Browsing by Subject "biodiversity"

High Nature Value (HNV) farming systems hold significant natural values but have decreased drastically during the process of agricultural modernization. Biodiversity in Europe is dependent on these extensively farmed areas because they maintain habitats for many endangered species; e.g. 30% of Europe's butterfly species have declining populations and most live in natural and semi-natural habitats. European common agricultural policy (CAP) favour conventional agriculture, leading HNV agriculture in a foul position. HNV areas are often abandoned or replaced with intensive farming practices. Participatory agricultural innovation processes offer solutions to the distress of HNV farmlands. In these processes different actors – such as farmers, entrepreneurs, advisors, NGO and municipality representatives – are brought together to find localized solutions to the challenges of the area. HNV-Link project was active during years 2016-2019 identifying, developing and improving innovations in ten European HNV farming areas. In this thesis I examine the success of innovations in seven Learning Areas (LA) in terms of socio-economic viability, environmental conservation and cultural region. The data in this thesis is both quantitative and qualitative. I use mixed methods- approach where the statistical analysis and qualitative content analysis support each other. I carried out a survey for the LA coordinators where they responded how was the impact of the innovations to social, economic and environmental wellbeing. I complement the survey with data gathered by the project in 2016-2017. I conduct a qualitative content analysis to innovation fiches using Atlas.ti programme and a statistical analysis with IMB SPSS statistics programme with non-parametric tests. I compare the relation of socio-economic and environmental impact of the innovations, explicit aim of HNV conservation, recognition of environmental topics in the fiches and cultural region. Innovations were successful both socio-economically and environmentally. There was a possible synergy between economic and environmental impacts, which indicates economic viability of the LA’s improving HNV conservation. Innovations with explicit HNV conservation objective had more positive environmental impact than the ones without. Innovations with high recognition of environmental themes in fiches had slightly more positive environmental impact, but the difference was so weak that they fail to express the environmental outcomes reported in the survey. Congruent patterns didn’t occur inside cultural regions which might be due to the similarities of the areas or small sample size. The results display the inherent unpredictability of innovation processes, and the importance of holistic understanding and long-term monitoring of them.

Conservation biological control is a strategy of biological control that aims to support natural enemies of pests. One of the potential ways to support natural enemies is to enhance diversity in agricultural landscapes. By establishing non-cultivated areas near crop fields natural enemies can be provided with many resources including food, shelter and overwintering sites. The availability of these resources potentially enhances the abundance and diversity of natural enemies and their efficiency to reduce pest populations. The goal of this study was to compare the effects of two different fallow strip types – meadow strip and grassland strip – on the abundance and species composition of predatory arthropods. To examine the differences between the strip types, data were collected from the strips and adjoining cereal fields. An experiment was conducted on two barley fields in Helsinki in summer 2014. Two fallow strips were established in the middle of each field. The strips were composed of four 3 m * 60 m-sized plots. Every other plot was sown with meadow seed mixture and every other with grassland mixture. Data on predatory arthropods were collected during June-July using pitfall traps. There were more predatory arthropods on the fallow strips than on the barley fields. However, there were no differences in the abundance of predatory arthropods between the fallow strip types. Moreover, the abundance of predatory arthropods on adjoining cereal field did not differ between the strip types. The species composition of predatory arthropods differed statistically significantly between barley fields and the fallow strips, and almost significantly between the strip types. The results indicate that the fallow strips succeeded to provide favorable habitats for predatory arthropods, which may be due to food or shelter that they provide. The lack of clear differences on the abundance and species composition of predatory arthropods between the strip types can be explained by the fact that the vegetation of the strips was not yet fully established in the first year. Other reasons include the substantial differences between the two study fields. However, it seems that fallow strips have potential to provide biodiversity benefits, which have previously been observed in environmental fallow fields, and to enhance ecosystem services such as biological control.

