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Johannes Kamp @kampjohannes.bsky.social · Jul 20

(All images from Astental, Großglockner Area, Carinthia, Austria, taken in 2024 and during last week - but situation similar in other parts of the Alps.)

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Johannes Kamp @kampjohannes.bsky.social · Jul 20

The future of the hay meadows will depend on the willingness of the coming generations to continue to hard work - and on sufficient funding to make the systems economically viable for the land users. I am impressed by the young families keeping up the mowing here, but it's not easy.

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Johannes Kamp @kampjohannes.bsky.social · Jul 20

Alternatively, former hay meadows are now grazed, and stocking densities are often so high that few flowering plants are seen.

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Johannes Kamp @kampjohannes.bsky.social · Jul 20

At the same time, where possible (and we are speaking of altitudes around 2000 m a.s.l. already), more and more livestock owners apply slurry as fertilizer (greener areas - mown earlier). This leads to the disappearance of many plant and butterfly species.

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Johannes Kamp @kampjohannes.bsky.social · Jul 20

Of course, a few species also benefit, such as this Lilium martagon, but mainly in early stages of abandonment.

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Johannes Kamp @kampjohannes.bsky.social · Jul 20

At my current location in a pretty remote valley in Austria, abandonment, but also intensification, have kicked in again since ca. 2017. Abandoned hay meadows quickly lose they herb-rich appearance, and grasses soon dominate (often described in the literature). And yes, these slopes are steep!

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Johannes Kamp @kampjohannes.bsky.social · Jul 20

I had assumed that some of these extremely biodiverse hay meadows ("Bergmähder") would persist in the long run. But speaking to the people who do the hard work, this seems less and less guaranteed.

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Johannes Kamp @kampjohannes.bsky.social · Jul 20

These meadows had been maintained for centuries as #social-ecological systems, but were #abandoned and #intensified over large areas in the 1950s-1980s. However, due to tradition and conservation funding, unfertilized areas managed at low intensity still exist - biodiversity hotspots.

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Johannes Kamp @kampjohannes.bsky.social · Jul 20

They also host a very high insect diversity and abundance, due to their high plant species richness and floral resources.

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Johannes Kamp @kampjohannes.bsky.social · Jul 20

Mountain hay meadows of the Alps are impressive.

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Johannes Kamp @kampjohannes.bsky.social · Jul 20

There is currently a lot of debate about #grazing vs. #mowing for #biodiversity - often polarized, with grazing seen as the holy grail and mowing as detrimental. I have long felt that it's not so much about one or the other, but about intensity and system. Well, here is another example:

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Johannes Kamp @kampjohannes.bsky.social · Jul 19

Update on a new project on revitalizing coppice in Germany, from the Plieninger Lab ⬇️ I'm really looking forward to results from this one.

Tobias Plieninger @plieningerlab.bsky.social · Jul 14

A warm welcome to our most recent social-ecological interactions group member, Pia Jensen! In this Medium blog post, Pia highlights the potential of traditional forest management (coppice forests) to meet current biodiversity and climate challenges in the forest sector. medium.com/people-natur...

Historical land uses, Community Forests and Local Perspectives

Coppice forests are a disappearing cultural landscape in Europe and Germany, but the importance of these historical forms of forest use is…

medium.com

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Tobias Plieninger @plieningerlab.bsky.social · Jul 14

A warm welcome to our most recent social-ecological interactions group member, Pia Jensen! In this Medium blog post, Pia highlights the potential of traditional forest management (coppice forests) to meet current biodiversity and climate challenges in the forest sector. medium.com/people-natur...

Historical land uses, Community Forests and Local Perspectives

Coppice forests are a disappearing cultural landscape in Europe and Germany, but the importance of these historical forms of forest use is…

medium.com

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Johannes Kamp @kampjohannes.bsky.social · Jul 11

necessarily transferable.

Johannes Kamp @kampjohannes.bsky.social · Jul 11

plus: a lot of cattle dung is collected anyway by the villagers for heating and cooking, so is busted permanently into the atmosphere. I think it's very difficult to speculate here about livestock and carbon sequestration without any data at hand, and insight from other grassland systems is not....

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Johannes Kamp @kampjohannes.bsky.social · Jul 11

Dung decays very slowly in this climate, and dung beetle densities are pretty low, so a lot of old dung actually burns (but again, there is little dung where it burns - for the reasons we outline in the paper).

