Selection and application of spatial indicators for nature conservation at different institutional levels

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Summary

As European integration increasingly affects pan-European nature conservation, indicators for the assessment of habitats are urgently needed to support ecosystem integrity monitoring as well as the target of halting biodiversity loss by 2010. The Natura 2000 network of protected sites with a strong focus on the protection of habitat types and strict monitoring obligations is now legally binding for all Member States. From a set of indicators that have been proposed for habitat monitoring by the SPIN project (Spatial Indicators for European Nature Conservation) we describe measures of landscape structure and soil function and their potential for the monitoring and management of protected areas and the surrounding landscape. In a case study from Austria, we show that structure-related indicators hold potential for the documentation of local-scale changes on a degraded raised bog Natura 2000 site. In a regional scale case study in northern Germany, we show how landscape metrics relate agricultural statistics, e.g. farm size and livestock density to landscape structure. In a third case study from Slovenia, we show how coarse-scale soil data can be disaggregated to finer scale by integrating topographic information and additional parameters for modelling, and production of soil-related habitat suitability maps. From these case studies we provide an overview of some of the critical issues affecting the selection and application of spatial indicators for nature conservation monitoring tasks. End users of spatial indicators work at different scales and in different biogeographical regions. The indicator selection and application demonstrated in our three case studies reveals the capability to contribute to a more quantitative evidence base for monitoring and management of biodiversity in Europe.

Introduction

Biodiversity conservation was established firmly on the political agenda with the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the main outcome of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro. In Europe, the implementation of the CBD is based on the EC Biodiversity Strategy and its four sectoral Biodiversity Action Plans (Commission of the European Communities (1998), Commission of the European Communities (2001)), as well as the Pan-European Biological and Landscape Diversity Strategy (PEBLDS) (1993). A more recent driver of the political biodiversity agenda is the ‘2010 target’ agreed at the meeting of the European Council in Gothenborg in June 2001 (Delbaere, 2004) which sets the ambitious target of halting biodiversity decline within the EU by 2010.

A number of indicator schemes are currently being established to provide an evidence base for national and EU level biodiversity conservation. These are the European Environment Agency (EEA) core set of biodiversity indicators, the EU biodiversity headline indicators, as well as indicators for the implementation and evaluation of effectiveness of the EC Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plans ‘BioIMPs’ (Delbaere, 2004). A report summarising the latest status of development and use of biodiversity indicators to monitor progress in, and to support the achievement of the 2010 target in Europe can be found in ETC (2004).

With regard to the practical issue of protecting the EU's rich biodiversity heritage, the Natura 2000 network of protected sites is one of the most important legally binding mechanisms in Europe. The Natura 2000 network combines Special Protection Areas (SPAs), established under the Birds Directive and Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) under the Habitats Directive (Commission of the European Communities, 1992). The Natura 2000 concept was characterised as potentially the most significant initiative for nature conservation at European scale (Krott et al., 2000; Weber & Christophersen, 2002). More critical reviews concern the perceived inflexible top-down approach as well as the focus on the concept of protected areas (Hiedanpää, 2002; Ledoux, Crooks, Jordan, & Turner, 2000).

Apart from the indicator requirements for the EU or national level (headline indicators), there is an increasing need to supply locally and regionally relevant and spatially explicit indicators to comply with the strong monitoring component of Natura 2000. Most indicators described in the literature relate to statistical or administrative units but do not reflect the information needs at lower levels, which require spatially explicit information (Blaschke, 2001; OECD, 2001; Weiers, Bock, Wissen, & Rossner, 2004). Spatially explicit indicators provide quantitative information on habitats that can be used to form part of a conservation status assessment.

Within the EU-funded SPIN project (Spatial Indicators for European Nature Conservation) it became clear that the user requirements differed greatly depending on the spatial scale (from local to national level) of the user's involvement in EU nature conservation. This was confirmed throughout the project by feedback from questionnaires sent out to end users as well as from personal interviews with decision makers at the EU level.

The SPIN project followed a multiple indicator strategy with a combined set of indicators to characterise the status of the test sites. Several groups of indicators were developed, applied and tested within the project: biodiversity indicators (Mitchley & Xofis, 2005), change indicators (Kleinod, Wissen, & Bock, 2005), pressure indicators as well as structural and functional indicators. These indicator categories are not mutually exclusive, often need to be applied together and sometimes the most appropriate level depends on the application context. In this paper, we focus on the last two categories of indicators, structural and functional, and their application to different nature conservation tasks in three different case study areas. Structural and functional indicators can form the basis of new indicator categories. For instance, changes in structural indicators over time could be used to develop a change indicator or could contribute to the development of pressure indicators or biodiversity indicators.

Furthermore, the combined application of the indicators can be a meaningful asset for investigations of drivers of landscape change. There is growing recognition of the need to combine the protection of valuable habitats and species with a more holistic approach that includes biodiversity protection outside protected areas (Hossell, Ellis, Harley, & Hepburn, 2003). We widen our scope from the monitoring objectives of the local Natura 2000 site to include, e.g. agricultural land surrounding protected areas.

