ABSTRACT
Land-use change is a major threat to biodiversity and whole landscapes worldwide. The increasing demand for food and infrastructural, urban and industrial development represent an increasing and dual pressure on open landscapes. On the one hand, there is a trend towards land-use intensification, especially in flat, lowland regions. On the other hand, there is land abandonment, especially in remote regions (Benjamin et al., 2005). Both pressures are detrimental to traditionally managed ecosystems such as wood-pastures (see also Bergmeier and Roellig, this volume). There is no doubt that the dramatic change of forest landscapes of Europe – due to anthropogenic factors in the past – caused a substantial loss in biodiversity. This is particularly the case for animals such as large predators, but also for large numbers of insects related to old-growth forests (Warren and Key, 1991, and see Falk, this volume). But there is also a huge biodiversity loss as a consequence of afforestation of traditionally open and semi-open landscapes, which are most typically represented in farming landscapes across Europe (Bignal and McCracken, 1996; Prévosto et al., 2011). In Europe (all countries except the Russian federation), large areas of former agricultural land are subjected to afforestation, both spontaneously (ca. two-thirds) and through planting (ca. one-third): between 1990 and 2000 at a rate of ca. 0.9 million ha per year; and between 2000 and 2010 ca. 0.7 million ha per year (FAO, 2010). There are no indications that this process will stop in the near future. Therefore, understanding the development of plant and animal communities on former agricultural land (abandoned as well as intensively used) will become increasingly important from biological conservation, habitat and landscape restoration, policy and scientific perspectives (Cramer et al., 2008).
