Grasslands of Northern Europe and the Baltic States

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  • Jürgen Dengler
  • Traci Birge
  • Bruun, Hans Henrik
  • Valerijus Rašomavicius
  • Solvita Rusina
  • Hanne Sickel

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.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationEncyclopedia of the World's Biomes : Forests - Trees of Life
EditorsDominick A. DellaSala, Dominic A. DiPaolo
Number of pages14
Volume3
PublisherElsevier
Publication date2020
Pages689-702
ISBN (Print)978-0-12-816096-1
ISBN (Electronic)978-0-12-816097-8
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2020

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