Freshwater systems and ecosystem services: challenges and chances for crossfertilization of disciplines

Freshwater ecosystems are among the most threatened in the world, while providing numerous essential ecosystem services (ES) to humans. Despite their importance, research on freshwater ecosystem services is limited. Here, we examine how freshwater studies could help to advance ES research and vice versa. We summarize major knowledge gaps and suggest solutions focusing on science and policy in Europe. We found several features that are unique to freshwater ecosystems, but often disregarded in ES assessments. Insufficient transfer of knowledge towards stakeholders is also problematic. Knowledge transfer and implementation seems to be less effective towards South-east Europe. Focusing on the strengths of freshwater research regarding connectivity, across borders, involving multiple actors can help to improve ES research towards a more dynamic, landscape-level approach, which we believe can boost the implementation of the ES concept in freshwater policies. Bridging these gaps can contribute to achieve the ambitious targets of the EU’s Green Deal

Gains to species diversity in organically farmed fields are not propagated at the farm level

Organic farming is promoted to reduce environmental impacts of agriculture, but surprisingly little is known about its effects at the farm level, the primary unit of decision making. Here we report the effects of organic farming on species diversity at the field, farm and regional levels by sampling plants, earthworms, spiders and bees in 1470 fields of 205 randomly selected organic and nonorganic farms in twelve European and African regions. Species richness is, on average, 10.5% higher in organic than nonorganic production fields, with highest gains in intensive arable fields (around +45%). Gains to species richness are partly caused by higher organism abundance and are common in plants and bees but intermittent in earthworms and spiders. Average gains are marginal +4.6% at the farm and +3.1% at the regional level, even in intensive arable regions. Additional, targeted measures are therefore needed to fulfil the commitment of organic farming to benefit farmland biodiversity

Early changes in Orthopteran assemblages after grassland restoration : a comparison of space-for-time substitution versus repeated-measures monitoring

Grasslands harbour significant biodiversity and their restoration is a common intervention in biodiversity conservation. However, we know very little on how grassland restoration influences arthropod groups. Here we compared orthopteran assemblages in croplands, natural grasslands and one to four-year-old grasslands restored in a large-scale restoration on former croplands in Hortobágy National Park (E-Hungary). Sampling was done by standardized sweep-netting both in a repeated measures design and space-for-time substitution (chronosequence) design. General linear models with repeated measures from five years showed that species richness, abundance and Shannon diversity of orthopterans decreased in the year following restoration but increased afterwards. By the fourth year, species richness almost doubled and abundance increased almost ten-fold in restored grasslands compared to croplands. Multivariate analyses showed that species composition in the first two years did not progress much but by the third and fourth year there was partial overlap with natural grasslands. Local restoration conditions (last crop, seed mixture) and landscape configuration (proportion of natural grasslands < 1 km away) did not influence the above patterns in either the repeated measures or the chronosequence design, whereas time since restoration affected almost all community variables. Our results suggest that generalist ubiquitous species appeared in restored grasslands first and the more sensitive species colonized the restored fields gradually in later years. The qualitative and quantitative properties of the orthopteran assemblages in restored fields did not yet reach those of natural grasslands, therefore, our study suggests that the full regeneration of the orthopteran assemblages takes more than four years