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Introduction
Skills and Expertise
Publications
Publications (54)
Human-assisted introduction of alien plants is causing ecosystem transformations worldwide and is considered an important threat to biodiversity. We provide a European assessment of habitat levels of invasion in heathlands and scrub and identify successful alien plants and invasion trends across biogeographical regions. We analysed a geographically...
European grasslands face strong declines in extent and quality. Many grassland types are priority habitats for national and European conservation strategies. Countrywide, high spatial resolution maps of their distribution are often lacking. Here, we modelled the spatial distribution of 20 permanent grassland habitats at the level of phytosociologic...
Habitat shift caused by human impact on vegetation structure poses a great threat to species which are specialized on unique habitats. Single layered beech forests, the main foraging habitat of Greater Mouse-eared Bats (Myotis myotis), are threatened by recent changes in forest structure. After this species suffered considerable population losses u...
Aims
Resurveys of vegetation plots are prone to several errors that can result in misleading conclusions. Minimizing such errors and finding alternative approaches for analyzing resurvey data are therefore important. We focused on inter‐observer error and excluded other sources of variation. Our main questions were: How large is the inter‐observer...
A typical degraded mountain bog in the Swiss Alps was restored by cessation of grazing and partial rewetting. We observed the development of the vegetation over 15 years, starting immediately after the grazing cessation (4 years before rewetting). Cessation of grazing stimulated the recolonisation of bare peat and the establishment of bryophytes. W...
Aktuelle Daten der Wirkunsgkontrolle Biotopschutz Schweiz WBS zeigen, dass die Moore weiterhin trockener werden. Hauptursache sind aktive Entwässerungsgräben, aber auch
der Klimawandel.
In: Hotspot 44; page 29 (https://scnat.ch/de/uuid/i/62e64055-defc-565d-854e-d24eeae7bc6f-HOTSPOT_4421_Biodiversit%C3%A4t_wird_Mainstream)
Aims
Understanding fine-grain diversity patterns across large spatial extents is fundamental for macroecological research and biodiversity conservation. Using the GrassPlot database, we provide benchmarks of fine-grain richness values of Palaearctic open habitats for vascular plants, bryophytes, lichens and complete vegetation (i.e., the sum of the...
Die Wirkungskontrolle Biotopschutz Schweiz untersucht, ob Biotope von nationaler Bedeutung in ihrer Qualität erhalten bleiben. Trotz Schutzbemühungen verschlechterte sich jedoch der Zustand des artenreichen Grünlands in den vergangenen Jahren. Nutzungsaufgabe und zunehmende Verbuschung werden als Ursache vermutet. Besonders ausgeprägt ist dieser Tr...
Die Wirkungskontrolle Biotopschutz Schweiz (WBS) wurde 2011 vom Bundesamt für Umwelt BAFU und der Eidgenössischen Forschungsanstalt WSL initiiert, um Veränderungen in den Biotopen von nationaler Bedeutung – Kerngebiete der Ökologischen Infrastruktur – zu untersuchen. Die Ersterhebung der Wirkungskontrolle Biotopschutz Schweiz endete 2017, die erste...
GrassPlot is a collaborative vegetation-plot database organised by the Eurasian Dry Grassland Group (EDGG) and listed in the Global Index of Vegetation-Plot Databases (GIVD ID EU-00-003). Following a previous Long Database Report (Dengler et al. 2018, Phytocoenologia 48, 331–347), we provide here the first update on content and functionality of Gra...
Geschützte Flächen sind unverzichtbare Instrumente für die Erhaltung und Förderung der
Biodiversität. Für fünf Lebensräume sind in der Schweiz nationale Biotopinventare in Kraft: Hoch- und Übergangsmoore, Flachmoore, Auengebiete, Amphibienlaichgebiete sowie Trockenwiesen und -weiden. Die Inventare enthalten 6831 Objekte (Stand 2019), die in Fläche...
The habitats of national importance, including fens, raised bogs, dry grasslands, riparian
areas, flood plains, and amphibian breeding sites, are a crucial element of the network
of protected sites in Switzerland. In 2011, the Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN)
and the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL launched the joint project “Monitori...
Les surfaces protégées constituent des instruments indispensables pour préserver et
promouvoir la biodiversité. En Suisse, cinq types de milieux naturels sont couverts par les
inventaires des biotopes d’importance nationale : les hauts-marais et les marais de transition, les bas-marais, les zones alluviales, les sites de reproduction de batraciens...
Wie ist der Zustand der Biotope von nationaler Bedeutung? Wie entwickeln sie sich über die Zeit? Hat sich ihre Qualität verändert? Diese Fragen beantwortet die Wirkungskontrolle Biotopschutz Schweiz. Vegetationsaufnahmen und Luftbildanalysen sind dabei eine wichtige Grundlage, um Veränderungen aufzuzeigen.
Resurveys of historical plots are important to study vegetation changes over time. However, there is a high potential of relocation error, as historical plots were usually not permanently marked, which might result in misleading interpretations of changes. Quasi-permanent plots can relatively well be relocated, because of available information on t...
In der Schweiz sind seit 1945 rund 95% der Trockenwiesen und -weiden (TWW) verloren gegangen. Um die verbliebene Fläche dieser wertvollen Lebensräume zu bewahren, hat die Schweiz 3631 TWW von nationaler Bedeutung ausgewiesen. Ob sich diese Biotope gemäss den Schutzzielen entwickeln und in ihrer Qualität erhalten bleiben, wird in der Wirkungskontrol...
