home    about    browse    search    latest    help 
Login | Create Account

Plant communities of field boundaries in Finnish farmland

Tarmi, Sanna; Tuuri, Hannu and Helenius, Juha (2002) Plant communities of field boundaries in Finnish farmland. Agricultural and Food Science in Finland, 11 (2), pp. 121-135.

[thumbnail of tarmi.pdf]
Preview
PDF - Published Version - English
560kB

Document available online at: http://www.mtt.fi/afs/pdf/afsf11_121.pdf


Summary

To determine the importance of field boundary habitats for farmland biodiversity, we surveyed a total of 193 boundaries from four climatically and agriculturally dissimilar regions in Finland. We measured the current plant species richness and composition of the boundaries, and based on the differences in vegetation characteristics, we describe six boundary types. The observed plant species were mainly indicators of fresh to wet soils and moderate to rich mineral nitrogen content. The most frequent species were tall, perennial monocots and dicots indicating the high productivity of thevegetation. Moreove, herbicide-tolerant species were common. No species rare for Finland were found.In animal husbandry regions, the most frequent species were sown grassland species and typical grassland weeds. In cereal production regions, fast-spreading root weeds tolerant of herbicides were the most frequent. Mean species richness was highest in the cluster Ca-lamagrostis-Phalaris (24 species (s)/boundary (b)), which we considered as representative of moist sites with some disturbance by agricultural practices. Most species-poor were the clusters Elymus-Anthriscus (14 s/b)and Elymus-Cirsium (16 s/b),both found predominantly in cereal production regions in southern Finland. Our results suggest that the biodiversity value of boundaries is lowest in the most intensive cereal production areas and highest in areas of mixed farming.


EPrint Type:Journal paper
Keywords:plant communities, correspondence analysis, boundaries, diversity, species richness
Subjects: Environmental aspects > Biodiversity and ecosystem services
Research affiliation: Finland > Univ. Helsinki
Finland > Luke Natural Resources Institute
ISSN:1795-1895
Related Links:http://www.mtt.fi/english
Deposited By: Koistinen, Riitta
ID Code:16743
Deposited On:09 Feb 2010 13:19
Last Modified:12 Apr 2010 07:43
Document Language:English
Status:Published
Refereed:Peer-reviewed and accepted

Repository Staff Only: item control page

Downloads

Downloads per month over past year

View more statistics