Download - Some examples of different landscape systems and their biodiversity potential

Some examples of different landscape systems and

their biodiversity potential

Friedrich Duhme*, Stephan Pauleit

Lehrstuhl fuÈr LandschaftsoÈkologie, Technische UniversitaÈt MuÈnchen, D-85350 Freising, Germany

Abstract

The Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) of the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED in Rio 1992)

presents a main challenge for the development of regional strategies for biodiversity conservation. If it is to be adopted

politically, then targets will have to be based on reliable documentation of the biotic `ingredients' of the different landscape

systems and moreover, targets have to be adapted to the regional socio-economic systems. Landscape systems were delineated

which are representative of the sequence of different land use and impact intensities in central Europe. In a ®rst test, these

systems were characterized by generally available biological and socio-economic data, in order to identify the conservation

performance of the dominant central European landscape systems. The results of this approach will be discussed with respect

to restoration needs, preservation measures and development proposals for the different central European landscape systems. It

can be shown that special attention for biodiversity conservation in central Europe has to be paid to the urban/suburban

landscapes because of their high biological diversity i.e. coverage of important sites for nature conservation and species

richness. In addition, the coupling of the ¯oristic data with a scheme of reproduction times for vegetation formations and

habitat types, helps to outline different packages of conservation action plans for sustainable regional development. # 1998

Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Biodiversity; Landscapes; Species; Development

1. Introduction

The Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) adopted by

the UN Conference on Environment and Development

(UNCED in Rio, 1992) requires implementation of

nature conservation targets into general planning and

policy-making in particular on a regional i.e. land-

scape-level if it is to be practically effective. European

countries are characterized by a patchwork of different

landscape systems that differ largely with respect to

their economic development. Thus, prospering urban

agglomerations need to be distinguished from old

industrialised regions, as do highly productive farming

areas from marginal areas, the latter being mainly

situated in mountain regions. European countries and

regions need, therefore, to be further differentiated

with respect to the dominance of these economic and

land use systems that urge for speci®c conservation

and development policies.

There have been several attempts towards classify-

ing European landscapes on ecological criteria as a

basis for regional nature conservation policies (Blank-

son and Green, 1991; Meeus, 1995; Klijn et al., 1995).

Landscape and Urban Planning 41 (1998) 249±261

*Corresponding author. Tel.: +49 8161 713712; fax: +49 8161

714427; e-mail: [email protected]

0169-2046/98/$19.00 # 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

P I I S 0 1 6 9 - 2 0 4 6 ( 9 8 ) 0 0 0 6 3 - 2

In addition, in order to achieve this objective, the

IUCN established a working group to elaborate a

Red List of threatened, valued landscapes in Europe

(Green et al., 1996).

Haber (1990), on the other hand, developed a

systems oriented classi®cation scheme. Here, land-

scape systems are grouped along a gradient of increas-

ing human impact from pristine, `self-controlled'

systems i.e. natural forests to urban-industrial systems

that entirely depend on human activities. A particular

advantage of this classi®cation is that it covers basi-

cally all factors of human and natural intervention in a

given geographical unit. Therefore, delineating these

landscape systems helps to identify both the natural

and anthropogenic `driving forces' within the land-

scape. In addition, the status of biodiversity can be

related to the development of these landscape systems

after the last glaciation in Europe (Fig. 1). Thus, the

species richness in central Europe is a result of the

actual mix of habitats both from remnants of pristine,

modi®ed natural, traditional as opposed to modern

farming and urban-industrial land use systems.

According to Fukarek and Henker (1987) some

40% of the ¯ora of Mecklenburg in the north-east

of Germany has been introduced by man and the

percentage of introduced plant species which are

endangered is even higher than with the indigenous

taxa (Fukarek, 1988). Most of these species closely

depend on speci®c land uses and management prac-

tices. Therefore, if the full range of biodiversity is

going to be preserved, the formalized high protection

measures in Nature Reserves or National Parks are not

assumed to be adequate and have to be complemented

by conservation policies for `normal' landscapes.

However, the conservational side effects of `normal'

landscape management practices are widely unknown.

