Abstract
The ongoing land use conversion is a major threat to biodiversity. But converted land can also provide new opportunities for biodiversity conservation. Road and railway verges and electric power-line corridors contain managed habitat that can resemble species-rich semi-natural grasslands. Their combined area in Sweden exceeds that of semi-natural grasslands, which is in continuous decline. In this project we will quantify whether infrastructure habitats support existing conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services, or even add new biodiversity to the landscape. We will further assess how their contributions to biodiversity and ecosystem services depend on landscape context. This will be done by 1) A systematic literature review, 2) An extensive field study to assess species, functional and phylogenetic diversity of plants and pollinating insects at a landscape scale, 3) A spatial prioritization analysis to identify where biodiversity-friendly infrastructure habitat management is most efficient, and 4) Establishment of a long-term experiment in collaboration with stakeholders to evaluate management options. This experiment will continue beyond the end of the project. Throughout the project we will interact closely with infrastructure owners. The project is designed to provide knowledge needed to fulfill national environmental targets on biodiversity as well as providing an evidence base for infrastructure owners to implement biodiversity-friendly management strategies.
Sweden