Gustafson, T., 2006. Bird communities and vegetation on Swedish wet meadows – importance of management regimes and landscape composition. Doctor's dissertation. Wet meadows in Sweden currently depend on management by grazing to maintain habitats for various breeding and migrating birds. However, due to ceased cattle farming management by mowing could be an option for restoration and conservatio...

When local resource users detect, understand, and respond to environmental change they can more effectively manage environmental resources. This article assesses these abilities among artisanal fishers in Roviana Lagoon, Solomon Islands. In a comparison of two villages, it documents local resource users' abilities to monitor long-term ecological change occurring to seagrass meadows near their c...

Ecological restoration is one of the most promising strategies to combat historical wetland losses caused by land use changes. Restored areas are ideal sites study plant succession and changes in ecosystem functions over time. However, little known about influence on along environmental stress gradients. Knowing processes mechanisms driving time contrasting abiotic conditions might provide new ...

Agri-environment schemes are the most widely adopted political measure to maintain and restore farmland biodiversity in Europe. However, abiotic and biotic factors often limit the success of ecological restoration. Among the biotic factors, the size of the local and regional species pool is a major constraint. This is only well documented for plants. We therefore wanted to know if a small regio...

List of papers This thesis is based on the following papers, which will be referred to in the text by their Roman numerals. Effects of intensified management of hay-meadows on population dynamics of Succisa pratensis. Manuscript. Intensified management affects population growth differently in the two perennial herbs Hypochoeris maculata and Polygala amarella. Manuscript. Artificial dispersal as...

1 Corresponding author: skercher@wisc.edu; (608) 238-4673; fax: (608) 262-7509 ABSTRACT: Twelve wet meadows in Dane County, Wisconsin showed vegetation patterns that correlate with hydrologic disturbance and presence of a clonal invasive grass, Phalaris arundinacea L., at two scales, 4500-m2 (0.45 ha) “sites” and 1-m2 plots. Sites with indicators of hydrologic disturbance had lower species rich...

Lowland meadow irrigation used to be widespread in Central Europe, but has largely been abandoned during the 20th century. As a result of agri-environment schemes and nature conservation efforts, meadow irrigation is now being re-established in some European regions. In the absence of natural flood events, irrigation is expected to favour fauna typical of lowland wet meadows. We analysed the ef...

Spatial properties of landscapes modify the abundance and diversity of most animal assemblages in ways that need to be understood to plan and implement conservation initiatives, and evaluate their effectiveness. Seascape context (i.e. the spatial arrangement of ecosystems) mediates the effects of reserves on fish abundance, species richness and ecological processes in shallow coral reef and man...