Breeding goats for organic production in Germany

With only 120,000 females (year 2000), goat keeping is a niche activity in animal husbandry in Germany. Most of the goats (about 90%) are kept on part-time farms. The main reasons they are kept are as a hobby, for milk production and for landscape management; in many cases it is a non-profit oriented activity. There are estimates (no official statistics exist) that 20,000 goats are milked and 10,000 are used in landscape management to avoid shrub succession on protected biotopes. In the year 2000 10% of the goats (12,000) were kept on organic farms but not all for economic reasons. Because the dairy breeds in Germany (White and Brown German Alpine) are selected under intensive keeping conditions, breeding under the restrictions of organic farming is necessary to get adopted and high yielding flocks. This is even more true in the case of harsh environmental conditions in landscape management. The German breeds are not suitable for the needs while grazing on marginal biotopes. This paper will show some results of: · a ten-year breeding programme for more milk ingredients, fat and protein, in a flock of 30 mother goats on an organic farm and · the breeding programme of the “Witzenhäuser Landschaftspflegeziege WLZ” for the new purposes of landscape management

Wild Bee Conservation within Urban Gardens and Nurseries: Effects of Local and Landscape Management

Across urban environments, vegetated habitats provide refuge for biodiversity. Gardens (designed for food crop production) and nurseries (designed for ornamental plant production) are both urban agricultural habitats characterized by high plant species richness but may vary in their ability to support wild pollinators, particularly bees. In gardens, pollinators are valued for crop production. In nurseries, ornamental plants rarely require pollination; thus, the potential of nurseries to support pollinators has not been examined. We asked how these habitats vary in their ability to support wild bees, and what habitat features relate to this variability. In 19 gardens and 11 nurseries in California, USA, we compared how local habitat and landscape features affected wild bee species abundance and richness. To assess local features, we estimated floral richness and measured ground cover as proxies for food and nesting resources, respectively. To assess landscape features, we measured impervious land cover surrounding each site. Our analyses showed that differences in floral richness, local habitat size, and the amount of urban land cover impacted garden wild bee species richness. In nurseries, floral richness and the proportion of native plant species impacted wild bee abundance and richness. We suggest management guidelines for supporting wild pollinators in both habitats.DFG, 414044773, Open Access Publizieren 2019 - 2020 / Technische Universität Berli

LIVELIHOOD STRATEGIES ON DANISH ORGANIC FARMS AND THEIR CONTRIBUTION TO FARM BASED RURAL DEVELOPMENT

Household livelihood strategies among Danish organic farmers are identified using combinations of off-farm income levels, time used for farming, and farm size. This is based on interviews carried out in 2002 with 10 % of the Danish organic farmers representing the national distribution of organic farm types as well as major landscape systems. The relationship between these strategies and farm-based rural development is investigated in terms of engagement in other farm-based activities and landscape management, and it is discussed how different strategies may be interpreted and the questions it raises to the further development of the organic farming

Affordances of Historic Urban Landscapes: an Ecological Understanding of Human Interaction with the Past

Heritage has been defined differently in European contexts. Despite differences, a common challenge for historic urban landscape management is the integration of tangible and intangible heritage. Integration demands an active view of perception and human-landscape interaction where intangible values are linked to specific places and meanings are attached to particular cultural practices and socio-spatial organisation. Tangible and intangible values can be examined as part of a system of affordances (potentialities) a place, artefact or cultural practice has to offer. This paper discusses how an ‘affordance analysis’ may serve as a useful tool for the management of historic urban landscapes

Finance for Integrated Landscape Management: Processes that support integrated landscape initiatives and make access to finance more inclusive

This methodology helps identify the key stakeholders linked to financial flows for integrated landscape management, their perspectives and motivations, and the mechanisms used to channel funding from investors through brokers or intermediaries to individual or recipient groups that support integrated landscape initiatives

Allocation of Land at the Rural-Urban Fringe Using a Spatially-Realistic Ecosystem Constraint

Development in rural-urban fringe communities is increasing with the potential to damage healthy ecosystems and endanger the long-term persistence of resident flora and fauna. The environmental impacts of development include loss, degradation, and fragmentation of wildlife habitat, increased air and water pollution, increased soil erosion, and decreased aesthetic appeal of the landscape. Current land use policies rarely incorporate features of landscape-scale ecosystem health. This paper develops a model that combines ecological and economic constructs to determine the optimal allocation of development across a spatially-realistic landscape. The land allocation model establishes links between long-term metapopulation persistence and development through an ecosystem constraint. A social planner seeks to maximize the benefits of development while guaranteeing a certain likelihood of long-term metapopulation persistence across the landscape that accounts for the changes to habitat patches and species dispersal success brought about by development. It is shown that in an economically homogeneous environment, the allocation of land to developed uses is determined solely by ecological elements (landscape structure and species parameters). The amount of land remaining in each habitat patch is the same regardless of their initial sizes or initial levels of development. The cost to society of meeting the ecological objective for metapopulation persistence depends on the land rent, the level of the safe-minimum-standard, the area of the landscape management unit, the distance between habitat patches, the dispersal ability of the focal species, and the species-specific area scaling parameter. Cost is not affected by the initial conditions of the habitat patches or the amount of development that has already taken place in the landscape management unit. When heterogeneity is introduced, the allocation of land is also determined by the differential land rents. More development occurs in habitat patches and landscape management units with higher land rents compared with the homogeneous case. In the heterogeneous land use case, where different land uses have different intensities of damages, the development intensity parameters are factors in the solution with more development occurring in areas zoned for less intensive land uses and the cost to society of achieving the ecological objective is a function of initial habitat patch sizes.Land Economics/Use,