At the same time quite a number of incentives and

®nancial support measures are launched for different

food and non-food production or set aside schemes

every year. Thus, it is essential to know the biotic

`ingredients' of different management practices along

the entire gradient from pristine to urban. On the

European scale higher aggregated informations of

complete spatial coverage need to be used both from

biological sciences and from socio-economic data sets

for this purpose.

The `Floristic Survey of Central Europe', the Bavar-

ian habitat mapping scheme and statistical yearbooks

were used in our study to link ecological and economic

systems. Five regions in Bavaria, which are represen-

tative for pristine to urban systems, were taken in a

®rst test as units of reference to examine their bio-

diversity status and subsequent potential. The results

of this approach will be discussed towards conserva-

tion performance of the different landscape systems,

their speci®cs will be interpreted concerning restora-

tion needs, preservation measures and development

options.

Fig. 1. Change of cover of the main landscape systems and of species richness during time (from: Duhme et al., 1997).

250 F. Duhme, S. Pauleit / Landscape and Urban Planning 41 (1998) 249±261

2. Materials and methods

Five test regions in Bavaria were selected with

reference to the NUTS 3 level of the EU hierarchy

of political units (`Landkreise') to represent the

sequence of landscape systems shown in Fig. 1.

The regions also cover different nature conservation

systems. Floristic data refer to one topographic map

within every region (scale 1:25 000):

� Freyung-Grafenau which includes the National

Park `Bayerischer Wald'. The `Bayerischer Wald'

is a mountain range (max. height: 1457 m) of

predominantly granites and gneiss which forms

the borderland between Bavaria and the Czech

Republic and is largely covered by conifer forests

in a more or less natural state. Agriculture consists

of small scale farming with a high proportion of

grasslands and of very marginal economic return.

� RhoÈn-Grabfeld, including the Bavarian part of the

Biosphere Reserve `RhoÈn' was selected as a typical

example of a mountain region with predominantly

extensive farming (mountain grasslands) mixed

with natural deciduous forests and bogs.

� Neustadt a.d. Waldnaab is also situated in the

northeastern borderland of Bavaria. The district

mainly belongs to the landscape unit `OberpfaÈlzer

Wald', a low mountain range (300±900 m). The

region can be characterized as a mix of large

managed forests and marginal to more intensive

forms of farming. The area is protected as a `Nature

Park', a category established mainly to preserve

landscapes for recreation.

� Dingolfing-Landau is a rural, mostly flat to rolling

countryside with some of the best agricultural soils

in Bavaria and offers best conditions for modern

agriculture (sugar beet, wheat).

� Pfaffenhofen is also a rural area with productive

soils. The hilly countryside is characterized by a

fine grained pattern of small fields, interspersed

with woodlands on hilltops and steep slopes. Pfaf-

fenhofen forms part of the largest hop growing area

of Europe and is situated on the very fringe of the

Munich agglomeration. However, we chose a topo-

graphic map which mainly lies outside the hop

growing area for comparison.

� Augsburg was chosen as a prospering urban system

of medium size with a population of about a quarter

of a million inhabitants. Augsburg is situated in the

floodplain of the river Lech, an alpine tributary to

the Danube. The city has changed from an old

trading and industrial town (e.g. heavy industries,

spinning mill factories) to modern commerce and

services.

From the summary ®gures in Table 1 and Fig. 2 the

wide range of economic and land use systems of the

selected regions can be seen. The differences are best

represented by socio-economic indicators such as

gross domestic income per inhabitant, average income

Table 1

Socio-economic parameters of the test regions. (Source: LSD, 1989, 1995)

Freyung-Grafenau RhoÈn-Grabfeld Neustadt/Waldnaab Dingolfing-Landau Pfaffenhofen Augsburg

National

Park

Biosphere

Reserve

Nature

Park

Modern

agric.

