Potential impacts of changing agricultural activities on scenic beauty - a prototypical technique for automated rapid assessment

As a result of the liberalisation of the agricultural market, mountain regions in Central Europe are at great risk of experiencing increasing land abandonment and spontaneous reforestation. Prior to taking measures for landscape maintenance, the ecological and landscape-aesthetic consequences of land abandonment should be analysed. This paper addresses the aesthetic component of such analyses: we investigated whether lay people perceive land abandonment and spontaneous reforestation as a loss or a gain and developed a prototypical technique for rapid aesthetic assessment of reforestation scenarios for vast regions. First, we conducted image experiments to assess the respondents' reactions to increasing levels of reforestation. Based on these experiments we concluded that a medium degree of reforestation is most desirable. Second, we analysed the relationship between scenic beauty and landscape patterns and found that landscape preference values correlate significantly with various quantitative measures of the landscape pattern (e.g., diversity and contagion indices of grey- tone and colour images). Third, we applied a GIS-assisted ‘moving- window' technique to transform spatially explicit remote-sensing data (in particular orthophotos) of a test region to spatially explicit data of landscape-pattern indices. Thanks to the significant positive correlation between pattern indices and landscape preference values, the resulting maps can preliminarily be interpreted as ‘beauty'-maps of the test-regio

History Matters: Relating Land-Use Change to Butterfly Species Occurrence

Western European landscapes have drastically changed since the 1950s, with agricultural intensifications and the spread of urban settlements considered the most important drivers of this land-use/land-cover change. Losses of habitat for fauna and flora have been a direct consequence of this development. In the present study, we relate butterfly occurrence to land-use/land-cover changes over five decades between 1951 and 2000. The study area covers the entire Swiss territory. The 10 explanatory variables originate from agricultural statistics and censuses. Both state as well as rate was used as explanatory variables. Species distribution data were obtained from natural history collections. We selected eight butterfly species: four species occur on wetlands and four occur on dry grasslands. We used cluster analysis to track land-use/land-cover changes and to group communes based on similar trajectories of change. Generalized linear models were applied to identify factors that were significantly correlated with the persistence or disappearance of butterfly species. Results showed that decreasing agricultural areas and densities of farms with more than 10ha of cultivated land are significantly related with wetland species decline, and increasing densities of livestock seem to have favored disappearance of dry grassland species. Moreover, we show that species declines are not only dependent on land-use/land-cover states but also on the rates of change; that is, the higher the transformation rate from small to large farms, the higher the loss of dry grassland species. We suggest that more attention should be paid to the rates of landscape change as feasible drivers of species change and derive some management suggestion

Spatial sensitivity of species habitat patterns to scenarios of land use change (Switzerland)

Long-term societal trends which include decreasing population in structurally poorer regions and changes in agricultural policies have been leading to land abandonment in various regions of Europe. One of the consequences of this development includes spontaneous forest regeneration of formerly open-land habitats with likely significant effects on plant and animal diversity. We assess potential effects of agricultural decline in Switzerland (41,000km2) and potential impacts on the spatial distribution of seven open-land species (insects, reptile, birds) under land-use change scenarios: (1) a business-as-usual scenario that extrapolates trends observed during the last 15years into the future, (2) a liberalisation scenario with limited regulation, and (3) a lowered agricultural production scenario fostering conservation. All scenarios were developed in collaboration with socio-economists. Results show that spontaneous reforestation is potentially minor in the lowlands since combinations of socio-economic (better accessibility), topographic (less steep slopes), and climatic factors (longer growing seasons) favour agricultural use and make land abandonment less likely. Land abandonment, spontaneous reforestation, and subsequent loss of open-land, however, are potentially pronounced in mountainous areas except where tourism is a major source of income. Here, socio-economic and natural conditions for cultivation are more difficult, leading to higher abandonment and thus reforestation likelihood. Evaluations for open-land species core habitats indicate pronounced spatial segregation of expected landscape change. Habitat losses (up to 59%) are observed throughout the country, particularly at high elevation sites in the Northern Alps. Habitat gains under the lowered agricultural production scenario range between 12 and 41% and are primarily observed for the Plateau and the Northern Alp

Factors influencing visual landscape quality perceived by the public. Results from a national survey

