were surveyed in the region of Tuscany, Italy. The surveys included a revised price-list method, and the results obtained showed the existence of willingness to pay (WTP) for the maintenance of forests. Users showed a strong preference for conversion to high forest, while natural evolution was the least preferred management option. People’s perception on this matter was also assessed based on their specific location, by georeferencing all of the respondents’ answers: considering this, it was observed that belonging to a municipality located in or close to the mountains (i.e., mountain and natural municipalities) influenced the users’ WTP to maintain natural evolution.

Traditional Medicine Analysis and Sustainable Use of Korean Pond Wetland Plants in the Agricultural Landscape

This study surveyed the most commonly observed plants at 40 pond wetlands in rural villages in Korea and assessed their use patterns in traditional medicine (TM) with reference to the contents of the Korea Traditional Knowledge Portal (KTKP). In this survey, 457 taxa in 108 families were identified. For these, there are use patterns in TM for 314 taxa; overall, 68.8% of the surveyed plants have uses in TM. The 314 taxa that have applications in TM involve 596 types of disease treatment and 771 types of efficacy. On average, for each taxon, there are 4.0 types of efficacy and 6.6 types of disease treatment. TM from 210 taxa have been described as applied to organs in 10 regions of the body: liver 123, lung 82, spleen 57, stomach 57, heart 45, large intestine 43, kidney 40, bladder 23, small intestine 16, and gall bladder 8. The results of this study will help support the conservation of pond wetlands that provide national biodiversity and various ecosystem services, by increasing the recognized value of pond wetlands even when they are no longer used in farming. Thus, this study can support educational materials for eco-experience and can be applied in the conservation of Korean pond wetlands.

Traditional Ecological Knowledge Maintains Useful Plant Diversity in Semi-natural Grasslands in the Kiso Region, Japan

Wild plant species provide a variety of ecosystem services that contribute to human well-being. However, much of the legacy of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) in Japan is rapidly being lost because of environmental changes; therefore, it is important to study the relationship between TEK of ecosystem management practices and plant diversity. Our study area is located in the southwest of Nagano Prefecture, Japan. We compared plant diversity among three land management types including traditional, labor-saving, and land abandonment sites, where we recorded 103 useful plant species based on interviews concerning the traditional use of local ecological resources; among them, 45 species are used for horse livestock, 32 for agriculture, 16 as edible plants, and 19 for manufacture of diverse every-day life goods. Data analyses demonstrated that useful plant diversity was significantly higher in the traditional sites than in other sites. We found highly diverse traditional uses of plant species (e.g., edible plants, horse feed, and rainwear) provided by TEK of local management. These results imply that when local farmers perform traditional management practices, they increase plant species diversity. With our work we investigated the effect of the loss of cultural values and the impact of biodiversity changes on the opportunities that people have to use ecosystem resources in Japan. This aspect particularly highlights the urgency of reconnecting nature and people. Conservation planning based on TEK has been and will be vital in addressing the goal of reducing biodiversity loss on a global scale.

New Tools for the Classification and Filtering of Historical Maps

Historical maps constitute an essential information for investigating the ecological and landscape features of a region over time. The integration of heritage maps in GIS models requires their digitalization and classification. This paper presents a semi-automatic procedure for the digitalization of heritage maps and the successive filtering of undesirable features such as text, symbols and boundary lines. The digitalization step is carried out using Object-based Image Analysis (OBIA) in GRASS GIS and R, combining image segmentation and machine-learning classification. The filtering step is performed by two GRASS GIS modules developed during this study and made available as GRASS GIS add-ons. The first module evaluates the size of the filter window needed for the removal of text, symbols and lines; the second module replaces the values of pixels of the category to be removed with values of the surrounding pixels. The procedure has been tested on three maps with different characteristics, the “Historical Cadaster Map for the Province of Trento” (1859), the “Italian Kingdom Forest Map” (1926) and the “Map of the potential limit of the forest in Trentino” (1992), with an average classification accuracy of 97%. These results improve the performance of classification of heritage maps compared to more classical methods, making the proposed procedure that can be applied to heterogeneous sets of maps, a viable approach.

Nomen omen. Toponyms predict recolonization and extinction patterns for large carnivores

The names given to places are a legacy of the past distribution of animal and plant species. The hypothesis tested in this work is that the density of toponyms can be used to predict the range of two large and charismatic species over time: the wolf and the brown bear in Italy. Kernel density maps of the toponyms were created and different thresholds of density were overlapped with the present and the historical ranges for both species. The density level maps were tested with the Kappa statistics against available historical ranges for both species. The pattern of the density in toponyms overlapped with the pattern of contraction and expansion reported in literature for both species over time. The minimum historical distributions of wolves and brown bears occurred at the highest densities of toponyms (95% isopleth value) and, overall, the various kernels thresholds showed an excellent agreement with the historical maps with an average Kappa of 0.84 ± 0.5.

