Publications and papers

People and rewilding: opposition and opportunities

Gesche Schifferdecker on July 29, 2026

Rewilding of former agricultural land in Friuli Venezia Giulia

Blogpost by Clara Jeanroy

200 million football fields.

200 million football fields are the size of agricultural areas abandoned in Europe since the 1990s, especially in regions like the Iberian Peninsula, the Alps and the Carpathians mountains.
What to do with all this land? In many cases the alternative is to “rewild”, which means promoting natural processes whilst minimizing human management. This can be achieved differently: One option is to let landscape evolve naturally with eventually, abandoned agricultural fields turning into forests (called “passive rewilding”) and forests that were managed reaching their full ecological potential (called “proforestation”). Meanwhile, another option is to reintroduce emblematic and locally instinct species like the beaver or the lynx (called “trophic” or “active rewilding”). However, people, and especially local communities, do not always welcome these changes.

For our recent study “Perceptions of rewilding in European abandoned agricultural lands”, we reviewed 80 articles to understand perceptions relating to rewilding in Europe.

Overall, rural, older and farming respondents typically opposed rewilding and preferred traditional land management. This was mostly because these communities are attached to the land and livelihood they grew up in, and they perceived rewilding as a threat to those. Meanwhile, younger and urban individuals, such as tourists, were usually more positive towards the conversion of abandoned agricultural areas into forests. When criticizing rewilding, people mostly dreaded impacts on the landscape (e.g. homogenizing the landscape or increased fire risk), and on economic activities (e.g. reducing food production). Feelings of fear or unsafety were also often mentioned along with feeling of injustice, specifically concerning active rewilding. Indeed, some people felt that wildlife and wilderness were prioritised over already marginalised humans.

Figure: Agricultural abandonment hotspot map with location of data collection sites of the case-studies. The agricultural abandonment hotspots were determined by combining data on both projected and existing abandonment. Map lines delineate study areas and do not necessarily depict accepted national boundaries.

To limit this feeling and conflict in general, we found that practitioners should focus on trust building, stakeholder engagement and financial support (e.g. subsidies which are powerful tools to promote acceptability). For the successful and fair re-naturalisation of abandoned agricultural areas, we advocate for better alignment between actors’ perspectives and rewilding objectives. In fire-prone regions for example, many oppose passive rewilding because it can fuel fire risk (more shrubs and vegetation that dries out in summer). Meanwhile, using active rewilding can limit this risk (e.g. herbivores consume the inflammable vegetation) and consequently reduce the conflict.

For next steps in research, more studies on perceptions are needed in the Carpathians and Baltic regions, which face strong yet more recent abandonment (20 to 30 years later than the Alps because agricultural abandonment only started after the Socialist period). In addition, while many papers look at attitudes towards active and passive rewilding, we mostly lack studies towards “proforestation” (passive rewilding of managed forests).

Lastly, timeline is crucial. Interestingly, some studies showed that people feared less Bisons after their reintroduction. This illustrates that attitudes are dynamic and evolve with knowledge and experience, particularly in the case of rewilding which can take decades to unfold and involve uncertainty. As such, we need more long-term understanding of perceptions with studies in later-stages of rewilding processes.

Reference: Jeanroy, C. G., Smith, A. M., & Verburg, P. H. (2026). Perceptions of rewilding in European abandoned agricultural lands. Landscape and Urban Planning, 274, 105715. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.LANDURBPLAN.2026.105715

Featured image: Rewilding of former agricultural land in Friuli Venezia Giulia (photo: Alessandro Foscari)

Priority actions for the conservation of primary and old-growth forests in Europe

Admin on June 29, 2026

Blogpost by Lyla O’Brien

The first time I walked through a primary forest in the Low Tatras in Slovakia, I was struck by how different it looked and felt from the forests I had known before. Woody fungi called Polypores, larger than both of my hands emerged from the deadwood littered across the forest floor. Spruce trees bore horizontal scars left by three toed woodpeckers searching for insects beneath the bark. Beneath a tree more than 200 years old, a patch of cleared earth marked the resting place of a brown bear. At every step, the forest revealed something new and unexpected.