The visual preferences for forest regeneration and field afforestation : four case studies in Finland

The overall aim of this dissertation was to study the public's preferences for forest regeneration fellings and field afforestations, as well as to find out the relations of these preferences to landscape management instructions, to ecological healthiness, and to the contemporary theories for predicting landscape preferences. This dissertation includes four case studies in Finland, each based on the visualization of management options and surveys. Guidelines for improving the visual quality of forest regeneration and field afforestation are given based on the case studies. The results show that forest regeneration can be connected to positive images and memories when the regeneration area is small and some time has passed since the felling. Preferences may not depend only on the management alternative itself but also on the viewing distance, viewing point, and the scene in which the management options are implemented. The current Finnish forest landscape management guidelines as well as the ecological healthiness of the studied options are to a large extent compatible with the public's preferences. However, there are some discrepancies. For example, the landscape management instructions as well as ecological hypotheses suggest that the retention trees need to be left in groups, whereas people usually prefer individually located retention trees to those trees in groups. Information and psycho-evolutionary theories provide some possible explanations for people's preferences for forest regeneration and field afforestation, but the results cannot be consistently explained by these theories. The preferences of the different stakeholder groups were very similar. However, the preference ratings of the groups that make their living from forest - forest owners and forest professionals - slightly differed from those of the others. These results provide support for the assumptions that preferences are largely consistent at least within one nation, but that knowledge and a reference group may also influence preferences.Väitöskirjassa tutkittiin ihmisten maisemapreferenssejä (maisemallisia arvostuksia) metsänuudistamishakkuiden ja pellonmetsitysten suhteen sekä analysoitiin näiden preferenssien yhteyksiä maisemanhoito-ohjeisiin, vaihtoehtojen ekologiseen terveyteen ja preferenssejä ennustaviin teorioihin. Väitöskirja sisältää neljä tapaustutkimusta, jotka perustuvat hoitovaihtoehtojen visualisointiin ja kyselytutkimuksiin. Tapaustutkimusten pohjalta annetaan ohjeita siitä, kuinka uudistushakkuiden ja pellonmetsitysten visuaalista laatua voidaan parantaa. Väitöskirjan tulokset osoittavat, että uudistamishakkuut voivat herättää myös myönteisiä mielikuvia ja muistoja, jos uudistusala on pieni ja hakkuun välittömät jäljet ovat jo peittyneet. Preferensseihin vaikuttaa hoitovaihtoehdon lisäksi mm. katseluetäisyys, katselupiste ja ympäristö, jossa vaihtoehto on toteutettu. Eri viiteryhmien (metsäammattilaiset, pääkaupunkiseudun asukkaat, ympäristönsuojelijat, tutkimusalueiden matkailijat, paikalliset asukkaat sekä metsänomistajat) maisemapreferenssit olivat hyvin samankaltaisia. Kuitenkin ne ryhmät, jotka saavat ainakin osan elannostaan metsästä - metsänomistajat ja metsäammattilaiset - pitivät metsänhakkuita esittävistä kuvista hieman enemmän kuin muut ryhmät. Nämä tulokset tukevat oletusta, että maisemapreferenssit ovat laajalti yhteneväisiä ainakin yhden kansan tai kulttuurin keskuudessa, vaikka myös viiteryhmä saattaa vaikuttaa preferensseihin jonkin verran. Nykyiset metsämaisemanhoito-ohjeet ovat pitkälti samankaltaisia tässä väitöskirjassa havaittujen maisemapreferenssien kanssa. Myöskään tutkittujen vaihtoehtoisten hoitotapojen ekologisen paremmuuden ja niihin kohdistuvien maisemallisten arvostusten välillä ei ollut suurta ristiriitaa. Kuitenkin joitakin eroavaisuuksia oli; esimerkiksi sekä maisemanhoito-ohjeiden että ekologisten hypoteesien mukaan säästöpuut tulisi jättää ryhmiin, kun taas ihmiset pitivät eniten yksittäin jätetyistä puista. Informaatiomalli ja psyko-evolutionaarinen teoria tarjoavat mahdollisia selityksiä uudistushakkuisiin ja pellonmetsitykseen kohdistuville preferensseille, vaikkakaan tutkimuksen tuloksia ei voida täysin selittää näillä teorioilla