Publications
NIBIOs employees contribute to several hundred scientific articles and research reports every year. You can browse or search in our collection which contains references and links to these publications as well as other research and dissemination activities. The collection is continously updated with new and historical material.
2024
Sammendrag
Semi-natural hay meadows are among the most species-rich habitats in Norway as well as in Europe. To maintain the biodiversity of hay meadows, it is important to understand local management regimes and the land use history that has shaped them and their biodiversity. There is however a general erosion of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), related to hay meadows and other semi-natural habitats. This review aims to examine historical and written sources of land use practices related to hay meadows and to discuss the implications of a re-introduction of TEK in present and future management practices. Traditional land use practices and TEK obtained from written sources from four Norwegian regions and for the country as a whole are compared with present management practices. Written sources show that hay meadows have been managed in a complex but flexible way. Today's management regimes of hay meadows in Norway are streamlined and strongly simplified, most often involving only one late mowing and in some cases grazing. This simplification may result in loss of biodiversity. The potential to include more variety of management practices in hay meadows, by utilizing knowledge from written sources more systematically in combination with farmers’ experienced knowledge (TEK) should be better utilized. Such an approach may secure both the biodiversity in hay meadows and TEK for the future. Former and present landscape ecological contexts in the infield-outlying land system show that management should be done for larger landscapes rather than small, isolated hay meadows, to optimize biodiversity conservation. For this study, we conducted a Norwegian literature review, based on ethnographical and ethnobotanical sources, as well as historical and present agricultural statistics, historical maps, results from research projects, and other sources. Our findings are discussed with similar European studies focusing on the historical management of hay meadows.
Forfattere
Linn Vassvik Vigdis Vandvik Silje Andrea Hjortland Östman Anders Nielsen Aud Helen HalbritterSammendrag
Plant reproduction in alpine environments is affected by climate both directly through climate impacts on growth and phenology, and indirectly through impacts on the biotic interactions affecting pollination success. These effects can be highly variable in time and space. In this study we investigated how different abiotic and biotic factors influence reproductive investment and success in populations of Ranunculus acris across an alpine landscape over a two-year period. In an alpine area at Finse, southern Norway, we measured reproductive investment (total seed mass) and reproductive success (seed-set rate) in 38 sites differing in temperature (related to elevation) and length of the growing season (related to time of snowmelt). To assess biotic interactions, we measured floral density and pollinator visits and conducted a supplemental pollen experiment. Reproductive investment and success increased with temperature, but only when floral density and/or number of pollinator visits was high, and only in the warmer year (2016). Reproduction in R. acris was pollen-limited in both years, especially at warmer temperature and in sites with early snowmelt. Pollinator visits increased with temperature and with higher floral density, suggesting a shift in relative importance of the biotic factors (from plants to pollinators) in limiting reproduction with increasing temperature. Our study shows that reproductive investment and success in R. acris is affected by climate through the interactive effects of abiotic and biotic processes. These effects vary between years and across the landscape, suggesting a potential for larger-scale buffering of climate change effects in heterogeneous landscapes.
Forfattere
Markus A. K. Sydenham Yoko L. Dupont Anders Nielsen Jens M. Olesen Henning Bang Madsen Astrid Brekke Skrindo Claus Rasmussen Megan Sara Nowell Zander Venter Stein Joar Hegland Anders Gunnar Helle Daniel Ingvar Jeuderan Skoog Marianne Strand Torvanger Kaj-Andreas Hanevik Sven Emil Hinderaker Thorstein Paulsen Katrine Eldegard Trond Reitan Graciela Monica RuschSammendrag
Climate change, landscape homogenization, and the decline of beneficial insects threaten pollination services to wild plants and crops. Understanding how pollination potential (i.e. the capacity of ecosystems to support pollination of plants) is affected by climate change and landscape homogenization is fundamental for our ability to predict how such anthropogenic stressors affect plant biodiversity. Models of pollinator potential are improved when based on pairwise plant–pollinator interactions and pollinator's plant preferences. However, whether the sum of predicted pairwise interactions with a plant within a habitat (a proxy for pollination potential) relates to pollen deposition on flowering plants has not yet been investigated. We sampled plant–bee interactions in 68 Scandinavian plant communities in landscapes of varying land-cover heterogeneity along a latitudinal temperature gradient of 4–8°C, and estimated pollen deposition as the number of pollen grains on flowers of the bee-pollinated plants Lotus corniculatus and Vicia cracca. We show that plant–bee interactions, and the pollination potential for these bee-pollinated plants increase with landscape diversity, annual mean temperature, and plant abundance, and decrease with distances to sand-dominated soils. Furthermore, the pollen deposition in flowers increased with the predicted pollination potential, which was driven by landscape diversity and plant abundance. Our study illustrates that the pollination potential, and thus pollen deposition, for wild plants can be mapped based on spatial models of plant–bee interactions that incorporate pollinator-specific plant preferences. Maps of pollination potential can be used to guide conservation and restoration planning.