These remaining primary and old-growth forests offer a rare glimpse into ecosystems that existed before centuries of intensive land use and forest management reshaped much of Europe. Today, however, they survive only in small, isolated fragments and continue to decline rapidly due to logging. Their loss is of particular concern because these forests support exceptionally high levels of biodiversity and provide important ecosystem services like carbon storage and water regulation.

Ecosystem services: old growth forest in Slovakia (photo: Lyla O’Brien)

Together with other researchers, I published a perspective article in Conservation Letters, titled Priority actions for the conservation of primary and old-growth forests in Europe. In the article, we examine how the recently adopted Nature Restoration Regulation could strengthen the long-term conservation of Europe’s remaining primary and old-growth forests. Although the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 calls for their strict protection, the target is not legally binding and implementation has progressed slowly. We argue that, despite not explicitly referring to primary and old-growth forests, the Regulation nonetheless presents an exceptional opportunity to advance their conservation.

We therefore identify four key problems for the conservation of these forests and propose four accompanying actions that we consider most urgent, while exploring how the Regulation could support their implementation (Table 1).

First, incomplete mapping and weak protection should be addressed by identifying barriers and introducing a logging moratorium for unprotected forests, including those that are unmapped.

Second, human pressures should be reduced in and around primary and old-growth forests by banning logging, avoiding new roads, limiting infrastructure and recreation, and regulating hunting practices.

Third, because many forests are too small and fragmented, strict protection should be expanded and buffer zones established to maintain ecological processes and reduce external anthropogenic disturbances.

Fourth, connectivity between isolated forest patches should be improved and new old-growth forests should be developed through active restoration or by letting nature recover on its own passively.

The paper shows that conserving Europe’s primary and old-growth forests requires more than formal protection goals; it needs targeted, complementary action, which can be implemented under the Nature Restoration Regulation.

Table 1: Priority actions for improving the conservation of primary and old-growth forests in the EU and relevant articles for achieving them embedded in the National Restoration Regulation

Problem	Priority action	Key elements	Link to NRR
Significant gaps in mapping and protection	1. Assess progress and address barriers to identification, mapping, and protection; implement a logging moratorium	Identify implementation barriers to mapping and protection; integrate findings into EU progress assessments; impose a moratorium on mapped but unprotected and potential primary and old-growth forests	Article 4(12) non-deterioration clause
Anthropogenic impacts, also in protected forests	2. Prevent degradation from anthropogenic pressures and protect natural processes	No new forest roads; no logging; limited infrastructure and recreation; relocation of ungulate hunting; ban on supplementary feeding	Article 4(12) non-deterioration clause
Small, fragmented patches, limiting natural disturbance dynamics and increasing vulnerability	3. Expand strict protection and establish buffer zones around primary and old-growth forests	Expand strictly protected area to meet minimum dynamic area; Establish protection and conservation buffer zones	Article 4(1) restoration of degraded habitat types listed in Annex 1 to good condition; Article 12(1) enhancement of forest; Article 12(3) increase in the national trend for at least six of the following seven indicators for forest biodiversity: standing deadwood, lying deadwood, share of forests with uneven-aged structure, forest connectivity, stock of organic carbon, and share of forests dominated by native tree species and tree species diversity
Fragmentation and isolation, which threatens persistence of associated species, lack of representative network of primary and old-growth forests	4. Improve connectivity between primary and old-growth forests and create secondary old-growth forests through restoration	Restore patches of land to reconnect forests and promote secondary old-growth forests through passive and active restoration

With this article, we urge EU Member States to incorporate these priority actions into their national restoration plans before the end of 2026, providing an opportunity for the EU to move beyond broad political commitments toward concrete conservation outcomes for some of Europe’s most valuable and threatened forests.

Reference: O’Brien, L., Castelli, F., Felton, A., Kuemmerle, T., Mikoláš, M., Munteanu, C., Sabatini, F. M., Svensson, J., Svoboda, M., Vandekerkhove, K., Winkel, G., & Lindner, M. (2026). Priority actions for the conservation of primary and old-growth forests in Europe. Conservation Letters. https://doi.org/10.1111/con4.70054

New paper reveals proforestation benefits for biodiversity in Mediterranean and Alpine forests

Sara Uzquiano on May 26, 2026

Forests are more than collections of trees – they are living systems shaped by time, disturbance, and the countless microhabitats that sustain biodiversity. A new WILDCARD study titled “Beyond management: Proforestation enriches tree-related microhabitat diversity, but forest types determine their composition across Mediterranean and Alpine forests” sheds light on how allowing forests to grow naturally over long periods can significantly enhance their ecological complexity.