Funding Information: The authors acknowledge funding from the Federal Office of the Environment (FOEN) through the Swiss Landscape Monitoring Programme (LABES). Dr. Chris Stride provided statistical consultancy through figure it out on earlier versions of our multilevel model and made helpful suggestions on model improvements. Any mistakes are our own. We gratefully acknowledge the constructive feedback from three anonymous reviewers, which helped to improve our manuscript. Publisher Copyright: © 2020 The Author(s) Copyright: Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Scenario-based assessment of future land use change on butterfly species distributions

Species distribution models (SDMs) are increasingly used to predict environmentally induced range shifts of habitats of plant and animal species. Consequently SDMs are valuable tools for scientifically based conservation decisions. The aims of this paper are (1) to identify important drivers of butterfly species persistence or extinction, and (2) to analyse the responses of endangered butterfly species of dry grasslands and wetlands to likely future landscape changes in Switzerland. Future land use was represented by four scenarios describing: (1) ongoing land use changes as observed at the end of the last century; (2) a liberalisation of the agricultural markets; (3) a slightly lowered agricultural production; and (4) a strongly lowered agricultural production. Two model approaches have been applied. The first (logistic regression with principal components) explains what environmental variables have significant impact on species presence (and absence). The second (predictive SDM) is used to project species distribution under current and likely future land uses. The results of the explanatory analyses reveal that four principal components related to urbanisation, abandonment of open land and intensive agricultural practices as well as two climate parameters are primary drivers of species occurrence (decline). The scenario analyses show that lowered agricultural production is likely to favour dry grassland species due to an increase of non-intensively used land, open canopy forests, and overgrown areas. In the liberalisation scenario dry grassland species show a decrease in abundance due to a strong increase of forested patches. Wetland butterfly species would decrease under all four scenarios as their habitats become overgrow

Predicting the potential spatial distributions of epiphytic lichen species at the landscape scale

The potential spatial distributions of six epiphytic lichen species were assessed in Switzerland (41 000 km2) as a function of various key climatic drivers and forest types using logistic regression models. Cetrelia cetrarioides is ‘near threatened', Lobaria pulmonaria is ‘vulnerable', and Graphis scripta, Hypogymnia physodes, Lecanora cadubriae, Letharia vulpina are not endangered according to the Red List assessment based on IUCN criteria. Lichen presence and absence were derived from the SwissLichens database that contains spatially explicit information on both species presence and absence. The spatial lichen niches are predicted with R2 values between 0·5 and 0·75 and AUC values between 0·63 and 0·94. Model evaluation shows that the models perform well. Lichenologists reviewed the spatial predictions of lichen species on the basis of their expert knowledge and concluded that parsimonious regression models may suffice for successful prediction of the potential spatial niche distributions of epiphytic lichen specie

Comparing outdoor recreation preferences in peri-urban landscapes using different data gathering methods

Support for the research reported in this paper was provided by the European Research Councilunder the European Union’s Seventh Framework ERC Grant Agreement 311819 GLOLAND (Integrating human agency in global-scale land change models, www.cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/106305/factsheet/en), the European Commission Grant Agreement 633838, through the project PROVIDE (Providing smart delivery of Public Goods by EU agriculture and forestry, www.provide-project.eu) and the BiodivERsA project ENVISION funded through the Dutch National Science Foundation.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Detecting successional changes in long-term empirical data from subalpine conifer forests

In many mountain regions, traditional agriculture and forestry are no longer economically viable and less intense land-use is becoming more and more widespread. Thus, the importance of understanding secondary succession in these abandoned systems increases. This study is based on a comparison of historic (1957) and present tree data (2001) from subalpine forest stands located in the Swiss National Park (SNP), where all management was stopped in 1914. The two data sets contain information on tree and sapling density as well as diameter distribution for all tree species present. Using time-series analyses, space for time substitution and multivariate methods (PCoA, minimum spanning tree analysis), we investigated if successional changes can be detected within the forest stands in the SNP. Our results showed that the stands studied are developing from a stage dominated by mountain pine (Pinus montana Miller) to a late successional stage dominated by Swiss stone pine (Pinus cembra L.) and European larch (Larix decidua Miller). This shift in species composition, which was observed in both the tree and sapling layer, was accompanied by a significant decrease in tree density (stems/ha). We also found that stand disturbances, such as fungal diseases, parasitic insects, ungulate browsing, windthrow or snow pressure, have not prevented succession from mountain pine to Swiss stone pine-larch communities. The minimum spanning tree analysis revealed that the sixteen observed 44-year-time-series cover at least 110 years of succession. This time frame is the shortest possible duration for a successional development starting from a 95 to 125-year-old mountain pine stand. The successional changes depicted in our study indicate how similar areas in the Central European Alps might develop in the near future when management cease