Nomen omen. Toponyms predict recolonization and extinction patterns for large carnivores

The names given to places are a legacy of the past distribution of animal and plant species. The hypothesis tested in this work is that the density of toponyms can be used to predict the range of two large and charismatic species over time: the wolf and the brown bear in Italy. Kernel density maps of the toponyms were created and different thresholds of density were overlapped with the present and the historical ranges for both species. The density level maps were tested with the Kappa statistics against available historical ranges for both species. The pattern of the density in toponyms overlapped with the pattern of contraction and expansion reported in literature for both species over time. The minimum historical distributions of wolves and brown bears occurred at the highest densities of toponyms (95% isopleth value) and, overall, the various kernels thresholds showed an excellent agreement with the historical maps with an average Kappa of 0.84 ± 0.5.

Designing Protected Areas for Social–Ecological Sustainability: Effectiveness of Management Guidelines for Preserving Cultural Landscapes

Rural cultural landscapes are social–ecological systems that have been shaped by traditional human land uses in a co-evolution process between nature and culture. Protected areas should be an effective way to protect cultural landscapes and support the way of life and the economy of the local population. However, nature conservation policymaking processes and management guidelines frequently do not take culturalness into account. Through a new quantitative approach, this paper analyzes the regulatory framework of two protected areas under different management categories, located in an ancient cultural landscape of the Madrid Region (Central Spain), to identify the similarities in their conservation commitments and the effectiveness of their zoning schemes. The results show some arbitrariness in the design and management of these parks, highlighting the importance of prohibited measures in their zoning schemes that encourage uses and activities more related to naturalness than to culturalness. The recognition of protected areas as cultural landscapes and their management considering both naturalness and culturalness issues are important methods of better achieving sustainable management objectives from a social–ecological approach. This methodological approach has proven useful to unravel various legislative content, and its application on a larger scale could reveal important information for the sound management of protected areas (PAs) in cultural landscapes.

Changes in grassland management and plant diversity in a marginal region of the Carpathian Mts. in 1999-2015

The political change from socialism to democracy in countries of Central and Eastern Europe at the end of the 20th century induced broad changes in agriculture mostly due to land ownership changes and strong reduction of subsidies to agriculture. This resulted in agricultural decline, including grassland abandonment, which influenced grassland biodiversity and conservation. Between 1999 and 2015 we studied the grasslands in the area depopulated in the early 1980's in the Poloniny National Park (NE Slovakia, Carpathian Mts.). The aim of the study was to examine influence of environmental factors and grassland management driven by the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) to plant community structure and taxonomical diversity. We identified altitude and soil properties as the main environmental factors: altitude determines climate gradient and probably also management intensity gradient and soil properties express soil fertility via A-horizon depth. We identified remarkable increase of proportion of managed grasslands from only 8% in 1999 to 40% in 2012-2015; other 7% of sampled grasslands were recently restored and prepared for future management. The average species richness in grasslands managed in 2012-2015 increased from 47.5 species per record in 1999 to 54.2 species in 2012-2015, the increase was found statistically significant. In 2012-2015, we observed statistically significant difference in the average species richness between managed (54.2) and abandoned grasslands (46.3). The agricultural subsidies of the CAP drive the grassland management in the study area. Therefore, we conclude that CAP enabled grassland biodiversity maintenance in significant part of the Poloniny National Park following start of its application in 2004 and above provided figures can be considered as indicators of the CAP effectiveness in our study area. However, the conservation of mountain meadows remains a challenge because of their poor accessibility.

Anticipating species distributions: Handling sampling effort bias under a Bayesian framework

Anticipating species distributions in space and time is necessary for effective biodiversity conservation and for prioritising management interventions. This is especially true when considering invasive species. In such a case, anticipating their spread is important to effectively plan management actions. However, considering uncertainty in the output of species distribution models is critical for correctly interpreting results and avoiding inappropriate decision-making. In particular, when dealing with species inventories, the bias resulting from sampling effort may lead to an over- or under-estimation of the local density of occurrences of a species. In this paper we propose an innovative method to i) map sampling effort bias using cartogram models and ii) explicitly consider such uncertainty in the modeling procedure under a Bayesian framework, which allows the integration of multilevel input data with prior information to improve the anticipation species distributions.