The research explored the effects of proforestation – the practice of allowing existing forests to continue growing naturally with minimal or no logging and limited human intervention – across three contrasting forest categories ranging from Mediterranean oak systems to Alpine coniferous and mountainous beech forests. By comparing actively managed stands with forests abandoned for more than 20 and more than 60 years, the study examined how time since abandonment (TSA) influences the development of tree-related microhabitats (TreMs).

TreMs include small but ecologically critical features such as cavities, cracks, bark loss, dead branches, fungal conks, and insect galleries. These structures provide habitat, shelter, and feeding resources for a wide variety of organisms including birds, bats, insects, fungi, and plants. As indicators of forest structural complexity, TreMs are increasingly used in biodiversity monitoring and forest conservation planning across Europe.

The results of the study revealed a clear pattern: in most forest types, longer periods without management promoted greater richness and abundance of TreMs. The strongest effects were observed in Alpine coniferous forests and mountainous beech forests, where unmanaged stands accumulated more deadwood and supported a broader diversity of microhabitats linked to ageing and natural decay processes.

Results of TSA effects on TreM indices across three forest categories:

However, the study also demonstrated that there is no universal trajectory of forest recovery. Mediterranean thermophilous deciduous forests (forests found in relatively warm Mediterranean climates that are dominated by trees which lose their leaves seasonally) showed a weaker response to abandonment, suggesting that structural ageing processes occur more slowly in these systems. The researchers propose that oak-dominated Mediterranean forests may require much longer timeframes – potentially over 90 years without management – before strong old-growth characteristics fully emerge.

Importantly, the research moved beyond simply counting microhabitats. It also investigated how TreM composition changes over time. The findings showed that proforestation not only increases the number of microhabitats but gradually reshapes the entire assemblage of ecological structures present within a forest. Long-abandoned stands increasingly hosted TreMs associated with decomposition, senescence (gradual biological ageing process of an organism or its tissues), and standing deadwood, while some microhabitats linked to active forestry operations became less common.

At the same time, responses varied strongly depending on local conditions, forest history, topography, and tree species composition. Certain TreMs, such as insect galleries and exposed sapwood, increased mainly where standing dead trees accumulated, while others were more influenced by silvicultural disturbance or terrain characteristics. This highlights the importance of understanding forest dynamics within their ecological context rather than applying one-size-fits-all management assumptions.

The study offers important implications for biodiversity-oriented forest planning. As Europe seeks effective nature-based solutions for climate mitigation and ecosystem restoration, proforestation emerges as a valuable strategy not only for carbon storage but also for enhancing habitat diversity and ecological integrity. Integrating long-term unmanaged stands into forest landscapes can help create the structural conditions required by many specialised species that depend on old-growth characteristics.

Ultimately, the research reinforces a simple but powerful message: when forests are given time, they develop complexity that management alone cannot easily reproduce. Protecting existing forests and allowing natural processes to unfold may therefore play a central role in safeguarding biodiversity across both Mediterranean and Alpine ecosystems.

Reference: Marcoz, G., Tomao, A., Bitunjac, D., Boscutti, F., Duvaltier, C., Marjanović, H., Orzan, L., Piazza, N., & Alberti, G. (2026). Beyond management: Proforestation enriches tree-related microhabitat diversity, but forest types determine their composition across Mediterranean and Alpine forests. Forest Ecology and Management, 614, 10.1016/j.foreco.2026.123827

Featured image and photo by Guido Marcoz

Soil Carbon Sequestration Following Natural Vegetation Recovery on Abandoned European Lands: Review and Research Needs

Gesche Schifferdecker on May 21, 2026

A new WILDCARD study published in the European Journal of Soil Science highlights the important role that natural vegetation recovery on abandoned agricultural land can play in climate change mitigation across Europe. The review paper, “Soil Carbon Sequestration Following Natural Vegetation Recovery on Abandoned European Lands: Review and Research Needs”, brings together evidence from 36 studies to better understand how soil organic carbon (SOC) changes after farmland abandonment.

