Biogeography and Geomatics, Department of Physical Geography, Stockholm University, 10691 Stockholm, Sweden
Department of Biology, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK.
Proc Biol Sci. 2018 Apr 11;285(1876). doi: 10.1098/rspb.2017.2349.
Semi-natural grasslands have been severely affected by agricultural land-use change. However, the isostatic land adjustment following deglaciation in the Northern Hemisphere means that new land is continually being created in coastal areas. We modelled isostatic adjustment during the last 4000 years in a region of the Baltic coast to estimate the emergence of potential grassland habitat. We also compared the α and β diversity of existing managed and abandoned coastal meadows, and assessed their contribution to biodiversity at landscape scales. We estimated that half the 7866 km of emerging land had the potential to become coastal meadow habitat, which is an order of magnitude larger than the total area of all valuable semi-natural grassland in the study region today. The small area of managed coastal habitat remaining was found to have a disproportionate influence on the richness of threatened species at landscape scales, but our results also show that continued management is essential for the maintenance of grassland biodiversity. Our combination of approaches identifies uplifted coastal meadows as an additional original niche for grassland plant species, while highlighting that low-intensity disturbance through grassland management is essential for the maintenance of diversity at multiple scales.
半自然草原受到了农业土地利用变化的严重影响。然而，北半球冰消后均衡上升意味着新的土地不断在沿海地区形成。我们模拟了波罗的海沿岸地区过去 4000 年来的均衡上升调整，以估计潜在草原栖息地的出现。我们还比较了现有管理和废弃沿海草地的α多样性和β多样性，并评估了它们对景观尺度生物多样性的贡献。我们估计，有一半的 7866 公里新出现的土地有可能成为沿海草地栖息地，这比研究区域今天所有有价值的半自然草原总面积还要大一个数量级。剩余的管理良好的沿海生境面积较小，但却对景观尺度上受威胁物种的丰富度产生了不成比例的影响，然而，我们的研究结果也表明，继续管理对于维持草原生物多样性至关重要。我们的综合方法确定了抬升的沿海草地是草原植物物种的另一个原始生态位，同时也强调了通过草原管理进行低强度干扰对于多尺度多样性的维持至关重要。