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Johannes Kamp @kampjohannes.bsky.social · Jul 11

well, plant-originating C has always been transported belowground by the numerous small mammals, but the area of high fire intensity does hardly overlap with the distribution of black soils (rather Kastanozems and Solonets/Solonchak soils there).

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Conservation Biology Göttingen @consbiogoe.bsky.social · Jul 11

#Bird #surveys: Do we need to rewrite our methodological standards?
#PassiveAcousticMonitoring suggests that expert-based recommendations might lead to under-recording, due to diurnal and seasonal mismatches.
New paper led by David Singer; with 25,000 h audio data: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

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Johannes Kamp @kampjohannes.bsky.social · Jul 11

(e.g. of Stipa bunchgrasses) is accumulated belowground and therefore difficult to extract, iii) the C balance depends on grazing intensity and grazer type (e.g. horses vs. cattle), which have been so dynamic recently. I guess this will be studied eventually, but it's not so easy.

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Johannes Kamp @kampjohannes.bsky.social · Jul 11

...combined livestock and fire effects on climate is difficult, because i) we don't know much about the fire-related C balance (how much C is emitted, how much returns to the system as "black carbon", e.g. soot, ash), ii) measuring C in steppe vegetation is difficult, because so much biomass...

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Johannes Kamp @kampjohannes.bsky.social · Jul 11

Note that we don't say (and know) anything about the climate effects of livestock here. The main message of the paper is that livestock grazing controls fire fuel availability (but of course it's more complex, e.g. drought and precipitation have also in impact on fire patterns). Looking into....

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Johannes Kamp @kampjohannes.bsky.social · Jun 23

Thanks a lot!

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Johannes Kamp @kampjohannes.bsky.social · Jun 22

What does 136:46, NFG and NFY mean?

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Conservation Biology Göttingen @consbiogoe.bsky.social · Jun 3

#Fieldwork update from our PyroDiv project (uni-goettingen.de/en/690609.html): A Kazakh-German field team is now collecting data on the Great Steppe to reveal the impact of fire legacies and grazing on biodiversity. Great collab between @acbk.bsky.social @consbiogoe.bsky.social and @uni-muenster.de.

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Johannes Kamp @kampjohannes.bsky.social · Jan 6

Ganz so einfach ist es nicht, es gibt viele Gründe für Landnutzungsaufgabe - und resultierende Bestandsentwicklungen von Arten sind auch lange nicht immer negativ. Hier der dem o.a. feature zugrundeliegende Artikel: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

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Conservation Biology Göttingen @consbiogoe.bsky.social · Jan 3

Long, exciting feature in @science.org today on land #abandonment, #rewilding and biodiversity by
@dancharles.bsky.social, covering our abandonment research across Europe and Kazakhstan. Based on interviews with Gergana and Johannes + site visit in Bulgaria. Free to read: bsky.app/profile/scie...

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Johannes Kamp @kampjohannes.bsky.social · Jan 3

Working from home before the start of the usual madness next week - window with a view!

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Johannes Kamp @kampjohannes.bsky.social · Dec 22

First chapter of Anne Graser's PhD thesis now published⬇️
Stay tuned for another one on disturbance and birds using national bird monitoring data, and a third analysis on #moths, disturbance heterogeneity and deer again from the Harz mountains.

Conservation Biology Göttingen @consbiogoe.bsky.social · Dec 20

New paper! Forest disturbance through drought, windthrow, pest outbreaks and fire is increasing in Europe, driven by past planting decisions and climate change. In Germany alone, more than 500,000 ha of mostly Spruce died back in 2018-2022. Led by Anne Graser, we studied biodiversity responses...

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Conservation Biology Göttingen @consbiogoe.bsky.social · Dec 20

New paper! Forest disturbance through drought, windthrow, pest outbreaks and fire is increasing in Europe, driven by past planting decisions and climate change. In Germany alone, more than 500,000 ha of mostly Spruce died back in 2018-2022. Led by Anne Graser, we studied biodiversity responses...

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Conservation Biology Göttingen @consbiogoe.bsky.social · Oct 2

Don't miss the next Blumenbach lecture in Göttingen! We are delighted that Jens-Christian Svenning agreed to speak about trophic #rewilding and will provide insights from and for #macroecology, #paleoecology and #conservation.
20 November, 5:15 p.m.

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