Led by Mohammad Tahsin Karimi Nezhad and co-authored by Domagoj Gajski, Clara G. Jeanroy, Peter H. Verburg, Giorgio Alberti, and Pavel Šamonil, the review demonstrates that abandoned croplands undergoing natural regeneration can become valuable carbon sinks over time. In particular, croplands transitioning into mixed and broadleaf forests showed strong increases in SOC, especially in Mediterranean regions and in soil groups such as Regosols, Cambisols, and Calcisols.

The study also reveals important knowledge gaps. Most available research is concentrated in Mediterranean Europe, while regions such as Central France, Germany, Poland, the Baltic states, the Balkans, and the United Kingdom remain underrepresented. The authors stress the need for more long-term studies across different climates, soil types, and vegetation systems to improve understanding of soil carbon dynamics at the continental scale.

Importantly, the paper emphasizes that natural vegetation recovery should not be viewed as a blanket recommendation for widespread cropland abandonment. Instead, land-use decisions must balance ecological, economic, and societal considerations alongside climate benefits.

The findings provide valuable guidance for researchers, land managers, and policymakers working to strengthen nature-based solutions and soil carbon monitoring across Europe.

Reference: Karimi Nezhad, M. T., Gajski, D., Jeanroy, C. G., Verburg, P. H., Alberti, G., & Šamonil, P. (2026). Soil Carbon Sequestration Following Natural Vegetation Recovery on Abandoned European Lands: Review and Research Needs. European Journal of Soil Science. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejss.70333

Featured image: Blätter Wald Natur via Pixabay (photo by ArtTower)

When forests return: carbon gains and biodiversity trade-offs

Gesche Schifferdecker on May 18, 2026

by Lorenzo Orzan

Across Europe, something quiet but powerful is happening. As people leave rural areas, forests are coming back, slowly reclaiming former meadows and pastures. At first glance, this seems like good news. More forests mean more carbon stored and, potentially, more biodiversity. But is it really that simple?

In our recent study across Italy, we followed this process from North to South, tracking how ecosystems change over time as forests naturally regenerate. By comparing sites at different stages, from open grasslands to forests up to 75 years old, we were able to reconstruct what happens when trees return.

The first answer is clear: carbon storage increases steadily. As forests grow, trees accumulate large amounts of carbon, becoming the main storage pool. In the oldest stands, carbon stocks can reach very high levels, highlighting the strong potential of natural reforestation for climate mitigation. But there is another side to the story: As forests close, light becomes scarce. Many herbaceous species that thrive in open habitats start to disappear. Across most of our study sites, plant diversity peaked in meadows and early stages and then declined as forests matured. In other words, gaining carbon often meant losing plant diversity. Yet, the picture is not entirely uniform. In the southernmost site, under Mediterranean conditions, plant diversity initially declined as forests became denser, but partially recovered again in the oldest stands, suggesting that mature forests can recreate suitable conditions for a richer understory vegetation. This suggests that, in some contexts, forests may eventually host both high carbon stocks and a richer understory. These findings highlight an important message for rewilding and land management: natural forest expansion is not automatically a win-win solution. It can involve trade-offs between climate mitigation and biodiversity conservation.

The challenge, moving forward, is to understand where and when these trade-offs can be reduced. Under the right conditions and given enough time, forests may offer opportunities to balance both goals. Until then, letting forests return remains a powerful tool, although it needs to be used with awareness of what we gain, and what we might lose along the way.