Environmental fallows were added as a new voluntary scheme to the agri-environmental programme in Finland in 2009. The scheme aims, among other things, to benefit farmland biodiversity by providing resources for wildlife, and to protect soil from erosion and nutrient leaching. There are four types of environmental fallows: long-term grassland, game crop field, landscape plant field and meadow plant field. In 2010, they covered in total over seven per cent of the field area in Finland. It is important to evaluate the impacts of environmental fallows on environment and develop the scheme, in order to make effective use of resources put into it. The goals of this study were to find out, how important environmental fallows are for biodiversity in agricultural landscapes; what kind of fallows are the most valuable for biodiversity; and how the scheme should be developed. In order to answer these questions, the species richness and composition of vascular plants as well as vegetation structure were surveyed on environmental fallows in Uusimaa and North Ostrobothnia regions in summer 2010. Additionally, the vegetation of environmental fallows was compared with the vegetation of semi-natural meadows and field edges surveyed in another study. Information on the study fields, e. g. parcel history, establishment and management, was collected through a farmer questionnaire. Meadow fields that are sown with low-competitive seed mixtures proved to be the most species rich of the environmental fallow types. On grasslands and meadow fields, the fertility of soil was negatively correlated to the number of species. In species composition the four types of environmental fallows differed from each others as well as from seminatural meadows and field edges. So, the scheme probably enhances diversity in landscape scale. However, there were few rare plant species on environmental fallows. Today, the big majority of the environmental fallows are long-term grasslands, which reduces their positive impact on landscape and biodiversity. The value of environmental fallows both for nature, farmers and society can be enhanced by developing seed mixtures and establishment and management methods as well as offering more advice for the farmers.

Dead wood is an integral part for forest biodiversity in boreal forests. 5000 (25 %) of Finland’s forest dwelling species depend on decaying dead wood during their life cycle. The loss of dead wood in forest ecosystems has been identified as the number one reason for species endangerment. Conventional dead wood mapping is done by counting and measuring dead wood from field plots or by aerial laser scanning, both of which can be timeand resource consuming. UAV-borne aerial imaging provides cost effective and high spatial and temporal resolution in comparison to conventional aerial imaging and satellite-based imagery. A convolutional neural network (CNN) is a deep learning algorithm that has shown promise in recognizing spatial patterns. The strengths of CNNs are end-to-end learning and transfer learning. CNNs have been used for mapping both standing and downed dead wood. This thesis aims to further investigate the usability of a method based on detecting downed coarse woody debris (CWD) in a coniferous boreal forest from RGB UAV-imagery using a CNN based segmentation approach. CWD was digitized from an orthomosaic created from UAV-imagery. CWD was digitized from 68 square shaped 100 x 100 m virtual plots surrounding 9 m radius circular field plots. The plots were divided into 57 training plots for training the CNN and 11 test plots for evaluating the CNN model performance. The effect of different loss functions and the effect of data augmentation on model segmentation performance was evaluated. The number of digitized and segmented CWD objects were compared to the number of CWD objects from the field plots and the effect of canopy cover and basal area on the detection rate was assessed. The CNN model segmented 324 m ² of CWD from the 11 virtual test plots, from which 469 m ² of CWD had been digitized, resulting in a 69 % segmented-to-digitized CWD ratio. The model with the best performance achieved a precision of 0.722, a recall of 0.500, a Dice-score of 0.591, and an intersection over union (IoU) of 0.42. The sample size of field measured CWD from the field plots was relatively small and neither canopy cover nor basal area was found to have a statistically significant (P = 0.05) effect on CWD detection rate. For the digitized CWD detection rate, canopy cover had a p-value of 0.059 and basal area a p-value of 0.764. For the model segmented CWD detection rate, the p-values were 0.052 and 0.884, respectively.