Landscape research in Switzerland: exploring space and place of a multi-ethnic society

Landscape research in Switzerland enjoys a high technological and intellectual standard. It is influenced by both region-independent stimuli (e.g. remote sensing, sociology, population biology or statistics), and stimuli that have a strong bounding to the regional context. Region-specific stimuli for Landscape Research in Switzerland are:- the highly heterogeneous topography of the mountains as prerequisite to develop and test landscape-related theories,- the contrasting individualistic lifestyles of a multi-ethnic society that generates contrasting notions towards landscapes and thus contrasting methods in landscape research,- the long tradition of environmental research, monitoring and education and the high public motivation to support landscape-related research, as well as- the direct democracy where Landscape Research finds an ideal experimental ground to test theories and research hypothesis about how public participation or diverse (public) value systems and stakeholder values affect landscapes.Landscape research in Switzerland developed under the institutional umbrella of several public universities and research Institutions, primarily in the disciplines of geography, botany, remote sensing, forestry, agriculture, ethnology and sociology.Modern landscape research in Switzerland is performed as basic as well as applied research. It is well-positioned in the following fields: (1) the interactions between stakeholder values (towards nature & landscapes) and landscape development, (2) integrating spatial aspects of population genetics with landscape ecology, (3) the impact of communications technology on landscape resources, exploring heterogeneity in ecosystem processes across landscapes, relating landscape indicators to ecological processes, landscape historical approaches, and communicating research to the public and to policy makers.Die Landschaftsforschung in der Schweiz ist sowohl technologisch als auch intellektuell hoch entwickelt. Sie wird geprägt von überregional wirkenden Forschungsstimuli, wie z.B. der Fernerkundung, der Soziologie, der Populationsbiologie oder der Statistik aber auch von Stimuli, die einen starken regionalen Bezug haben. Letztere sind:- die unterschiedliche Topographie des Gebirges als günstige Voraussetzung für das Entwickeln und Testen von landschaftsrelevanten Theorien,- die unterschiedlichen, individuellen Lebensstile einer multi-kulturellen Gesellschaft, welche bewirken, dass Landschaften ganz unterschiedlich wahrgenommen, und mit gegensätzlichen Methoden untersucht werden,- die langjährige Tradition im Erforschen und Beobachten der Umwelt sowie in der Umwelterziehung und die grosse Bereitschaft der Öffentlichkeit, landschaftsrelevante Forschung zu unterstützen, und- die direkte Demokratie, die für die Landschaftsforschung einen idealen experimentellen Raum zum Testen von Theorien und Hypothesen darstellt, z.B. darüber, wie die öffentliche Mitbeteiligung oder die unterschiedlichen Werthaltungen der Akteure die Landschaft beeinflussen.Die Landschaftsforschung in der Schweiz entwickelte sich an unterschiedlichen Institutionen und Universitäten, hauptsächlich in den Disziplinen Geographie, Botanik, Fernerkundung, Forst- und Agrarwissenschaften, Ethnologie und Soziologie.Die moderne Landschaftsforschung in der Schweiz versteht sich als grundlagen­ orientierte und angewandte Forschung. Sie ist auf folgenden Gebieten führend: (1) Analyse der Zusammenhänge zwischen den unterschiedlichen Werthaltungen der Akteure (gegenüber Natur & Landschaft) und der Landschaftsentwicklung, (2) Integration der räumlichen Aspekte der Populationsgenetik in die Landschaftsökologie, (3) Auswirkungen moderner Kommunikationstechnologien auf die Landschaft, (4) Analyse von ökologischen Prozessen in der realen Landschaft, (5) Indikatoren zur Beschreibung des Landschaftszustandes und ihre Verknüpfung mit ökologischen Prozessen, (6) Landschaftsgeschichte, und (7) Umsetzung von Wissen für die Öffentlichkeit und die Politik

Landscape quality payments in Switzerland : the congruence between policy and preferences

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