Vanessa Berger

Fachhochschule Kärnten · Faculty of Engineering and IT

Protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs) are important to stop the global decline in biodiversity. Systematic site-based monitoring of the state of biodiversity and conservation outcomes is necessary for evidence-based adaptive management in protected areas and OECMs. Biodiversity monitoring is also important to...

To gain a deeper understanding of the water balances of Alpine grassland ecosystems, it is crucial to know the abiotic and biotic drivers of evapotranspiration. The abiotic drivers are very heterogeneous in mountain regions because elevation, slope and aspect control incoming Rs, and atmospheric layering affect air temperature, humidity and wind di...

Old-growth forests (OGF) provide valuable ecosystem services such as habitat provision, carbon sequestration or recreation maintaining biodiversity, carbon storage, or human well-being. Long-term human pressure caused OGFs in Europe to be rare and scattered. Their detailed extent and current status are largely unknown. This review aims to identify...

Maintaining and improving the state of biodiversity is a primary factor guiding management activities in conservation areas, including protected areas (PAs) and other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs). Due to the complex nature of conservation programs, a common management approach cannot be prescribed. Robust monitoring programs s...

Summary: Biodiversity in the Biosphere Reserve Carinthian Nockberge. Results from the 6th GEO day of Nature 2021 – “At the foot of the Zunderwand” Seventy-one biodiversity experts participated in the inventory of plant, fungi and animal species from the area beneath the Zunderwand on the 2nd and 3rd of July 2021. The study area is situated in the C...

State-of-the-art tools are revolutionizing protected area (PA) manager approaches to biodiversity monitoring. Effective strategies are available for test site establishment, data collection, archiving, analysis, and presentation. In PAs, use of new technologies will support a shift from primarily expert-based to automated monitoring procedures, all...

Biodiversity loss is one of the most serious global environmental problems caused by human activities. The intensification of agriculture and the increasing presence of monocultures is one of the main reasons for this. To study the long-term effects of maize monocultures compared to crop rotation systems on vegetation and biodiversity, two nearby s...

Sites affected by avalanches are considered as highly dynamic sites and are therefore of high ecological value. A wide spectrum of environmental conditions occurs in a narrow space. Due to the uneven mechanical impact of avalanches within the avalanche path, important niches and microhabitats are generated. Often adjacent forest stands cause a brak...

The Austrian Federal Forests (ÖBf) are a public enterprise owned by the Republic of Austria, and manage about 13% of Austrian forests and thereby about 10% of the national territory. For this reason, they do have an important impact on ecosystems and landscape, therefore on “Ecosystem Services“ (ESS). The centrepiece of this study, entitled „Values...

Conventional monitoring approaches in forest ecology are still time-consuming and thus cost-intensive. A holistic, efficient and goal-oriented ecological monitoring workflow is essential for the assessment and management of protected areas. The aim of this study is to combine field surveys and UAV-based data collection, which opens up new possibili...

Climatic changes in mountain regions play a key role in current and future grassland ecosystem processes. It is currently expected that droughts and heatwaves will become more frequent in a changing climate. All around the world mountain regions have been labelled as sensitive zones, where declining water availability and increasing temperature are...