The importance of multipurpose forests is increasing since forests can simultaneously provide solutions for climate change mitigation, biodiversity protection, and the diverse needs of humans. Therefore, forest management practices, various management objectives, and forest-related policies become necessary parts of sustainable forestry. A notable share of forest management decisions depends on the preferences and motives of private forest owners, and an increasing number of owners are interested in other than timber values in their properties. In addition, changes in forest ownership structures and varied use of forest management alternatives emphasize understanding private forest owners’ management motives. This thesis aims to examine Finnish private forest owners and their forest management preferences regarding the support of biodiversity values and interest in wood-material production for the needs of the bioeconomy. The survey data were collected in spring 2020 and included a choice experiment with three forest management schemes. Two hypothetical management contracts, timber-oriented, and nature-oriented strategies, were used as alternatives for the conventional management practices. The long-term effects from each management scheme were described with the changes in profit, biodiversity, carbon stock, climate change-induced damages, and one-time subsidy. The survey data were analyzed using conditional logit, random parameters logit, and latent class logit models. Forest owners consider biodiversity values and raw material supply for the bioeconomy important. However, the results suggest that, on average, forest owners may not be willing to accept the timber-oriented management contract, whereas the nature-oriented management strategy is generally a more preferred option. The latent class model reveals three forest owner types with different preferences and management objectives. The largest share of the respondents is identified as Traditionalists who prefer conventional management practices to other alternatives. They might be reluctant to change their strategies despite the level of subsidies. The smallest group, Environmentalists, is oriented towards environmental and natural values in their forests and would most likely use continuous cover forestry and safeguard biodiversity values. The monetary support does not necessarily impact their management decisions. The rest of the respondents are described as Profit-oriented owners who may be a potential target for various forest management contracts. They consider their property more often as financial security and could be motivated by compensation. The possibility for productive and viable forests has a considerable impact on forest owners’ management decisions. However, the results indicate broad interest in various management alternatives, and the segment-based analyses reveal different forest management objectives among the owners. Therefore, understanding the diversity between forest owners helps policymakers to target specific policy goals more effectively.

Land-use change stands behind the current biodiversity crisis and all it entails in terms of ecosystem services. Guinea-Bissau, in West Africa, is originally characterized by a forest- savanna mosaic biome. However, while savannas have long been planted with rice, both rice paddies and forest remnants are now being converted into cashew monocultures – the only cash crop in the country – at unprecedented rates. The ecological impact of such rapid change is largely unknown. To help fill this gap, we examined how three diversity metrics – rarefied species richness, abundance and composition – varied across forest remnants, cashew orchards and rice paddies for amphibians and reptiles in northern Guinea-Bissau. To do so, visual encounter surveys were carried across 21 sampling sites, seven of each habitat type. A total of 703 amphibian and 266 reptile encounters was recorded from nine and 14 taxa, respectively. The results show class-specific responses to habitat type. Amphibians’ diversity in forest remnants and cashew orchards was similar across all metrics, but rice paddies had a higher abundance and unique composition compared to forest remnants. Reptiles’ abundance was highest in cashew orchards and this habitat had a distinct composition, when compared to forest remnants. Rice paddies sustained both lower reptile richness and abundance. Overall, our results are not in agreement with the expected detrimental impacts of cashew expansion, which might be due to the still high heterogeneity of habitat types within the landscape. Rice paddies proved particularly important for amphibians, and for open-habitat reptiles, boosting overall species diversity. In face of the eminent habitat conversion, maintaining heterogeneous landscapes, including the persistence of both forest remnants and rice paddies, will allow minimizing biodiversity loss in West Africa.

