The role of protected areas in mitigating plant biodiversity loss in Germany

• Applicant: Dr. Ingmar Staude
• Subject Area: Ecology and Biodiversity of Plants and Ecosystems
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 552574450

Protected areas are foundational to national conservation strategies worldwide, and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework has recently adopted a new target to protect 30% of land by 2030. However, while seemingly counter-intuitive, the true effectiveness of protected areas in conserving biodiversity remains poorly quantified, particularly for plant species. A recent meta-analysis on the impacts of conservation actions finds that protected areas have a net positive effect on species, but their exhaustive literature synthesis lists not a single study investigating protected area effectiveness for plant species, highlighting a clear and urgent research gap. Germany, with over 30% of its territory protected stands as a leading example in achieving global conservation goals like the "30 by 30" initiative. Despite this, Germany faces significant challenges in preserving ist plant biodiversity, with 70% of plant species experiencing declines and about 30% of the native flora listed as endangered. Recent initiatives to amalgamate monitoring studies at both federal and state levels, alongside long-term vegetation resurveys, make Germany an ideal case study for assessing the potential for an extensive protected area network to conserve plant biodiversity over time. This proposal will leverage nationwide distributional change data combined with fine-scale plot-level data and analyze the temporal trends in the persistence of at-risk plant species, comparing their changes within and outside protected areas. We will elucidate the role of global change drivers, such as nitrogen deposition rates, natural succession, plant invasions, climate change and land-use change, and their interactions in driving species decline and assemblage changes inside and outside protected areas, considering geographic and habitat-specific variations. Additionally, we will quantify the extent to which protected areas can accommodate shifts in plant distributions. Empirical evidence is essential to support the ambitious global area-based conservation targets. By addressing these research gaps, this project hopes to provide a nuanced understanding of how area-based conservation interacts with global change drivers to safeguard at-risk plant diversity in Central Europe.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants