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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Richard Francksen, Professor Mark WhittinghamORCiD, Dr Matt Hiron
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
© 2024 by the authors. Permanent grasslands cover more than a third of European agricultural land and are important for a number of ecosystem services. Permanent grasslands used for agriculture are broadly separated into agriculturally improved and semi-natural grasslands. High cultural and natural values linked to semi-natural grasslands are well documented. However, in boreal and hemi-boreal agricultural landscapes, less information is available about the areal coverage of improved permanent grasslands and their role for ecosystem service provision and biodiversity. In Sweden, grasslands are administratively separated into semi-natural (i.e., land that cannot be ploughed) or arable (i.e., improved temporary or permanent grassland on land that can be ploughed). We used data from a large-scale environmental monitoring program to show that improved permanent grassland (i.e., permanent grasslands on arable fields) may be a previously unrecognised large area of the agricultural land use in Sweden. We show that improved permanent grasslands together with semi-natural grasslands are both comparable but also complementary providers of a range of ecosystem services (plant species richness, plant resources for pollinators and forage amount for livestock production). However, as expected, semi-natural grasslands with the highest-level AESs (special values) show high species richness values for vascular plants, plants indicating traditional semi-natural management conditions and red-listed species. Improved permanent grasslands on arable fields are likely an underestimated but integral part of the agricultural economy and ecological function in boreal landscapes that together with high nature value semi-natural grasslands provide a broad range of ecosystem services.
Author(s): Aguilera Nunez G, Glimskar A, Zacchello G, Francksen RM, Whittingham MJ, Hiron M
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Agronomy
Year: 2024
Volume: 14
Issue: 3
Online publication date: 12/03/2024
Acceptance date: 06/03/2024
Date deposited: 08/04/2024
ISSN (electronic): 2073-4395
Publisher: MDPI
URL: https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy14030567
DOI: 10.3390/agronomy14030567
Data Access Statement: Data from environmental monitoring presented in this study are available on request from A.G.
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