Forfattere
Markus A. K. Sydenham Yoko Dupont Anders Nielsen Jens Olesen Henning Bang Madsen Astrid Brekke Skrindo Claus Rasmussen Megan Sara Nowell Zander Venter Stein Joar Hegland Anders Gunnar Helle Daniel Ingvar Jeuderan Skoog Marianne Strand Torvanger Kaj-Andreas Hanevik Sven Emil Hinderaker Thorstein Paulsen Katrine Eldegard Trond Reitan Graciela Monica RuschSammendrag
Climate change, landscape homogenization and the decline of beneficial insects threaten pollination services to wild plants and crops. Understanding how pollination potential (i.e. the capacity of ecosystems to support pollination of plants) is affected by climate change and landscape homogenization is fundamental for our ability to predict how such anthropogenic stressors affect plant biodiversity. Models of pollinator potential are improved when based on pairwise plant-pollinator interactions and pollinator´s plant preferences. However, whether the sum of predicted pairwise interactions with a plant within a habitat (a proxy for pollination potential) relates to pollen deposition on flowering plants has not yet been investigated. We sampled plant-bee interactions in 68 Scandinavian plant communities in landscapes of varying land-cover heterogeneity along a latitudinal temperature gradient of 4–8 C°, and estimated pollen deposition as the number of pollen grains on flowers of the bee-pollinated plants Lotus corniculatus, and Vicia cracca. We show that plant-bee interactions, and the pollination potential for these bee-pollinated plants increase with landscape diversity, annual mean temperature, plant abundance, and decrease with distances to sand-dominated soils. Furthermore, the pollen deposition in flowers increased with the predicted pollination potential, which was driven by landscape diversity and plant abundance. Our study illustrates that the pollination potential, and thus pollen deposition, for wild plants can be mapped based on spatial models of plant-bee interactions that incorporate pollinator-specific plant preferences. Maps of pollination potential can be used to guide conservation and restoration planning.
Forfattere
Mélanie Spedener Jenny Larsen Valaker Juliette Helbert Franziska Veronika Schubert Karen Marie Mathisen Marie Vestergaard Henriksen Anders Nielsen Gunnar Austrheim Barbara ZimmermannSammendrag
Livestock summer grazing in mountains and forests in Norway is generally considered beneficial to biodiversity. In this study we investigated if this is the case for cattle in boreal production forest. We collected biodiversity data on field layer vegetation, floral resources and flower-visiting insects in young spruce plantations that were planted 2–10 years ago. We picked young spruce plantations inside and outside well-established cattle grazing areas. On each plantation, we sampled fenced and unfenced plots (20 * 20 m each). This study design allowed us to investigate long-term effects of cattle grazing as well as short-term effects of excluding cervids only and short-term effects of excluding cervids and cattle. Long-term cattle grazing reduced the abundance of woody plants and reduced the abundance of flowers. Excluding cervids for two summers led to reduced height of woody plants (shrubs and heather) and to increased flower abundance. In contrast, excluding cervids and cattle for two summers led to increased height of graminoids, herbs and woody plants, to higher abundance of graminoids, higher flower abundance and higher abundance of flower-visiting insects. In conclusion, cattle affected the studied system in different ways and to a larger extent than native cervids. Our study shows that we must be careful when inferring results from cattle grazing studies on grasslands to forest ecosystems. As this study documents a negative effect of cattle on floral resources and flower-visiting insects, and we currently are facing a global pollination crisis, a careful consideration of the current practice of cattle grazing in boreal forest might be needed.
Forfattere
Charles D. Minsavage-Davis G. Matt Davies Siri Vatsø Haugum Pål Thorvaldsen Liv Guri Velle Vigdis VandvikSammendrag
Northern European heathlands and moorlands dominated by Calluna vulgaris are internationally recognized for their conservation importance while also supporting traditional, low-intensity agriculture and game hunting. Managed burning plays an important role in maintaining these ecosystems but climate and land-use changes, including planned or unplanned transitions to forest and woodland, are now resulting in concerns about increasing wildfire frequency, intensity and severity. In combination with rapidly-changing regulations surrounding managed burning, this has highlighted the need to understand current and potential future fuel structures to effectively model fire behaviour and develop evidence-based regulations surrounding managed burning. We developed standardized heathland fuel descriptions and modeled associated fire behaviour for heathlands in the UK (England, Scotland) and Norway. Utilizing existing fuel and biomass data, we used cluster analysis to identify five distinct fuel models and assessed how they were represented across C. vulgaris life-stages, geographic locations and EUNIS habitat-types. We validated their independence by examining predicted fire rates of spread based across three representative fire weather scenarios. Fire rates of spread differed between C. vulgaris life stages, regardless of EUNIS community or country. Mature stage and taller building stage fuels produced the highest fire rates of spread and early, shorter building and pioneer stage fuels produced the lowest. Moss and litter fuel loads proved to be important determinants of fire rate of spread in a high-risk fire weather scenario. An understanding of links between fuel types and potential fire behaviour can be used to inform management and policy decisions. To aid in this, we used classification tree analysis to link fuel types to easily-observable characteristics. This will facilitate pairing the fuel models with fire behaviour prediction software to make evidence-based assessments of management fire safety and wildfire risk.
Forfattere
Melinda D. Smith Kate D. Wilkins Martin C. Holdrege Peter Wilfahrt Scott L. Collins Alan K. Knapp Osvaldo E. Sala Jeffrey S. Dukes Richard P. Phillips Laura Yahdjian Laureano A. Gherardi Timothy Ohlert Claus Beier Lauchlan H. Fraser Anke Jentsch Michael E. Loik Fernando T. Maestre Sally A. Power Qiang Yu Andrew J. Felton Seth M. Munson Yiqi Luo Hamed Abdoli Mehdi Abedi Concepción L. Alados Juan Alberti Moshe Alon Hui An Brian Anacker Maggie Anderson Harald Auge Seton Bachle Khadijeh Bahalkeh Michael Bahn Amgaa Batbaatar Taryn Bauerle Karen H. Beard Kai Behn Ilka Beil Lucio Biancari Irmgard Blindow Viviana Florencia Bondaruk Elizabeth T. Borer Edward W. Bork Carlos Martin Bruschetti Kerry M. Byrne James F. Cahill Dianela A. Calvo Michele Carbognani Augusto Cardoni Cameron N. Carlyle Miguel Castillo-Garcia Scott X. Chang Jeff Chieppa Marcus V. Cianciaruso Ofer Cohen Amanda L. Cordeiro Daniela F. Cusack Sven Dahlke Pedro Daleo Carla M. D'Antonio Lee H. Dietterich Tim S. Doherty Maren Dubbert Anne Ebeling Nico Eisenhauer Felícia M. Fischer Tai G.W. Forte Tobias Gebauer Beatriz Gozalo Aaron C. Greenville Karlo G. Guidoni-Martins Heather J. Hannusch Siri Vatsø Haugum Yann Hautier Mariet Hefting Hugh A.L. Henry Daniela Hoss Oscar Iribarne Forest Isbell Yari Johnson Samuel Jordan Eugene F. Kelly Kaitlin Kimmel Juergen Kreyling György Kröel-Dulay Johannes Ingrisch Alicia Kröpfl Angelika Kübert Andrew Kulmatiski Eric G. Lamb Klaus Steenberg Larsen Julie Larson Cintia V. Leder Anja Linstädter Jielin Liu Shirong Liu Alexandra G. Lodge Grisel Longo Alejandro Loydi Junwei Luan Jason Lawson Frederick Curtis Lubbe Craig Macfarlane Kathleen Mackie-Haas Andrey V. Malyshev Adrián Maturano-Ruiz Thomas Merchant Daniel B. Metcalfe Akira S. Mori Edwin Mudongo Gregory S. Newman Uffe N. Nielsen Dale Nimmo Yujie Niu Paola Nobre Rory C. O'Connor Romà Ogaya Gastón R. Oñatibia Ildikó Orbán Brooke Osborne Rafael Otfinowski Meelis Pärtel Josep Penuelas Pablo L. Peri Guadalupe Peter Alessandro Petraglia Catherine Picon-Cochard Valério D. Pillar Juan Manuel Piñeiro-Guerra Laura W. Ploughe Robert M. Plowes Cristy Portales-Reyes Suzanne M. Prober Yolanda Pueyo Sasha C. Reed Euan G. Ritchie Dana Aylén Rodríguez William E. Rogers Christiane Roscher Ana M. Sánchez Bráulio A. Santos María Cecilia Scarfó Eric W. Seabloom Baoku Shi Lara Souza Andreas Stampfli Rachel J. Standish Marcelo Sternberg Wei Sun Marie Sünnemann Michelle Tedder Pål Thorvaldsen Dashuan Tian Katja Tielbörger Alejandro Valdecantos Liesbeth van den Brink Vigdis Vandvik Mathew R. Vankoughnett Liv Guri Velle Changhui Wang Yi Wang Glenda M. Wardle Christiane Werner Cunzheng Wei Georg Wiehl Jennifer L. Williams Amelia A. Wolf Michaela Zeiter Fawei Zhang Juntao Zhu Ning Zong Xiaoan ZuoSammendrag
Climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of short-term (~1 y) drought events—the most common duration of drought—globally. Yet the impact of this intensification of drought on ecosystem functioning remains poorly resolved. This is due in part to the widely disparate approaches ecologists have employed to study drought, variation in the severity and duration of drought studied, and differences among ecosystems in vegetation, edaphic and climatic attributes that can mediate drought impacts. To overcome these problems and better identify the factors that modulate drought responses, we used a coordinated distributed experiment to quantify the impact of short-term drought on grassland and shrubland ecosystems. With a standardized approach, we imposed ~a single year of drought at 100 sites on six continents. Here we show that loss of a foundational ecosystem function—aboveground net primary production (ANPP)—was 60% greater at sites that experienced statistically extreme drought (1-in-100-y event) vs. those sites where drought was nominal (historically more common) in magnitude (35% vs. 21%, respectively). This reduction in a key carbon cycle process with a single year of extreme drought greatly exceeds previously reported losses for grasslands and shrublands. Our global experiment also revealed high variability in drought response but that relative reductions in ANPP were greater in drier ecosystems and those with fewer plant species. Overall, our results demonstrate with unprecedented rigor that the global impacts of projected increases in drought severity have been significantly underestimated and that drier and less diverse sites are likely to be most vulnerable to extreme drought.
Sammendrag
1. We propose that the ecological resilience of communities to permanent changes of the environment can be based on how variation in the overall abundance of individuals affects the number of species. Community sensitivity is defined as the ratio between the rate of change in the log expected number of species and the rate of change in the log expected number of individuals in the community. High community sensitivity means that small changes in the total abundance strongly impact the number of species. Community resistance is the proportional reduction in expected number of individuals that the community can sustain before expecting to lose one species. A small value of community resistance means that the community can only endure a small reduction in abundance before it is expected to lose one species. 2. Based on long-term studies of four bird communities in European deciduous forests at different latitudes large differences were found in the resilience to environmental perturbations. Estimating the variance components of the species abundance distribution revealed how different processes contributed to the community sensitivity and resistance. Species heterogeneity in the population dynamics was the largest component, but its proportion varied among communities. Species-specific response to environmental fluctuations was the second major component of the variation in abundance. 3. Estimates of community sensitivity and resistance based on data only from a single year were in general larger than those based on estimates from longer time series. Thus, our approach can provide rapid and conservative assessment of the resilience of communities to environmental changes also including only short-term data. 4. This study shows that a general ecological mechanism, caused by increased strength of density dependence due to reduction in resource availability, can provide an intuitive measure of community resilience to environmental variation. Our analyses also illustrate the importance of including specific assumptions about how different processes affect community dynamics. For example, if stochastic fluctuations in the environment affect all species in a similar way, the sensitivity and resistance of the community to environmental changes will be different from communities in which all species show independent responses.
Forfattere
Linn VassvikSammendrag
No abstract has been registered
Forfattere
Linn VassvikSammendrag
No abstract has been registered