CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2024
| Author | Scheepens, Nadia |
|---|---|
| Title | Cultivating Agrobiodiversity for Harmony in the Groves: Assessing the Impact of Understorey Management Practices on Vascular Plant and Arthropod Diversity in Olive Groves on Lesbos, Greece |
| Summary | Agriculture is a primary driver of biodiversity loss. The balance between maintaining agricultural productivity while limiting negative biodiversity impacts is one of the greatest challenges facing the food system today. Olive groves have traditionally been farmed in complex agro-forestry systems, allowing for high levels of biodiversity. However, the dual trends of intensification and abandonment in olive grove management is threatening the biodiversity benefits these agro-ecosystems can provide. To drive the implementation of more biodiversity-friendly management practices and effective agri-environmental policies supporting them, this thesis investigates the impact of three different understorey management practices – herbicide application, understorey clearing, and undisturbed understorey – on the biodiversity of plant and arthropods in olive groves in the Gera region on Lesbos, Greece. Plant and arthropod sampling was carried out in nine research plots in the months of March, April and May 2024. A total of 18,403 arthropods, belonging to 9 classes and 23 orders, were collected across the whole sampling period, while 95 plant taxa were recorded in May. The results showed that, while the spraying of herbicides had a negative effect on plant diversity, the effects on arthropods were less pronounced. This indicates that, while herbicide application is generally not environmentally desirable, limited and periodical herbicide spraying do not have long-term negative impacts. The rapid recovery of arthropod biodiversity is likely also caused by the relatively high structural complexity in the Gera region, in line with the intermediate landscape complexity hypothesis. The abandoned olive groves, on the other hand, displayed the lowest arthropod abundance and vegetation in line with different successive stages following land abandonment, leading to gradual impoverishment of plant biodiversity with associated negative impacts on arthropod diversity. The proportion of annual species in the plant cover was found to be positively associated with arthropod abundance. With the most annual plant coverage observed in the cleared sampling plots, this study proposes a new eco-scheme that provides support to farmers for the maintenance of understorey plant cover, with periodical clearing through ruminant grazing, to enhance plant and arthropod biodiversity in olive grove systems. |
| Supervisor | Kizos, Athanasios |
| Department | Environment Sciences and Policy MSc |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2024/scheepens_nadia.pdf |
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