Forests are vital for biodiversity and climate change mitigation through carbon storage and sequestration. In Finland, forests are the most important renewable natural resource and forestry is significant for the national economy. In addition, forests are the largest carbon sinks of the land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) sector and provide remarkable amount of biodiversity. The Finnish non-industrial private forest (NIPF) owners have significant potential to supply ecosystem services and have substantial opportunities regarding the forests, as 60% of the total area of forest land is privately owned. The NIPF owners may enhance the state of biodiversity and carbon sequestration by participating in the forest conservation programs. The regulations and inclusion of the LULUCF sector in the climate targets of the European Union (EU) and a 30% conservation target of land in the EU Biodiversity Directive are intensifying the pressure on further development of conservation programs. Hence, it is important to understand the behavior of the NIPF owners to motivate the program participation. The aim of the thesis is to get insight into the Finnish NIPF owners’ participation behavior in permanent forest conservation programs by using the choice experiment (CE) method. A novel conservation program is being planned in Finland and this survey processes it for the NIPF owners by using a survey questionnaire. The survey questionnaire was targeted to 5,010 NIPF owners and the overall response rate was 11.7%. The study provides analysis on specific non-participant group of protesters, attribute preferences of the conservation program as well as estimates of the willingness to accept (WTA) compensation for program participation. The forest conservation program is described with four attributes being the payment for biodiversity; payment for carbon sequestration; conduction of non-timber businesses and eligibility of the forest area. The sources behind preference heterogeneity regarding the conduction of non-timber businesses and eligibility of the forest area are examined using interactions in the econometric model. The results reveal that a significant share (77%) of serial non-participants are identified as protesters and should be excluded from the WTA estimates. Several socio-economic and attitudinal characteristics were found to statistically significantly influence on protest behavior. The probability to protest increases with e.g. older age, pensioners, female gender and renters for hunting club. Additionally, the protest behavior depends on a number of stated attitudinal statements. Using a binary logit model, the model estimates show that the WTA for program participation is considerably higher when protesters are included, being 16,032 €/ha and respectively 5,641 €/ha, when protesters are excluded. The results regarding the preferences reveal attitudinal and socio-economic aspects affecting statistically significantly on the program attribute of the eligibility of forest area. According to the analyses, the possibility to conduct non-timber businesses is rather irrelevant for the respondents. In addition, there are a few attitudinal factors that influence the preferences of the conduction of non-timber businesses which are statistically significant. However, none of the socio-economic factors regarding the preferences of the attribute are statistically significant. To our knowledge, this is the first study that aims to explain the sources behind protest behaviour as well as to investigate the conduction of non-timber businesses, in the context of permanent forest conservation program. The results provide novel information about protesters and preferences of program attributes of forest management requirements and conduction of non-timber businesses. The results may be useful for the development and targeting of voluntary forest policies and incentives as well as for the business development of organizations that provide services for the NIPF owners. Further, the results help recognizing protesters more easily and reducing protest behavior. To conclude, further studies on the objectives of protests in the context of permanent forest conservation program could be valuable. In addition, further examination on individual attribute level WTAs, could be useful to reveal detailed information of the program attributes of conduction of non-timber businesses and required management activities.

Iron-manganese (FeMn) concretions are found on soft sediment bottoms both in the deep sea and coastal sea areas, formed as a result of a combination of biogeochemical and microbial processes. It has been estimated that concretions occur at least in 11 % of the Finnish marine areas. Concretions form hard substrates on predominantly soft seafloors, and they are therefore suggested to increase geodiversity and habitat complexity of the seafloor. This has been found to correlate with biodiversity of the benthic fauna. Despite their widespread occurrence in the northern Baltic Sea, the ecological importance of FeMn concretions has been left unaddressed. In the recent assessment of threatened habitat types in Finland, concretion fields were classified as a data deficient habitat type. The aim of this study is to examine the role of FeMn concretions as habitats in the Baltic Sea ecosystem. Benthic biodiversity was investigated utilizing two approaches; the abundance of mobile fauna and sessile macrofauna were studied with point-dives. The data was compared to pre-existing data from similar soft bottoms where there are no observations of concretions, collected in the Finnish Inventory Programme for the Underwater Marine Environment (VELMU). Samples for sediment in-fauna were taken with a Van Veen Grab Sampler, and additional data was gathered also from Environmental Information System HERTTA (administered by Environmental Administration). The shape and quantity of concretions appear to affect the abundance of sediment in-fauna. Similarities to the invertebrate composition of soft sediment habitats depends of the soft sediment availability in the habitat, which is dependent on concretion shape and quantity. Crusts seem to affect the faunal composition more than spheroidal and discoidal concretions, as they offer the most complex habitats, significantly different from bare seafloors. Based on this study, the concretion fields should not necessarily be considered as just one habitat type, since the faunal composition appears to differ according to the shape of the concretions.

