Land uplift creates important meadow habitat and a potential original niche for grassland species.

ABSTRACT: Semi-natural grasslands have been severely affected by agricultural land-use change. However, the isostatic land adjustment following deglaciation in the Northern Hemisphere means that new land is continually being created in coastal areas. We modelled isostatic adjustment during the last 4000 years in a region of the Baltic coast to estimate the emergence of potential grassland habitat. We also compared the α and β diversity of existing managed and abandoned coastal meadows, and assessed their contribution to biodiversity at landscape scales. We estimated that half the 7866 km² of emerging land had the potential to become coastal meadow habitat, which is an order of magnitude larger than the total area of all valuable semi-natural grassland in the study region today. The small

SUBMITTER: Auffret AG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5904306 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature