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Field Margin Biodiversity and Landscape Function

TERRECO Cluster A-03

From 07/2011 to 09/2015

Principal Investigator: Björn Reineking, Bernd Huwe, John Tenhunen, Dowon Lee
Staff: Hamada Elsayed Ali

Abstract 2011: The plant communities of field margins are an important aspect of agroecosystem ecology. A major research challenge is to link studies aiming to understand the determinants of species distribution and community assembly on the one hand and the consequences of resulting biodiversity patterns for ecosystem functioning on the other hand. The main aim of this study is to bridge this gap between species and communtiy distribution models and models of ecosystem function, by addressing the following research questions:     

(1) What types of field margins can be identified in Korean agricultural landscapes, and how are they influenced by management? (2) How do local site conditions (margin width, margin management – cut/sprayed/natural, soil type, slope) and landscape context (composition, e.g., %non-crop area, %forest within several buffer distances, and configuration, i.e., spatial arrangement of landscape elements) affect plant communities and plant functional diversity? (3) Can species’ traits and resulting functional diversity explain the observed distribution of species in the landscape? (4) How do plant communities, species diversity, and plant functional traits distribution relate to ecosystem services (e.g. food provisioning, reduction of local soil erosion, or soil carbon accumulation)?

 

project description in detail from proceedings of 2011 TERRECO Science Conference GAP

 

Abstract 2013: The plant communities of field margins are an important aspect of agroecosystem ecology. The effectiveness of field margins in contributing to landscape function by reducing environmental impacts of human activities depends on biological community composition, i.e., the abundance and the functional traits of organisms occupying these niches. A major research challenge in landscape ecology relates to linking the determinants of species distribution and community assemblage with the consequences of resulting biodiversity patterns for ecosystem and landscape function.

The main aim of this study is to further our understanding of the processes governing plant community structure and resulting function of agricultural field margins, by addressing the following research questions:

(1) What types of field margins can be identified in Korean agricultural landscapes, and how are they influenced by management?

(2) How do local site conditions (e.g. margin width, margin management – cut/sprayed/natural, soil type, slope) and landscape context (composition, e.g., %non-crop area, %forest within several buffer distances, and configuration, i.e., spatial arrangement of landscape elements) affect plant communities and plant functional diversity?

(3) Can species’ traits and resulting functional diversity explain the observed distribution of species in the landscape?

(4) How do plant communities, species diversity, and plant functional trait distribution relate to ecosystem services (e.g. reduction of local soil erosion, or soil carbon accumulation)?

The research project will be conducted in three main steps, which include:

(1) Field margin intensive botanical survey to identify the plant species growing in different field margins in Haean Catchment.

(2) Quantification of key species functional traits; in this part, we measure a set of the plant functional traits for field margin plant species and soil properties related to erosion control with a design based on the botanical survey in step (1).

(3) Field experiments and modeling; in this step we quantify the role of different vegetated buffer strips in controlling soil erosion in Haean Catchment, which should then help improve farm management practices.

Keywords: field margins, biodiversity, plant functional traits, ecosystem services, community ecology, species distributions, soil erosion

 

Poster January 2013








last modified 2015-10-13