The effects of land-use and structural heterogeneity on biodiversity: A new assessment method using cost-effective remote sensing and fine-scale pattern analysis

• Antragstellerin: Professorin Dr. Kerstin Wiegand
• Fachliche Zuordnung: Ökologie und Biodiversität der Pflanzen und Ökosysteme
• Förderung: Förderung von 2008 bis 2014
• Projektkennung: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Projektnummer 61007207

Based on exemplary high-resolution aerial images, we have previously shown that biodiversity of vascular plants in the forest understorey does strongly correlate with the structural complexity of canopy gaps. This is feasible because “understorey light can be used as a single synthetic factor grouping less apparent microclimatic variations” (Barbier et al. 2008). However, so far it is unknown how understorey biodiversity responds to available gap structures when confounding trans-regional effects such as differences in soil or climate come into play. Likewise, little is known about the confounding effects from different tree species compositions on the response of understorey plants to gap light or how large sample areas must be to cause meaningful correlations between gap structures and biodiversity. In this project we intend to investigate these questions based on gap information from orthophotos that are available for vegetation recordings of 1500 grid plots in three regions of Germany. We will use soil data and tree recordings from forest inventories of these grid plots in the three exploratories to investigate in detail the relationship between understorey diversity and gap structure. This analysis will help to better understand the relative importance of gap structure, soil, and tree species composition for understorey plant diversity. As a further deliverable, our assessment method of biodiversity may be used as a cost-effective ‘coarse-filter approach’ to conservation because orthophotos are available at most forest administrations. We consider this as substantial benefit because the escalating loss of biodiversity requires efficient large-scale evaluations of land-use impact on diversity.

• DFG-Verfahren: Infrastruktur-Schwerpunktprogramme
• Teilprojekt zu: SPP 1374: Biodiversitäts-Exploratorien