References: Orzan, L., Tomao, A., Antoniella, G., Bonari, G., Casolo, V., Chiti, T., Cingano, P., Foscari, A., Incerti, G., Panico, S. C., Piazza, N., Trotta, G., & Alberti, G. (Year). As forests reclaim the land: Latitudinal variations in carbon-biodiversity trade-offs under natural forest expansion in Italy. Forest Ecology and Management, Volume 605, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2026.123527

Where Europe could rewild: mapping the forests of the future

Gesche Schifferdecker and Margarita Penna on January 21, 2026

Proforestation in Germany (photo: Gesche Schifferdecker)

By Gesche Schifferdecker and Margarita Penna

Across Europe, landscapes are quietly changing. Mountain farms and pastures are being abandoned, forest management is easing in some regions, and climate and policy pressures are reshaping how land is used. For some, these trends raise concerns. For others, they open a powerful question: where could nature return, at scale, if we let it?

This is the starting point of WILDCARD’s “First iteration estimates of rewilding area and potential” (Deliverable 1.1), the project’s first EU-wide attempt to map where rewilding could realistically take place over the coming decades.

Rather than asking where rewilding should happen, this work asks a more grounded question: where is rewilding most likely to happen, given social, economic, and environmental change? The answer provides a much-needed baseline for understanding Europe’s rewilding potential – and for shaping future policy and restoration strategies.

Seeing opportunity in land-use change

Rewilding in WILDCARD is not a single process. It emerges through different pathways: when agricultural land is abandoned and forests naturally grow back; when managed forests are allowed to mature and develop more natural structures (proforestation); or a large step towards rewilding can be taken by going from intensive agricultural use to new mixed-use forests where ecological needs are explicitly addressed.

First main pathway to wilder forests in Europe: Agricultural abandonment can trigger rewilding from croplands/grasslands/mosaics toward more natural forest states, either by shifting into a combined-objective forest (some continued management alongside recovery) or by moving into close-to-nature forest through more hands-off rewilding.

Second main pathway to wilder forests in Europe: Proforestation, instead, focuses on existing forests, reducing management so plantations or multi-use stands mature into close-to-nature forests.

To capture this complexity, researchers explored eight future scenarios that reflect different development pathways for Europe. These scenarios cover both the IPCC Shared Socioeconomic Pathways and the IPBES Nature Futures Framework, ranging from business-as-usual futures to more ambitious, policy-driven nature restoration pathways. More particularly, the IPCC Shared Socioeconomic Pathwaysdescribe different ways society, economies, and governance might develop in the future, from current trends to transformative change. The IPBES Nature Futures Framework adds perspectives on how humans value and interact with nature. Together, they offer a comprehensive picture of how Europe’s landscape could evolve, visually showing how different socio-economic choices and visions of nature we prioritise can shape future land-use patterns.

At the heart of the analysis lies the CLUMondo model, a spatially explicit land-use model that simulates how land systems evolve under changing demands, policies, and biophysical conditions. The model projects land-use changes across Europe from 2020 to 2050, at a fine resolution of 1 km², allowing researchers to zoom from continental patterns down to regional detail.

Mapping Europe’s rewilding hotspots

Despite the diversity of futures explored, a striking pattern emerges from the WILDCARD work: forest recovery is an important feature in almost all scenarios.

The strongest signals appear along Europe’s major mountain systems – the Alps, Pyrenees, Carpathians, and the Dinaric–Šar–Pindus arc – where steep terrain, lower agricultural profitability, and existing forest cover create favourable conditions for natural regeneration. These landscapes form the backbone of Europe’s potential rewilding corridors.

Different processes dominate in different regions

Proforestation is most common in areas with relatively large and not very intensively managed forests, where reduced intervention allows forests to develop toward near-natural conditions.
Agricultural abandonment and rewilding are most likely in marginal farmland, particularly in Southern and Central Europe, where retreating agriculture opens space for forest regrowth.
Combined-objective forests emerge on previously cultivated lands mainly in Central and Eastern Europe, where land is released from agriculture but remains partially managed for multiple benefits. While not rewilding per se these transitions make an important contribution to a wilder Europe.

When these processes are combined, they reveal a coherent continental picture: rewilding potential clusters in uplands and less productive landscapes, while Europe’s intensively farmed lowlands largely remain under production.

