TY  - JOUR
A1  - van zanten, Boris T.
A1  - Zasada, Ingo
A1  - Koetse, Mark J.
A1  - Ungaro, Fabrizio
A1  - Hafner, Kati
A1  - Verburg, Peter H.
T1  - A comparative approach to assess the contribution of landscape features to aesthetic and recreational values in agricultural landscapes
JF  - Ecosystem Services : Science, Policy and Practice
N2  - The importance of cultural ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes is increasingly recognized as agricultural scale enlargement and abandonment affect aesthetic and recreational values of agricultural landscapes. Landscape preference studies addressing these type of values often yield context-specific outcomes, limiting the applicability of their outcomes in landscape policy. Our approach measures the relative importance of landscape features across agricultural landscapes. This approach was applied in the agricultural landscapes of Winterswijk, The Netherlands (n=191) and the Markische Schweiz, Germany (n=113) among visitors in the agricultural landscape. We set up a parallel designed choice experiment, using regionally specific, photorealistic visualizations of four comparable landscape attributes. In the Dutch landscape visitors highly value hedgerows and tree lines, whereas groups of trees and crop diversity are highly valued in the German landscape. Furthermore, we find that differences in relative preference for landscape attributes are, to some extent, explained by socio-cultural background variables such as education level and affinity with agriculture of the visitors. This approach contributes to a better understanding of the cross-regional variation of aesthetic and recreational values and how these values relate to characteristics of the agricultural landscape, which could support the integration of cultural services in landscape policy. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
KW  - Cultural ecosystem services
KW  - Landscape preferences
KW  - Comparative study
KW  - Landscape aesthetics
KW  - Landscape values
KW  - Agricultural landscape
Y1  - 2016
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2015.11.011
SN  - 2212-0416
VL  - 17
SP  - 87
EP  - 98
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Amsterdam
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Heim, Olga
A1  - Lenski, Johannes
A1  - Schulze, Jelena
A1  - Jung, Kirsten
A1  - Kramer-Schadt, Stephanie
A1  - Eccard, Jana
A1  - Voigt, Christian C.
T1  - The relevance of vegetation structures and small water bodies for bats foraging above farmland
JF  - Basic and applied ecology : Journal of the Gesellschaft für Ökologie
N2  - Bats are known to forage and commute close to vegetation structures when moving across the agricultural matrix, but the role of isolated landscape elements in arable fields for bat activity is unknown. Therefore, we investigated the influence of small isolated ponds which lie within arable fields close to vegetation structures on the flight and foraging activity of bats. Additionally, we compared species-specific activity measures between forest edges and linear structures such as hedgerows. We repeatedly recorded bat activity using passive acoustic monitoring along 20 transects extending from the vegetation edge up to 200 m into the arable field (hereafter: edge-field interface) with a small pond present at five transects per edge type (linear vs. forest). Using generalized linear mixed effect models, we analyzed the effects of edge type, pond presence and the season on species-specific flight and foraging activity within the edge-field interface. We found a higher flight activity of Nyctalus noctula and Pipistrellus pygmaeus above the arable field when a pond was present. Furthermore, Pipistrellus nathusii and Pipistrellus pipistrellus foraged more frequently at forest edges than at linear structures (e.g. hedgerows). Additionally, we found three major patterns of seasonal variation in the activity of bats along the edge-field interface. This study highlights the species-specific and dynamic use of forest and hedgerow or tree line edges by bats and their importance for different bat species in the agricultural landscape. Further, additional landscape elements such as small isolated ponds within arable fields might support the activity of bats above the open agricultural landscape, thereby facilitating agroecosystem functioning. Therefore, additional landscape elements within managed areas should be restored and protected against the conversion into arable land and better linked to surrounding landscape elements in order to efficiently support bats within the agroecosystem.
KW  - Hedgerow
KW  - Forest edge
KW  - Pond
KW  - European bats
KW  - Agricultural landscape
KW  - Wind turbines
Y1  - 2017
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.baae.2017.12.001
SN  - 1439-1791
SN  - 1618-0089
VL  - 27
SP  - 9
EP  - 19
PB  - Elsevier GMBH
CY  - München
ER  -