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Project title

Grassland conservation across European landscapes protecting biodiversity and ecosystem services with ecological networks

Primary Funding Agency

Environmental Protection Agency

Co-Funding Organisation(s)

Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine (DAFM)

Lead Organisation

National University of Ireland Galway (NUIG)

Lead Applicant

Mike Gormally

Project Abstract

Permanent grasslands in Europe are the result of human-environment interactions within and outside of protected areas and make a disproportionately high contribution to the biodiversity and ecosystem services (ES) (e.g. carbon storage) of agricultural landscapes. However, abandonment, soil sealing, conversion to arable land, and intensification of grasslands are major challenges within protected areas, such as biosphere reserves, and outside (e.g. OECM - “other effective area-based conservation measures” - areas), thus threatening biodiversity and ES provision. A key strategy to counteract these developments is to adopt combined land sharing and land sparing approaches and to consider the landscape level for conservation planning (Grass et al., 2019, Leclère et al. 2020). Such a holistic strategy of conservation management (CM) of grasslands is purposefully arranged along a management intensity gradient in order to: i) create effective and resilient ecological networks that protect species and genetic diversity; ii) conserve soil organic carbon; and ii) facilitate forage production and other provisioning ES in multifunctional or agricultural working landscapes (e.g. Bennett et al., 2021, Manning et al. 2018), thereby searching for win-win situations for nature and society. A key challenge is that land-use decisions are made at the individual farm scale focusing on private values whereas biodiversity and ES outcomes, which often have public good characteristics, emerge at the landscape scale (e.g. Armsworth et al., 2012). Thus, spatial planning for resilient landscapes requires well developed social networks of interaction, incentives and governance strategies i.e., collaboration and coordination (e.g. Pascual et al. 2017). Current policies to overcome such obstacles often act on grassland properties in isolation, neglecting such landscape and multifunctional context. Policy leakage, i.e. shifting negative externalities of intensive agricultural production in space without contributing to a net improvement of biodiversity and ES, can also be observed in existing protected areas (Grass et al., 2019). Uncertain future conditions (e.g. global change) add further complexity to the planning of CM in protected areas. GreeNet contributes to managing this planning deficiency and corresponding research gaps by developing and assessing next generation resilient CMs and incentive schemes (e.g. market incentives and policies) that allow for a sustainable adaptive governance of permanent grasslands in protected areas today and in the future.

Grant Approved

�248,857.76

Research Hub

Natural Environment

Research Theme

n/a

Start Date

01/05/2023

Initial Projected Completion Date

01/04/2026