Small scale

agric. pattern

Urban/

suburban

Area in km2 984 1 022 1 429 878 759 147

Inhabitants 75 564 77 197 91 792 75 517 88 449 242 819

Pop. density/km2 77 76 64 86 116 1 650

Gross domestic income

(GDI) in mio. DM

1 951 2 545 2 607 3 836 7 663 15 438

GDI in DM per inh. 59 090 66 298 72 300 84 627 196 451 95 987

Employees 35 552 36 223 43 853 36 803 43 817 116 513

Net income/employee 29 667 30 216 30 638 35 633 37 749 32 656

Building land prices in

DM/m2

77 43 82 64 396 504

Agric. employees/100 ha 6.7 2.8 5.7 6.4 8.7 13.8

Gross value added from

agric. and forestry in DM/ha

563 603 769 1 327 1 483 3 315

F. Duhme, S. Pauleit / Landscape and Urban Planning 41 (1998) 249±261 251

per employee and land prices. Even in the rural areas

e.g., Bayerischer Wald agriculture is only of minor

economic importance today. Population density is

fairly low in the rural areas, except Pfaffenhofen

district, where settlement pressure has been high

during the last decade due to the close vicinity to

Munich (see parameters `land prices', `average

income'). Gross income represents particularly well

the strong gradient from the urban area to the Bayer-

ischer Wald.

Gross value added per hectare shows the different

conditions for agriculture and forestry. These range

from 600 DM for the Bayerischer Wald to some

1400 DM for Dingol®ng (sugar beet) and Pfaffenho-

fen (hops). In combination with the small size of the

farmsteads there is a strong tendency of land abandon-

ment and afforestation in the more marginal areas. The

high gross value added generated by agriculture in

Augsburg can be explained by the large area of

horticulture which supplies the urban area. The labour

intensity of agriculture as measured by employees per

hectare is, therefore, also highest in Augsburg. Due to

labour intensive hop cultivation the ®gure is also

rather high in the Pfaffenhofen district. The RhoÈn

district, on the other hand, is dominantly marked by

labour extensive agriculture such as sheep farming.

The ¯oristic survey of Bavaria provided by courtesy

of the Bavarian Agency of Environmental Protection

(cf. SchoÈnfelder and Bresinsky, 1990) included spe-

cies names, their Red List status for Bavaria and

overall numbers of species per quarter of topographic

maps (ca. 3418 ha each) and provided as a ®rst result

the species richness of each grid.

All endangered species were grouped into vegeta-

tion formations according to Sukopp et al. (1978) and

also coupled with a reproduction time scheme sug-

gested by Duhme et al. (1997). Both procedures are

not standard at the moment and thus rely to some

extent on personal judgement.

The Bavarian inventory of important sites for nature

conservation (ISNC) provides information on the

cover of habitat types for each reference district. These

again are linked with a reproduction time scheme

according to Haber and Duhme (1990), Table 2).

3. Results

The map of Bavaria given in Fig. 3 depicts the

¯oristic richness per topographical map as recorded

by the `Floristic Survey of Central Europe'. The map

locates the test areas within the general geographic

pattern of ¯oristic richness of the whole country

(Table 3).

Species richness is particularly high in the lime-

stone low mountain ranges in the central part of

Fig. 2. Land cover in the test regions. (Source: LSD, 1994)


Bavaria. However, with over 800 taxa per topogra-

phical map the city of Augsburg is similar rich in plant

species. Also, the urban areas of Munich and Nurem-

berg are among the most species rich areas in Bavaria.

The RhoÈn Biosphere Reserve also ranks among the

species rich areas. The regions selected to represent

natural landscapes as well as the intensive farming

areas (Bayerischer Wald, OberpfaÈlzer Wald, Dingolf-

ing, Pfaffenhofen) are somewhat species poor. More-

over, also the number and the percentage of

endangered plant species is far higher in the urban

system and the Biosphere Reserve than it is in the

National Park and the farmland areas.

Regardless of its causal background it may be

summarized:

1. There is a tendency for the richer the ¯oras to

contain a high number of endangered species.

2. The degree of human interference is not directly

correlated with species richness as the Augsburg

agglomeration is the most species rich test area.

3. Areas with strictly formalized conservation

measures like National Parks do preserve only a

limited number of endangered species as they

may be selected according to the assemblages of

species other than individuals. In a floristic survey

of the National Park alone, only 28 plant species

were recorded that are endangered according to the

Red List for Germany (Ammer and Utschick,

1986).

