Characteristic evaluation of biodiversity in economic grassland small structured areas: Methodological studies of agri-environmental programs

Evaluation of Plant Species Diversity in Grasslands in Smallstructured Landscapes - A Methodological Study for Agri-environmental Schemes Result-oriented agri-environmental schemes provide a more effective conservation of biodiversity in agricultural landscapes than action-oriented programmes, the latter currently being recommended for farming practices with positive ecological impact. Their implementation requires target species which indicate biodiversity as well as a simple sampling method. Therefore, the aim of this study was to examine a list of target species for the assessment of plant biodiversity in meadows and to develop a suitable method to record these species. Survey methods with different accuracy were tested on 52 grassland sites in two distinct regions of Bavaria. Due to their close correlation with the total number of species, the number of target species proved to be a good indicator of biodiversity. Transects provided reliable results in detecting the target species, and could be performed easily and quickly. For the implementation on grassland parcels with a diagonal < 200 m transects are recommended with a length of 100 m along the longest diagonal. Sites with at least seven target species along this transect are considered as species-rich and eligible for funding.