In Switzerland, steppe vegetation is restricted to inner alpine dry valleys in the West (Valais) and the East (Grisons). They harbour many specialist and threatened species. In 2011, a long-term program was established to monitor changes in Swiss habitats of national importance. Here, we studied patterns of vascular plant diversity in a subset of 1...
Die Moore der Schweiz sind im Wesentlichen seit der Annahme der Rothenthurm-Initiative im Jahr 1987 in ihrer Fläche geschützt. Doch wie steht es um sie heute? Und wie haben sich die Flach- und Hochmoore der Schweiz in den letzten 20 Jahren entwickelt? Viele Moore wurden in dieser Zeit regeneriert. Waren die entsprechenden Regenerationsmaßnahmen erf...
GrassPlot is a collaborative vegetation-plot database organised by the Eurasian Dry Grassland Group (EDGG) and listed in the Global Index of Vegetation-Plot Databases (GIVD ID EU-00-003). GrassPlot collects plot records (relevés) from grasslands and other open habitats of the Palaearctic biogeographic realm. It focuses on precisely delimited plots...
Dry grasslands are species rich and ecologically valuable habitats that have experienced a massive decline in Switzerland during the last century due to agricultural intensification and land abandonment. Appropriate management is a key factor in maintaining habitat quality of the remaining most valuable sites and should thus be an essential part of...
Switzerland harbors a high biological diversity. To protect this biodiversity and to prevent habitat loss and the extinction of endangered species, Switzerland designated around 6000 'objects of national importance' since the early 1990s, including fen, bog, dry grassland and flood plain habitats as well as amphibian breeding sites. In 2011, a long...
Many central problems in geometry, topology and mathematical physics reduce to questions regarding the behavior of solutions of nonlinear evolution equations. Examples are Thurston’s classification of compact 3-manifolds based on Hamilton’s Ricci flow and the work of Christodoulou and Klainerman on the nonlinear stability of Minkowski spaces. Examp...
In an era of the availability of very large databases, the problem of efficient methods to analyze such datasets remains. In large scale forest and landscape monitoring projects for instance, appropriate data mining techniques that can summarize the overall status of landscapes are necessary for planning and implementing follow-up management strate...
We describe a probabilistic sampling design of circular permanent plots for the long-term monitoring of protected dry grasslands in Switzerland. The population under study is defined by the perimeter of a national inventory. The monitoring focus is on the species composition of the protected grassland vegetation and derived conservation values. Eff...
Assessing the ecological requirements of species coexisting within a community
is an essential requisite for developing sound conservation action. A particularly interesting
question is what mechanisms govern the stable coexistence of cryptic species within a
community, i.e. species that are almost impossible to distinguish. Resource partitioning
t...
Many species that depend on old trees and dead wood are suffering from habitat losses and intensive forest management. For the conspicuous cerambycid beetle Rosalia alpina, a relative sampling analysis combined with a distribution model showed a population decrease in Switzerland between 1900 and World War II. This negative trend can be ascribed to...
To assess whether short-term changes in mire vegetation can be detected using the phytosociological approach, paired vegetation relevés from two surveys of 112 mire sites of Switzerland were assigned to phytosociological alliances through a numerical approach. About 30% of the plots were assigned to different alliances in the two surveys. These tra...
Remote-sensing plays an important role in wetland monitoring on the regional and global scale. In this study we assessed the potential of different optical sensors to map floristic indicator gradients across complex mire habitats at the stand level. We compared traditional CIR photographs from RC30 cameras with modern digital ADS40 data and SPOT5 s...
As conservation of sensitive habitats is a high priority issue in European environmental policy, there is considerable interest in mapping and monitoring specific habitats of high conservation value. In this study, we discuss the potential of the Swiss mire monitoring program to monitor small area habitats in sufficient detail. The monitoring schem...
This paper presents an approach to assess increase and decrease (2002–1997) of forest area and other wooded areas in a mire biotope in the Pre-alpine zone of Central Switzerland using logistic regression models and airborne remote sensing data (CIR aerial images, DSM derived from them). The present study was carried out in the framework of the Swis...
This paper describes the development of a fractional shrub/tree cover in open mire land using logistic regression and airborne remote sensing data (the DSM is derived from colour infrared images). The present study was carried out in the framework of the Swiss Mire Protection Program, where shrub encroachment is a key issue. An example of the use o...
Question: How may Landolt indicator values be re-calibrated to improve the performance of predictive models?
Location: Mires Gross Moos Schwändital (1250 m a.s.l.) in the Prealps, Burgmoos (465 m. a.s.l.) on the Central Plateau and La Burtignière (1000 m a.s.l.) in the Jura, Switzerland.
Methods: Habitat distribution models based on high resolution...
Predictive habitat models based on remotely sensed spectral and relief information and on field data of vegetation are tested for their performance in assessment of changes in site factors. The results show that high data quality and model performance are a prerequisite for detection of changes, but not a sufficient condition. Bias can compromise c...
The present study was carried out in the framework of the Swiss Mire Conservation Program which aims at protecting 103 mire ecosystems of national importance and outstanding beauty in their present state. Shrub encroachment and increase of forest area are exerting vehement impact on the non-forest areas of the mire biotopes. The first objective of...
The detection and evaluation of changes in vegetation patterns is a prerequisite for monitoring programs. The Swiss mire monitoring program aims to assess the changes in mire vegetation in order to examine the efficiency of the management measures. A promising way to explore and detect vegetation structure and vegetation change is the application o...