The loss of species which are now considered to be

endangered is highest in the area of the Nature Park

`̀ OberpfaÈlzer Wald'' due to intensi®cation of agricul-

ture and pond ®shery (Table 4). Thus, the landscape is

still aesthetically appealing because a characteristic

pattern of natural structures like forests and ponds

exists, however, in a degraded state. Although species

loss is also high in the urban agglomeration of Augs-

Table 2

Habitat types of the Bavarian habitat survey and their reproduction time (from: Haber and Duhme, 1990, changed)

Reproduction time

�5 years 5±30 years 30±100 years >100 years >500 years

Early successional herbs

and grasses, dry and wet

Small woodlots/hedgerows/

ext. orchards

! Mesophytic hard-wood

Ruderal vegetation Early successional

scrublands

Dwarf shrubs and

heathlands

Acidophytic broadleaf forests/

acidophytic pine forests

Scrubland ! Fresh forests of ravines

Thermophilic scrub

and forest edges

Wet forests

Alpine scrublands Montane mixed forests

Vegetation of walls Rocks and boulders ! Subalpine fir forests

Wetland scrub Regeneration of peat plots Raised bogs

Reeds and rushes/tall-herbs Fenlands Fenland forests

Freshwater veg./

free-floating veg.

Springs/natural

running waters

Floodplain forests/

riparian woody veg.

Grassy field verges Ext. cultivated lands

Rough meadows and

pastures

Calcareous dry meadows

Wet meadows Acidophytic dry meadows

Table 3

Plant species richness and endangered plant species of the test

areas (data from: Korneck and Sukopp, 1988)

No. of plant

taxa per map

Endangered

plant species

No. % of taxa

Freyung (National Park) 507 32 6.3

Neustadt (Nature Park) 399 8 2.0

RhoÈn (Biosphere Reserve) 745 68 9.1

Dingolfing-landau (agriculture) 581 26 4.5

Pfaffenhofen (agriculture) 557 28 5.0

Augsburg (urban) 832 105 12.6


burg due to town development, it is still safeguarding

more than three times the number of endangered

species of the National Park `̀ Bayerischer Wald''.

However, the RhoÈn Biosphere Reserve demonstrates

the best performance with less than 13% loss out of the

second largest number of endangered species. The loss

of endangered plant species is not especially con-

nected with any of the landscape systems. Interest-

ingly, in the National Park the total loss of endangered

plant species was slightly greater within the vegetation

formations from the `pristine' category.

According to the Red List of Germany (Korneck

and Sukopp, 1988) the bulk of endangered plant

species belong to habitat formations from pristine

and modi®ed natural landscapes such as bogs, fen-

lands, freshwaters, and extensively managed mea-

dows. Thus, the results from the test areas contrast

with the common appraisal of the conservation value

of geographical entities belonging to pristine or to

urban systems. The only result which is not surprising

is the minor conservation role of agricultural lands. A

closer look at the species level, focusing on habitat

Fig. 3. Plant species richness in Bavaria according to the floristic survey (state 1980; each grid represents one topographic map, scale

1:25 000, area ca. 137 km2) Source: MLU, 1994.


types and vegetation formations, helps to identify

where these losses mainly take place. Also by this

type of analysis landscape management practices may

be evaluated concerning their contribution to species

conservation and likewise concerning the efforts

needed to restore supporting habitats.

The overall number of plant species is equally

distributed among the different landscape systems.

The percentage of endangered plant species, however,

is highest in the modi®ed natural landscape systems,

followed by the agricultural and urban landscapes.

In the National Park endangered plant species

mainly concentrate in vegetation formations of wood-

lands and bogs. Both in the Biosphere Reserve and in

Augsburg the endangered species almost equally

belong to vegetation formations from pristine, mod-

i®ed natural and agricultural/urban habitats. In mod-

ern farming areas the overall small number of

endangered plant species mostly belong to typical

agricultural formations. (Table 5)

Some 75% of the endangered plant species of the

National Park, the Biosphere Reserve and the urban

system belong to vegetation types of reproduction

times>100 years. The corresponding ®gure is only

42% for Pfaffenhofen and 55% for Dingol®ng

(Table 6). Again, the most interesting result is that

the urban ¯ora has a high proportion of plant species

that can only be reproduced of moderate to long time

periods and thus need strict conservation and careful

management.

