Speaker
Description
To determine the winner and loser species of biodiversity change, systematic monitoring data are needed that cover all habitat types, extend into the last century, and are geographically representative. However, such data are lacking, but species trends might be obtained from so far untapped data. Here, we make use of plant species occurrences records that were recorded in habitat mapping programs, with the aim to derive species trends. In Germany, almost all federal states carried out such programs over the past decades, mapping all protected habitat types while also recording plant species occurrences within those habitats. Based on such data, we derived temporal trends within the three federal states Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg, and Baden-Württemberg from 1977-2021. In addition to trends across all habitat types in each state we also derived trends within broadly defined habitat types. We found consistent negative trends across all states for species that prefer heaths and semi-natural grasslands, meadows and pastures, and coastal and marine habitats. Consistent positive trends across all states were found for species that prefer scrubs, copses and field hedges, and forests. Furthermore, species mostly showed negative trends within their preferred habitat type, while shrub encroachment occurred within most habitat types. We however also found some regional variation in trends between the states. Overall, the mostly consistent trends of species groups across the states point to common drivers of biodiversity change across the studied parts of Germany. Our findings are a conservative estimate of change, as our study included almost exclusively sites that kept their protection status over the study period. Thus, more and stronger species trends can be expected for sites that experienced severe habitat degradation
| Status Group | Doctoral Researcher |
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