Context

However, the levers for action to conserve biodiversity are often conceived at a local scale (site or parcel) by looking for practices that better preserve local biodiversity. This local vision is not adapted to account for the dynamics of biotic and abiotic fluxes and the interactions between the elements of the landscape mosaic that are essential for ecosystem functioning. Despite recent conceptual advances in landscape ecology, the current challenge in terms of conservation is still to move from a "management" vision at the local scale to a "spatial planning" vision at the landscape scale.

Objectives

How can landscapes be organised to better protect multi-taxonomic diversity?

In a global context of loss and fragmentation of natural habitats, changes in land use and management practices, the consortium will address the following two questions

• What is the link between landscape compositional and configurational heterogeneity and multi-taxonomic specific and functional diversity at different spatial scales?
• How is multi-taxonomic gamma-specific diversity influenced by the configuration and composition of the landscape mosaic, and what are the relative contribution of different types of management (or ecosystem types resulting from management) to this gamma-specific diversity?

These questions are central to understand and analyse the role of management types on biodiversity in European anthropogenised landscapes, and to determine landscape organisation that would be more favourable to biodiversity.

Approaches

These questions will be addressed through an empirical approach sampling different landscapes and biogeographical regions: predominantly forested landscapes, predominantly agricultural landscapes (including vineyards), aquatic landscapes and mixed landscapes, trying to cross-reference landscape types and biogeographical regions as much as possible.

The first task of the consortium will be to better formalise and refine the working hypotheses through an in-depth literature review on the link between landscape heterogeneity and biodiversity, in particular detailing the mechanisms that maintain gamma diversity in heterogeneous landscapes.

The second phase will focus on the sites and management gradients to sample, taking into account the current issues in forest management, agroecology and lakes, and the geospatial data available to characterise landscape composition and structure (satellite or aerial images, BDcarto®, Cesbio OSO layer, RPG).

A third focus will be on the sampling strategies to estimate multi-taxonomic gamma-specific diversity, as sampling gamma specific richness raises several methodological issues (species accumulation, detectability, etc.).

INRAE units involved

• Département ACT
  • LESSEM  Research Unit - Mountain Ecosystems and Societies Laboratory
  • BAGAP Joint Research Unit - Biodiversity, Agroecology and Landscape Planning
  • DYNAFOR Joint Research Unit - Agriforestry Landscape Dynamics and Ecology
• Département AGROECOSYSTEM
  • EFNO Research Unit - Forest Ecosystems
  • PSH Research Unit - Plants and Cropping Systems in Horticulture
  • ABSYS Joint Research Unit – Biodiversified Agrosystems
  • LISAH Joint Research Unit - Soil-Agrosystem-Hydrosystem interaction lab
• Département AQUA
  • EABX Research Unit – Aquatic Ecosystems and Global Change
• Département ECODIV
  • LESSEM  Research Unit - Mountain Ecosystems and Societies Laboratory
  • DYNAFOR Joint Research Unit - Agriforestry Landscape Dynamics and Ecology
  • EFNO Research Unit - Forest Ecosystems
  • EABX Research Unit – Aquatic Ecosystems and Global Change
• Département ECODIV
  • UREP Grassland Ecosystem research
• Département MATHNUM
  • LISC Joint Research Unit - Complex Systems Lab
• Département SPE
  • SAVE Joint Research Unit -Vineyard health and agroecology

External partnerships

• ECOBIO Rennes 1 University 
•  Jyväskylä University (Finland)