The test regions differ largely both with respect to

the absolute area and the relative cover of important

sites for nature conservation (ISNC). As the forests of

the National Park were only partly surveyed, we

included ®gures from another study to obtain the cover

of the woodland areas in the National Park (source:

Ammer and Utschick, 1986, only woodland areas

which were valued as `ecologically important', ca.

40% of the National Park forests). Fig. 4 refers to the

political districts as the data from this study could not

be disaggregated to topographical maps.

Table 4

Loss of endangered plant species in the test areas between 1945±

1980

No. of endangered plant species

Before

1945

1980 % of

loss

Freyung (National Park) 42 32 23.8

Neustadt (Nature Park) 19 8 57.9

RhoÈn (Biosphere Reserve) 78 68 12.8

Dingolfing-Landau (agriculture) 36 26 27.8

Pfaffenhofen (agriculture) 35 28 20.0

Augsburg (urban) 179 105 41.3

Fig. 4. Cover of important sites for nature conservation (ISNC) in the test regions classified by landscapes systems.


The district which includes the National Park is the

only one where the coverage of ISNCs attains a

frequently proposed target value for nature conserva-

tion areas of 10% (e.g. Haber, 1990; Duhme et al.,

1994). With some 9% also the RhoÈn-Grabfeld district

comes close to this value. The habitat cover is also

relatively high in the city of Augsburg whereas the

main de®cits exist in the agricultural landscapes where

the cover of ISNCs is below 3%.

If the coverage of ISNC is compared with the

¯oristic richness of the test regions then in tendency

the same trends can be observed i.e. the increasing

percentage of ISNCs goes in parallel with species

richness. However, two exceptions have to be stated:

(a) the Bayerischer Wald district which includes the

National Park is comparatively species poor in relation

to the high coverage of ISNCs, whereas (b) it seems

that the urban system is in particular ef®cient in this

respect. Interestingly, ISNCs from `pristine' habitat

types predominate in Augsburg.

The relation between the habitats from different

landscape systems mainly changes along the gradient

Table 5

Frequency of endangered taxa in the different vegetation formations (source: floristic survey of central Europe)

Vegetation

formation

Reproduction

time (in years)

Bayerische

Wald

RhoÈn Oberpf.

Wald

Dingolfing Pfaffenhofen Augsburg

Pristine 45.0 31.7 57.7 9.5 25.0 28.2

Halophytes �30

Coastal dunes >100

Vegetation of rocks >500

Alpine vegetation >500 1.7 1.2

Springs >500 3.3 2.4

Oligotr. mires and fenland forests >500 15.0 12.7 19.2 16.7 12.4

Oligotr. freshwaters >500 0.8 7.7 2.4

Wet forests >500 3.3 6.3 11.5 2.1 4.7

Mesoph. dec. and fir forests >500 11.7 7.9 3.8 4.8 4.2 4.7

Sil. broadleaf and conifer forests >500 10.0 1.6 7.7 4.8 2.1 2.9

Modified natural 35.0 38.1 26.9 33.3 12.5 37.1

Dwarf shrub heath and mat grass >100 18.3 8.7 15.4 2.4 5.9

Dry meadows >100 6.7 10.3 4.8 2.1 18.2

Thermophilic herbs >100 11.1 11.9 2.1 7.6

Tall-herbs and scrub 30±100 3.3 1.6 14.3 2.4

Thermophilic scrub >100 6.7 6.3 11.5 8.3 2.9

Agric. and urban 20.0 30.2 23.1 57.1 62.5 34.7

Annual hygrophytes �30 0.6

Arable weeds �30 5.0 11.1 7.7 14.3 29.2 5.3

Nitrophilous herbs �30 1.7 1.6 2.4 2.4

Creeper comm. �30 0.8 2.9

Couch grasslands �30 1.6 2.4

Pond floors �30 11.5 4.8 8.3 1.2

Eutrophic freshwaters 30±100 5.0 2.4 4.8 14.6 7.1

Wet meadows 30±100 3.3 7.9 3.8 11.9 6.3 14.1

Mesotrophic meadows

and pastures

30±100 5.0 4.8 16.7 4.2 0.6

Total frequencya 60 26 126 42 48 170

Red List species 32 8 68 26 28 105

aSpecies are weighted by their occurrence in the four quarters of the topographic map, i.e. a species that was recorded in four quarters has a

frequency of 4 and so on.

