Relating land-use and plant biodiversity in Scanian semi-natural grazing lands

Sammanfattning: Climate change and biodiversity loss are amongst the most pressing environmental issues internationally, with far-reaching impacts that place natural and semi-natural habitats at ever greater risk of degradation. My project explores the effects of land-use on plant biodiversity in semi-natural grazing lands using datasets covering Sweden’s southernmost region, Scania. Comparative analyses were performed using biodiversity measures and a number of landscape variables. The measures of biodiversity in terms of plant species richness were calculated using a grazing land inventory subset with records from the latest years. These measures were correlated with landscape variables, relating to hydrology and vegetation phenology. Such variables include a Wetness Index and Plant Phenology Index, computed using recent remotely sensed data, namely Sentinel-2 time series data. Land cover data was processed to cluster the study sites into distinct land cover groups which facilitated further correlation analysis between plant biodiversity and the landscape variables. These variables were also analysed at two spatial scales, i.e. at the extent of both the grazing lands and their 1 km buffer zones.