The first case study from Austria is a local level nature conservation area that forms part of the Natura 2000 Network and evaluates the potential of quantifying landscape structure for monitoring the conservation status of a raised bog. The second case study from Germany describes a larger, regional scale case study area, in which several Natura 2000 sites are embedded and investigates monitoring and evaluation of the impacts of agricultural land-use on landscape structure and the consequences on adjacent protected areas. The third case study from Slovenia develops a functional indicator based on the use of soil information for nature conservation.

The negative effects of land-use practices on biodiversity include both intensification of agriculture as well as land abandonment in marginal regions of Europe (Young et al., in press). The land abandonment issue is an underlying concern in our third case study from Slovenia while the other two case studies are located in intensively farmed areas.

The Wenger Moor is situated in Salzburg province (Austria) at a mean altitude above sea level of 510 m. As a small (298 ha) remnant of a sub-alpine raised bog, Wenger Moor contains several natural habitat types and one priority habitat type according to Annex I of the FFH Directive. Conservation measures are mainly focused on small remnants of ‘active raised bogs’ (FFH code: 7110) which to a large extent have been changed to ‘degraded raised bogs still capable of natural regeneration’ (FFH code: 7120). Following manual peat extraction up to the 1960s and a significant lowering of the (bog) water table, a gradual shift in vegetation species composition was observed. The open bog areas dominated by Sphagnum cuspidatum were subsequently replaced with S. nemoreum and S. magellanicum followed by encroachment with heather (Calluna vulgaris) and woody vegetation (Pinus mugo and other species).

This site in the north of Germany includes the two districts Schleswig-Flensburg and Nordfriesland as a regional planning region of approximately 415,600 ha. From the Baltic sea to the North sea the case study site covers three distinct landscape units: the hilly area with young quaternary glacial deposits and fertile soils in the east, secondly the flat “Geest” area in a north–south extension in the centre formed by older glacial moraines, and finally sand plains and less fertile soils and the flat marshes in the west consisting mainly of Holocene sea sediments. Several Natura 2000 sites with raised bogs and wet grasslands are embedded in this landscape otherwise characterised by intensive agriculture. Grasslands and pastures are most typical on the leached, sandy or wet soils in the Geest, while arable land is predominating on the fertile soils of the hilly area in the east and lime marshes in the west. Pressures on the protected sites stem from drainage, use of fertilisers, soil compaction and also fragmentation of the habitats.

The core part of the Postojna case study site measures 10,000 ha and is situated in a sparsely populated south-western part of Slovenia. The area is predominantly mountainous and hilly and the altitude varies from 400 m in the SW to 1270 m in the NE. The varied relief and climate accounts for the wide range of soil types – shallow Leptosols, Chromic and Eutric Cambisols, Gleysols and Planosols on clay deposits and Histosols. Geology and topography combined with high precipitation favour the development of many karst phenomena such as caves, intermittent lakes, natural bridges, poljes and dolinas. These environmental conditions result in a rich diversity of forest and grassland vegetation communities, some in pristine condition. A key issue in this region is the widespread abandonment of agricultural practices and the consequent spontaneous afforestation. This process permanently changes the traditional cultural landscape and threatens the unique habitats of dry karst grasslands (Boštjančič & Zafran, 1998).

Section snippets

Wenger Moor, Austria

The objective of this case study was to apply structural indicators to conservation monitoring tasks at the local scale. Landscape pattern strongly influences ecological processes and therefore biotic abundance and diversity (Levin, 1992; Turner, 1989). Landscape structural analysis and the development of structural indicators within the SPIN project were therefore based on the application of landscape metrics. Although it is recognised that structural indicators are valuable to address the

Wenger Moor study area, Austria

Following a pre-selection on the basis of the size and characteristics of the Wenger Moor, a limited number of metrics was applied and Table 3 summarises the results.

One example for a mapped result of a core area analysis is shown in Fig. 2. The classification of three aerial photographs (1953, 1976 and 1999) and an application of core area analysis revealed a dramatic decrease of the remaining core area for the Natura 2000 priority habitat type “active raised bog” from 6.59 to 0.71 ha. This

Discussion

The use of structural and functional indicators adds a quantitative and spatially explicit component to the traditional methods of site management in nature conservation and supports an integrative assessment of habitat status and the potential impacts from the surrounding landscape. Therefore, our tools and indicators can also be applied to meet the challenges of halting biodiversity decline outside protected areas.

Conclusions

We have not attempted to establish the final set of universally applicable indicators for all Natura 2000 monitoring and site management requirements. Instead the proposed set of indicators is to be understood as a toolbox, and the case study results as application examples. For each individual Natura 2000 site or landscape of interest, a different set of indicators may need to be chosen and could require local adoption, even within the same habitat type. Data availability, as a basis for

Acknowledgement

The authors thank the European Commission for funding part of this work through the 5th Framework programme within the SPIN project (Spatial Indicators for European Nature Conservation) under Contract No. EVG1-CT-2000-019.

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