6533b862fe1ef96bd12c6d58

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Grasslands of Northern Europe and the Baltic States

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This chapter deals with the grasslands of Northern Europe (Denmark, Faroe Islands, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden) and the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania), with a focus on natural and semi-natural grasslands of the lowlands, thus treating arctic-alpine and strongly intensified types only marginally. At present, grasslands cover ca. 7% of the study region, half of which are natural grasslands (mostly arctic-alpine, to a smaller extent also azonal and extra-zonal) and the other half secondary grasslands created by human land use (livestock grazing or haymaking). Both grassland categories have high importance for biodiversity in many taxa. However, particularly the secondary grasslands are profoundly negatively affected by area loss (conversion to other land uses) and quality loss (mainly due to intensification and to abandonment). Conservation measures typically try to mimic traditional low-intensity land uses that are agronomically not profitable anymore. Peer reviewed