Academic literature on the topic 'Farmland mosaic'

SummaryHigh Nature Value farmlands in Europe are of greatest importance in the conservation of biodiversity. Their environmental importance has been recognized for some time, and has been studied mostly in Western Europe. This article describes the results of multivariate statistical analyses performed on data (13 variables) collected from the latest National Agricultural Census and the CORINE database to provide a typology of farmlands with respect to their nature value at municipality level (LAU 2, Local Administrative Units level 2) across Poland. All municipalities were grouped into eight categories (types). Some of the farmland categories were considered to be High Nature Value farmland (HNVf). The following interrelated variables mostly contributed to the identification of HNVf: share of protected areas and forest, grassland, arable land and fallow, farmland cover diversity, and rate of nitrogen fertilization. HNVf was identified in 958 out of 2173 municipalities, covering 44% of the territory of Poland. The identified HNVf also overlaps partially (61%) with LFAs (Less Favored Areas). Farmlands with the highest nature value are located mostly across mountain and hilly areas, close to forests, and protected areas on lowlands and river valleys. The identified HNV farmlands are characterized by low-input farming systems and a large share of semi-natural habitats with a high landscape mosaic.

Rodent assemblages have ecological importance in ecosystem functioning and protected area management. Our study examines the patterns of assemblages of rodents across four habitat types (i.e., Miombo woodland, Acacia woodland, grasslands and farmlands) in the savanna environment. Capture-mark-recapture (CMR) methods were applied for data collection across the Chembe Bird Sanctuary (CBS) landscape. The Non-metric Multi-Dimensional Scaling (NMDS) was used for exploratory data analysis, followed by Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and Tukey–Kramer’s Honestly Significant Difference (HSD) post-hoc tests. The rodent assemblages in CBS significantly differed between the non-farmlands (i.e., Miombo woodland, Acacia woodland and grasslands) and farmlands. There were: (1) zero rodent diversity in farmlands, dominated completely by a pest species, M. natalensis; and (2) different rodent assemblages in three non-farmland habitat types. We suggest that rodent assemblages should be mediated by conservation planning and multi-stakeholder collaboration beyond the protected area boundaries to contribute to a working CBS landscape positively.

Landscape heterogeneity, as measured by the spectral diversity of satellite imagery, has the potential to provide information on the resources available within the movement capacity range of arthropod vectors, and to help predict vector abundance. The Spectral Variation Hypothesis states that higher spectral diversity is positively related to a higher number of ecological niches present in the landscape, allowing more species to coexist regardless of the taxonomic group considered. Investigating the landscape heterogeneity as a proxy of the resources available to vectors may be relevant for complex and continuous agro-forest mosaics of small farmlands and degraded forests, where land cover classification is often imprecise. In this study, we hypothesized that larger spectral diversity would be associated with higher tick abundance due to the potentially higher number of hosts in heterogeneous landscapes. Specifically, we tested whether spectral diversity indices could represent heterogeneous landscapes, and if so, whether they explain Amblyomma and Hyalomma tick abundance in Benin and inform on their habitat preferences. Benin is a West-African country characterized by a mosaic landscape of farmland and degraded forests. Our results showed that both NDVI-derived and spectral predictors are highly collinear, with NDVI-derived predictors related to vegetated land cover classes and spectral predictors correlated to mosaic landscapes. Amblyomma abundance was not related to the predictors considered. Hyalomma abundance showed positive relationships to spectral diversity indices and negative relationships to NDVI-derived-ones. Though taxa dependent, our approach showed moderate performance in terms of goodness of fit (ca. 13–20% R2), which is a promising result considering the sampling and scale limitations. Spectral diversity indices coupled with classical SRS vegetation indices could be a complementary approach for providing further ecological aspects in the field of disease biogeography.

