TY  - JOUR
A1  - Langhammer, Maria
A1  - Grimm, Volker
T1  - Mitigating bioenergy-driven biodiversity decline
BT  - a modelling approach with the European brown hare
JF  - Ecological modelling : international journal on ecological modelling and engineering and systems ecolog
N2  - The cultivation of energy crops leads to direct and indirect land use changes that impair the biodiversity of the agricultural landscape. In our study, we analyse the effects of mitigation measures on the European brown hare (Lepus europaeus), which is directly affected by ongoing land use change and has experienced widespread decline throughout Europe since the 1960s. Therefore, we developed a spatially explicit and individual-based ecological model to study the effects of different landscape configurations and compositions on hare population development. As an input, we used two 4 x 4 km large model landscapes, which were generated by a landscape generator based on real field sizes and crop proportions and differed in average field size and crop composition. The crops grown annually are evaluated in terms of forage suitability, breeding suitability and crop richness for the hare. In six mitigation scenarios, we investigated the effects of a 10 % increase in the following measures: (1) mixed silphie, (2) miscanthus, (3) grass-clover ley, (4) alfalfa, (5) set-aside, and (6) general crop richness. All mitigation measures had significant effects on hare population development. Compared to the base scenario, the relative change in hare abundance ranged from a factor of 0.56 in the grass-clover ley scenario to-0.16 in the miscanthus scenario. The mitigation measures of mixed silphie, grass-clover ley and increased crop richness led to distinct increases in hare abundance in both landscapes ( > 0.3). The results show that both landscape configuration and composition have a significant effect on hare population development, which responds particularly strongly to compositional changes. The increase in crop diversity, e.g., through the cultivation of alternative energy crops such as mixed silphie and grass-clover ley, proves to be beneficial for the brown hare.
KW  - agent-based modelling
KW  - mitigation measures
KW  - agriculture
KW  - European brown
KW  - hare
KW  - land-use change
KW  - Lepus europaeus
Y1  - 2020
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2019.108914
SN  - 0304-3800
SN  - 1872-7026
VL  - 416
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Amsterdam
ER  -