PARENT SESSION
Organized Oral Session 42: Applying ecological theories to multiple spatio-temporal scales and to different landscapes in Europe
Organizer(s): J Loeffler and U Steinhardt
Thursday, August 11, 8:00 AM - 11:30 AM, Meeting Room 511a, Level 5, Palais des congrès de Montréal

Multiple scales and biodiversity response: Case studies from agricultural landscapes in Germany.

Waldhardt, Rainer^*,1, Otte, Annette¹, ¹ Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, Giessen, Germany

ABSTRACT- In Germany, as in other European countries, agriculture led to a substantial increase in biodiversity until about 100 years ago. Today, agriculture accounts for about 54 % of all land use in Germany, and agricultural intensification and extensification are seen as the primary causes of terrestrial biodiversity loss. Thus there is an urgent need to evaluate effects of potential future land uses that may result from agricultural policy decisions and / or nature conservation strategies. Multiple scales in space and time need to be considered in the respective modeling approaches and in monitoring programs. Information that cover the field to the landscape scale are essential. Temporal dynamics at the population to the ecosystem level must be considered. Ecological theories and concepts such as Island Theory and mosaic-cycle concept, which are relevant for the spatial upscaling of data and for the understanding of temporal transitions in natural ecosystems, fail to be applied in agricultural landscapes. However, problems with respect to the spatial upscaling of data can be handled by more recent models and concepts such as Forman's patch-corridor-matrix model and Duelli's mosaic concept. Examples that deal with spatial aspects of the diversity of plants and animals in various agricultural landscapes in Germany will be given. With respect to temporal transitions, extensive field investigations show that, in the agricultural landscape, the rates of changes in biodiversity strongly depend on the investigated biota, habitats, and on the landscape structure. In general, species diversity tends to increase with habitat age. This tendency is pronounced in traditional mosaic and nutrient poor landscapes, reflecting higher dispersal capacities of many species in successional processes in these landscapes.

Key words: species diversity, ecological theories, mosaic landscape, Europe