BiodivERsA Resilience of marginal grasslands and biodiversity management

Marginal grasslands in mountain communities have, due to natural conditions and long-term influence from farming and pastoralism, developed valuable biodiversity - they are biodiversity hot-spots. In the light of societal change as well as climate change we need more knowledge regarding the vulnerability or the resilience of such areas. This is investigated in the EU-Project REGARDS. A special focus is given to multi-level governance structures in this respect. Three case areas have been studied: To mountain communities in Lautaret, France, one community in the Stubai-valley in Austria, and Oppdal in Norway. Interviews have been undertaken with farmers, public managers, advisory bodies and tourism actors in Oppdal. Results show that Oppdal still has an open cultural landscape where the open land is farmed or used as pasture. The situation is different in commons in the forest and mountain areas where less animals grazing leads to increased bush encroachment. Oppdal municipality is a winner when it comes to receiving agri-environmental grants. This is due to an active farming community but also the departments of agriculture and environment at the municipal administration actively supporting and advising farmers in this respect. Given that Oppdal is a municipality with a long tourism history, employment in tourism has been an extra financial leg for agrarian households. However, tourism might also be a tempting exit option for farmers. Farmers involved in sheep farming have a strong and growing professional environment in Oppdal while the dairy farmers have become fewer. This s bad news for some types of landscape management schemes where grazing from both sheep and cows is important to maintain a specific biodiversity. Various experts from the three countries have been consulted through a Delphi-approach; that is in total three rounds of questionnaires presented for the same group of experts (managers, advisors, researchers etc) where each round provides some preliminary results from the project and asks for the experts elaborations. Regarding what it takes to uphold such valuable landscapes as in the study areas in the future, the Delphi shows that the most important factor is to keep the farming communities viable and try to enhance inhabitants' feeling of Identity and belonging. The most important economic strategy is to focus on direct marketing of agrarian products and develop agri-tourism, while the most threathening factors are global markets and depopulation. Changing agrarian practices changes the landscape. The most obvious changes reported from the experts in all countries is bush encroachment or re-growth of forest in previous open farmed or grazed land. In terms of what measures is needed to prevent or slow-down this development the experts agree that positive measures (economic support, advice etc) is better than restrictions. To increase the status of farming and the landscape of mountain farming communities is important. All experts agree on the importance of farmers taking part in the development or improvement of measures.

European marginal grasslands are biodiversity hot spots owing to ecological constraints, biophysical heterogeneity, and centuries of agriculture. Currently it is not clear whether these unique systems are vulnerable to ongoing environmental, socio-economi c and political changes, or if they have developed a high resilience over their history of co-evolution between humans and ecosystems. In the latter case the limits to this resilience are unknown, and their prediction hazardous. This uncertainty lies larg ely in the poor knowledge of resilience mechanisms of both the ecological and human sub-systems, as well as those underpinning robustness or vulnerability of the entire system coupled through land management decisions and ecosystem services. REGARDS aims to unravel the mechanisms underpinning resilience of marginal grassland systems to global environmental and social change in order to enhance socio-ecological resilience from farm to regional level. Studies will be undertaken in mountain grassland sites i n Austria, France and Norway, where contrasted biophysical and human situations make it possible to explore complementary dimensions of socio-ecological resilience. The project is organized in six work packages where the first three will address plant fun ctional diversity, climate and management, and an historical analysis over the last 60 years used as a basis for quantifying landscape functional structure and its effects on ecosystem services. WP 4 implies an assessment of how local, regional, national and EU programs affect farmers responses and resilience, accounting for the multiple factors influencing their decisions. A three-round Delphi inquiry will be undertaken. WP 5 consist of a comparison of the study sites. WP 6 will focus on future scenarios through a participative scenario-based approach involving key local and regional stakeholders and decision makers.