Agroforestry is a collective name for land-use systems and technologies where woody perennials are deliberately used on the same land-management units as agricultural crops and/or animals. Silvopasture is a type of agroforestry that integrates trees, livestock, and forage crops on the same piece of land. This topic is specifically interesting because silvopasture is already present in Finland, mostly in the form of traditional biotopes, despite these being endangered habitats. Agroforestry is also recognized by the Kyoto Protocol as an afforestation practice that has several advantages. These include environmental benefits, increased productivity, and animal welfare. However, there has been discussion on detrimental effects of animal presence to the trees as well. This research aims to explore the effects of silvopasture on trees, cattle, and the environment in South-western Finland traditional biotopes. Several individual criteria are assessed in three categories: woodland, animal performance and biodiversity. Data was collected on three farms on four pastures through field surveys and farmer interviews. The data is analyzed through multi criterium decision analysis (MCDA) with normalized values from agriculture and forestry to assess performance of silvopastures on three separate categories. Results from four pastures follow a somewhat similar pattern but variation occurs. High scores of forest indicators are reached in woodland category whereas biodiversity category results are lower. Silvopasture negatively affects forest regeneration but otherwise does not have adverse effects. Cattle performance is positive outcome whereas biodiversity category has room for improvement. To get more accurate and comprehensive results the research should be conducted during growing season and with several farms around Finland. However, silvopasture is a meaningful measure to diversify habitats, contribute to animal wellbeing and strengthen ecosystem services.

High rates of deforestation and forest degradation have led to urgent need of forest restoration, especially in tropical domain. In Southeast Asia, deforested areas are often occupied by Imperata grasses, which decelerates successional processes and prevent natural forest regeneration. Establishing plantations on Imperata grasslands based on fast-growing tree species can improve site conditions and foster natural regrowth of a forest. In the late 1980s in an experimental area in South Kalimantan, Indonesia, fast-growing plantations were established to study reforestation methods on Imperata grasslands. As a result, indigenous species began to regenerate naturally under the plantations and developed secondary forest patches and individual trees in the site. This study investigated how well the experimental site has been restored in 30 years, estimating the diversity of woody species and aboveground biomass (AGB). The results were compared with a reference forest, an old-growth forest nearby. In addition, the impact of plantation species selection was investigated. Diversity analyses were conducted with Shannon and Simpson’s indices, species accumulation curve and non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS). The AGB was estimated with mixed-species tree biomass allometric model, based on diameter at breast height (DBH) and species-specific wood density. In the restored site, the mean AGB was 165 Mg ha-1, while in the old-growth forest the mean AGB was 188.2 Mg ha-1, respectively. The mean species richness and Shannon index in the restored site were 14 and 3.6, while in the old-growth forest the mean species richness and Shannon index were 20 and 4.19. The results show that the AGB of the restored site had almost reached the AGB of the old-growth forest (87.7%), but the woody species diversity was still significantly lower in the restored site than in the old-growth forest. NMDS ordination plot described that the research sites differed in their species composition. In addition, the species composition between the sample plots were more similar in the oldgrowth forest than in the restored site. The AGB did not differ significantly in plantations stands of different nurse species but the mean species richness and Shannon index were significantly lower in G. arborea (12 and 1.9) than under A. mangium (15 and 2.4) or P. falcataria (20 and 2.6) plantation stands. These results indicate that with appropriate methods, Imperata grasslands can be restored in 30 years close to the pre-disturbance state in terms of structural characteristics, but the recovery of species diversity and composition takes longer. Nurse species selection affects the restoration outcome, when restoring tropical rainforests with fast-growing plantations.