Bold characters: frequency>10%.


from the National Park district with predominantly

`pristine' habitats to the agricultural landscape sys-

tems. The RhoÈn Biosphere comprises extensive rem-

nants of historical land uses such as hay meadows

whereas the intensive farming areas are particularly

de®citary in typical ISNCs of agricultural landscape

systems.

Finally from Fig. 5 it can be seen that the National

Park district ± as can be expected ± but also the urban

systems are characterized by a high percentage of

habitats that can only be re-established in long time

spans.

As a ®rst step towards linking the habitat pro®les

with socio-economic indicators Fig. 6 shows the

inverse relationship between habitat cover in farm-

lands and gross value added from agriculture per

hectare. Agricultural landscapes that are marginal in

economic terms thus have to be considered as being

particularly ef®cient for nature conservation. In

Freyung-Grafenau the economic return from agricul-

ture and forestry per hectare is about one third as

compared with the Pfaffenhofen district. Important

habitats for nature conservation (ISNC), however,

cover over 12% of agricultural lands in Freyung-

Table 6

Percentage of endangered species in the test regions grouped by reproduction times

Reproduction time Percentage of endangered speciesa

(Years) Bayerische Wald RhoÈn Oberpf. Wald Dingolfing Pfaffenhofen Augsburg

�30 6.6 15.1 19.2 23.9 37.5 12.4

30±100 16.7 15.1 11.5 21.4 20.8 15.3

>100 31.7 36.5 27.0 33.3 12.5 34.7

>500 45.0 33.3 42.3 21.4 29.2 37.6

Total frequencya 60 126 26 42 48 160

Red List species 32 68 8 26 28 105

aSpecies are weighted by their occurrence in the four quarters of the topographic map, i.e. a species that was recorded in four quarters has a

frequency of 4 and so on.

Fig. 5. Reproduction times of important sites for nature conservation (ISNC) in the test regions.


Grafenau whereas the ISNC cover drops below 2% in

farmlands in Pfaffenhofen.

4. Discussion

Figs. 7 and 8 summarize the information on ¯ora

and habitat coverages for the selected test regions.

Grouping the ¯ora into vegetation formations provides

the key to describe the subsystems of the landscapes in

focus. Thus we can investigate by which land uses and

management practices the landscape systems are char-

acterized and how long it will take to reproduce the

biological assets of these landscapes.

The study con®rms the speci®cs of the different

landscape systems. Also, the results show that strictly

protective measures such as Nature Reserves and

National Parks can preserve the biodiversity of central

Europe only to a limited extent as measured by species

richness alone. A purely conservation approach will

not suf®ce to safeguard and enhance biodiversity but

has to be complemented by habitat renewal schemes

for `normal' landscapes. Furthermore, a recent study

on habitat decay in large reserves as opposed to

unprotected areas (Sinclair et al., 1995) suggests that

signi®cant habitat changes and degradation take place

even in strictly protected areas.

The results show that cultural landscapes such as the

RhoÈn Biosphere Reserve are more ef®cient with

respect to the overall ¯oristic richness, number of

endangered plant species and coverage of ISNC.

Therefore, the Biosphere Reserve will play an impor-

tant role to conserve heritage landscapes which are

characterized by the mix of pristine, modi®ed natural

and farming systems and biota.

In the short term, rural areas characterized by

intensive farming such as the Dingol®ng-Landau

and the Pfaffenhofen districts can contribute to bio-

diversity mainly by promoting and reestablishing the

typical farmland ¯ora (and fauna) from arable lands,

pastures, ®eld verges and hedgerows. At a regional

scale targets will have to be ®xed within conservation

plans to achieve a minimum recruitment and connec-

tivity of habitats e.g., a coverage of 10% of hegerows

in small-scale farming areas (see Duhme et al., 1994).

As the surveys show, intensive farming areas almost

completely lack habitats and (endangered) species

from `pristine' and `modi®ed natural' landscapes.

However, the ¯oras from before 1950 reveal that many

of these species were still present at that period.