Agricultural environments are critical to the conservation of biota throughout the world. This is due both to the limited extent of current reserve systems and the large, and still expanding, proportion of terrestrial environments already dominated by agricultural land-uses. Consequently, there is a growing call from scientists around the world for the need to maximise the conservation value of agricultural environments. Efforts to identify key influences on the conservation status of fauna in agricultural landscapes have taken complementary approaches. Many studies have focussed on the role of remnant or semi-natural vegetation, and emphasised the influence on biota of spatial patterns in the landscape. Others have recognised that many species use diverse ‘countryside’ elements (matrix habitats) within farmland, and emphasise the benefits of landscape heterogeneity for conservation. Here, these research themes have been combined. This study takes a whole-of-landscape approach to investigating how landscape pattern and countryside heterogeneity influence the occurrence of birds in agricultural environments. Birds were sampled in 27 agricultural mosaics, each 1 km x 1 km in size (100 ha), in Gippsland, south-eastern Australia. Mosaics were selected to incorporate variation in two landscape properties: the cover of native vegetation, and richness of different types of element (i.e. land-uses/vegetation types). In each mosaic, 15 fixed sampling locations were stratified among seven different elements in proportion to their cover in the mosaic: native vegetation, linear vegetation, tree plantation, scattered paddock trees, pasture, wetlands and farm dams. Six point counts of birds were undertaken at all sample points in each mosaic: three each in the breeding and non-breeding months of a one-year period (October 2004 – August 2005). Independent measures of the composition, configuration, and heterogeneity of elements in the mosaic had differing effects on the richness of bird species recorded in these same mosaics. Sub-groups of birds based on habitat requirements responded most strongly to the extent of preferred element types in mosaics. Woodland birds (those of greatest conservation concern in farmland environments in Australia) were richer in mosaics with higher cover of native vegetation while open-tolerant species responded to the extent of scattered trees. In contrast, for total species richness, mosaic heterogeneity (richness of element types) and landscape context (cover of native vegetation in surrounding area) had the greatest influence. Mosaic structural properties also influenced the composition of entire bird assemblages in study mosaics. Avifaunal composition showed systematic variation along two main gradients which were readily interpreted in relation to landscape properties: 1) a gradient in the cover of wooded vegetation and, 2) the proportional composition of vegetation types in the mosaic. These gradients represent common trajectories of landscape modification associated with agricultural development: namely, the removal of wooded vegetation and the replacement of native species with exotic vegetation (e.g. crops and plantations). Species possessing different characteristics in relation to three avian life-history traits (nest type, feeding guild and clutch size) varied significantly in their position along these gradients of landscape modification. Species with different nesting requirements showed a strong relationship with the gradient in wooded vegetation cover while species belonging to different feeding guilds were influenced by the gradient defined by the replacement of native vegetation with exotic species. More bird species were recorded in native vegetation than in any other type of element sampled in this study. Nevertheless, most countryside elements had value for many species; particularly structurally complex elements such as scattered trees and tree plantation. Further, each type of landscape element contained different bird assemblages. Species that were recorded in a greater number of different types of landscape element were also recorded in more mosaics. This was true for all species and for woodland birds, and indicates that species that can use a greater range of countryside elements may have an increased tolerance of future landscape modification. The richness of woodland species at survey sites in different elements was influenced by features of the mosaic in which they occurred. Notably, the richness of woodland bird species recorded at sites in scattered trees and pasture increased with a greater cover of native vegetation in the overall mosaic. Of the overall pool of woodland bird species documented in the broader study region, 35% of species were not recorded in the agricultural mosaics sampled here. While many of these species were uncommon in the study area, or were associated with vegetation communities infrequently sampled in mosaics, this shows that conservation efforts in agricultural landscapes will not be appropriate for all species. For those woodland species that were recorded, measures of the extent of wooded vegetation cover had a strong, positive influence on the frequency of occurrence of individual species in mosaics. Thus, individual species of woodland bird occurred more frequently in mosaics with a greater cover of wooded vegetation. Nine woodland species showed a stronger response to measures of vegetation cover that included tree plantation and/or scattered trees than to the cover of native vegetation alone. For these species, structurally complex countryside elements provide valuable supplementary habitat at the landscape scale. Results of this study show that landscape properties influence the occurrence of birds in agricultural mosaics. The extent of cover of element types, particularly native vegetation, had the strongest influence on all measures of bird occurrence in mosaics. Thus, native vegetation is vital for the persistence of birds in farmland landscapes and is the primary element on which conservation efforts in these environments depend. Nevertheless, with careful management, countryside elements may provide additional conservation benefits for many bird species. Countryside elements made an important contribution to landscape heterogeneity, the landscape property with greatest influence on overall bird richness in mosaics. Countryside elements also increased the structural complexity of cleared agricultural land, and so have the capacity to enhance connectivity in fragmented landscapes. A focus on these factors (landscape heterogeneity and structural complexity) will provide the greatest opportunities for using countryside elements to increase the conservation value of farmland environments for native fauna. The relatively small scale of this study indicates that the cumulative effect of even small elements in farm mosaics contributes to the structural properties of entire landscapes. Critically, this emphasises the important contribution that individual landholders can make to nature conservation in agricultural environments.

The Isle of Sheppey lies in the mouth of the Thames tucked up along the northern coastline of Kent, south-eastern England. Known to the Romans as insula orivum, and accessible for centuries only by ferry, the small Isle waited until 1860 for the construction of its first permanent bridge, over the River Swale to the mainland. It contains an uneasy mixture of lowland agricultural farmland, tourism, and commercial shipping activities, all divided by a diagonal east-to-west line of low hills. Elmley Marshes, situated on the southern side of the Isle, attract thousands of ducks, geese, and wading birds in the winter. Further to the east lies the Swale National Nature Reserve, a mosaic of grazing land and salt marshes that is home to short-eared owls and hen harriers. Fine beaches dotted along the northern coastline near to the traditional seaside town of Leysdown-on-Sea draw tourists whose spending boosts the local economy. Discovery of a deep-water channel off the north-west coast saw the construction of a Royal Navy dockyard at Sheerness in 1669. The new dockyard was replaced 290 years later by the commercially successful Port of Sheerness, which benefits from the capacity to accommodate large modern ships regardless of the tides. Geology and the sea have combined to shape the cultural and economic aspects of the Isle from its earliest days. In the early part of the nineteenth century, pyrite—iron sulfide—collected from the beaches and foreshore provided a source of green vitriol dye for the tanning and textiles industries. At around the same time, a small industry flourished excavating cement stones (septaria) for the manufacture of Parker’s (or Roman) cement. But the supply of septarian nodules on the beaches was soon exhausted and, with the emergence of more economic means of producing cement, the industry collapsed. The fleeting septaria industry mirrors the fleeting existence of Sheppey, for the Isle is shrinking fast as wave action erodes metres of its cliffs each year. Ultimately, in no more than a geological instant, the Isle of Sheppey and its inhabitants will be gone.