Reestablishment of natural woodlands and restoration

of bogs, fenlands and freshwaters, therefore, has to be

considered as a long term task for rural areas. Land-

scapes like the OberpfaÈlzer Wald will be ®rst candi-

Fig. 6. Relationship between coverage of important sites for nature conservation (ISNC) and economic performance of agriculture and

forestry.


dates for this because they still offer a wide range of

habitat structures like forests, meadows and ponds

(Fig. 2, Table 6), although in a degraded state.

The high biological diversity of the urban system

merits particular attention. While it is well known that

large cities and towns contain a rich ¯ora (e.g. Gilbert,

1989; Wittig, 1993) special concern has mostly been

given to urban speci®cs e.g. adventitious plants from

warmer climatic regions that can only thrive in the

urban core areas. However, the results of our study

suggest that urban agglomerations like the Augsburg

area especially accommodate a vast number of species

and habitats from `pristine' and `modi®ed natural'

landscape systems which have become highly endan-

gered or extinct in modern farming landscapes. Rem-

nants of old woodlands, dry haymeadows but also

large wastelands are particularly to be found in the

suburban areas of cities and towns. Partly woodlands

were protected e.g., as game reserves in earlier times

or were converted into parks but many sites of nature

conservation interest also survived within the urban

fabric due to the patchiness and the different grain of

urban land uses. The diversity of urban land uses and

structures further add to the richness of the urban ¯ora.

Therefore, the urban areas can signi®cantly contribute

to biodiversity preservation and appropriate policies

and instruments are required to achieve this task.

Tentative reproduction times of the different vege-

tation formations and habitat types indicate how much

and by what means landscape restoration can be

achieved in the foreseeable future (30±100 years).

In this ®rst test, we documented the ¯oristic assets

still present in the study areas. Historical records, on

the other hand, can provide a plausible reference for

the biodiversity potential of the landscape systems.

Thus, the well documented ¯oras from before 1950 i.e.

the peak of biodiversity can serve for this purpose.

Again, grouping the ¯ora into the different compart-

ments of human activities by means of vegetation

formations and habitat types will help to identify

Fig. 7. Floristic profiles of the test regions (figures in parentheses refer to: no. of plant species/no. of endangered plant species/no. of

endangered plant species which have become extinct since 1945).


speci®c options for biodiversity preservation and

development within the different landscape systems.

Furthermore, with complete spatial coverage it will

be feasible to determine which species will be of

special concern in single regions due to their limited

distribution.

Gross value added from agriculture per hectare is a

promising parameter to link economy with biodiver-

sity issues. However, a more detailed review will be

needed to establish the relationship between economic

returns and biodiversity performance of different agri-

cultural production systems and crops. This will help

to assess (a) the direct economic bene®ts of a speci®c

production system or crop, and (b) the ®nancial sub-

sidies required to establish production systems needed

from a biodiversity point of view. Moreover, (c) also

indirect bene®ts need to be taken into account e.g.,

aesthetic upgrading of landscapes by traditional agri-

cultural land uses.

Finally, we would like to stress that species richness

is only one aspect of biodiversity, however, an impor-

tant one. Following Dansereau (1997), landscape sys-

tems will also need to be assessed by ecodiversity ± the

richness of ecotopes/habitats and sociodiversity ± the

location of partners in ecosystemic strategies. As

Dansereau points out, there need not be always a

direct relationship between these different approaches

to understand diversity. Thus, strategies and targets for

biodiversity conservation will have to be differentiated

according to scale as well as the natural and the socio-

economic setting. The speci®c role of the different

landscape systems and their inherent driving forces

then need to be evaluated accordingly.

The main focus of this paper, however, was to show

how the existing information based ¯oristic data can

be effectively used to derive speci®c strategies for

different landscape systems.

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the kind permission of the Bavar-

ian Environmental Protection Agency to use the data

from the Floristic Survey of Central Europe and from

the habitat inventory for our study. We would also like

to thank the anonymous referee and the participants of

the IALE Concerence on `Perspectives of Rural Land-

Fig. 8. Habitat profiles of the test regions (coverage of important sites for nature conservation).


scapes in Europe', PaÈrnu, Estonia, 1996 for their

valuable comments on the paper.

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