Graphic: Total rewilding probability map of Europe, representing areas with different levels of agreement across all eight land-use change scenarios. The maximum probability is reached when the conversion from croplands (arable and permanent), grasslands, mosaics and managed forests to close-to-nature forest occurs in all eight scenarios

Why policy matters

One of the most important insights comes from the “SSP2 – Planned Rewilding scenario” developed by WILDCARD researchers. Here, rewilding is not left entirely to chance. Spatially guided towards areas of potentially high ecological importance and good chances on rewilding success, policy-supported measures produce more connected and coherent forest recovery patterns than spontaneous abandonment alone. In other words, how we guide rewilding matters as much as where it happens.

These first maps do not offer final answers – and they are not meant to. Instead, they provide a continental baseline: a shared reference point for exploring trade-offs, biodiversity outcomes, and climate benefits in the next phases of WILDCARD. As future deliverables refine these scenarios and link them to ecological and social outcomes, one message is already clear: Europe’s forests of the future are taking shape now – and understanding where nature can return is the first step toward letting it thrive.

Rewilding: A double shield against Climate Change and Biodiversity Loss

Raghav Sharma on September 29, 2025

We are living in a decisive moment, facing two connected global challenges: the loss of biodiversity and climate change. As rising temperatures accelerate the disappearance of species, it is clear we need to rethink how we live with nature and how we manage our land. Traditional conservation efforts have had mixed success, and more and more attention is turning to restoration – bringing nature back – as a lasting solution.

The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration and the EU Nature Restoration Law both urge member states to “prevent, halt, and reverse” ecosystem degradation. In Friuli Venezia Giulia (FVG, Italy), a WILDCARD Case Study, nature is already making a comeback: over the past 50–60 years, forest cover has nearly doubled (from 160.000 to over 300.000 ha), now covering around 40% of the region. Much of this change has happened quietly as old pastures and terraced fields were left to rewild, with a warming climate helping forests spread higher up the mountains, as shown in a research by Valentina Olmo (University of Trieste) and a team of researchers from different countries, including WILDCARD Coordinator Giorgio Alberti. Across the EU, the story is similar: since the 1990s, forested areas have increased by about 14 million hectares, clear evidence that passive rewilding is already reshaping the landscape.

Example of the recolonisation of abandoned meadows by forest vegetation in the municipality of Tapiana, Udine (Credits: Luca Cadez)

Pros and Cons of Rewilding

Olmo and her team caution that more trees do not always mean more biodiversity. Their initial findings have shown that the trajectories of plant and microbial biodiversity in the soil (fungi and bacteria) and those of carbon do not always coincide or are not always positive. Moreover, numerous national and international projects are investigating not only the impacts of natural reforestation on carbon stock dynamics in the various components of the ecosystem and on plant, animal and microorganisms’ biodiversity, but they are also verifying the level of acceptability of these rewilding processes by local populations and the possible economic tradeoffs.

The purple line in the four graphs shows the trends in the abundance (number of species) of the herbaceous plants, woody plants, fungi and bacteria as carbon accumulated in forest stands of different ages, originating from abandoned agricultural land. It can be seen that the number of species, particularly plants and fungi, increased with the increase in accumulated carbon (and the age of the stand) up to a certain point and then decreases. As of bacteria, however, there is an almost linear growth in relation to accumulated carbon. This suggests that ecosystems with greater carbon accumulation are not always the most favourable for biodiversity conservation, and that this relationship depends on the organisms considered (Credits: Lorenzo Orzan)

Proforestation: Letting Forests Mature

A complementary approach, proforestation, simply suspends timber management to let stands age naturally. Accumulating deadwood boosts carbon storage and creates microhabitats for fungi, insects, and cavity-nesting birds. The Wildcard project and the newly established Italian National Registry of Old-Growth Forests are studying how unmanaged stands handle climate stress, fire risk, and pests. Whereas scaling proforestation more widely must also weigh timber, water regulation, soil protection, and tourism values. Achieving such a balance will require dialogue among scientists, planners, and stakeholders.

Letting forests regrow naturally or leaving them unmanaged, can help tackle biodiversity loss and climate change. Europe’s restoration policies show how abandoned farmland has turned into forest and weigh the benefits and trade-offs of these approaches for carbon storage, biodiversity, and local economies.

To learn more about it and the case of Friuli Venezia Giulia (FVG), read the article by clicking on the link below (only in Italian):

IL REWILDING PER CONTRASTARE LA PERDITA DI BIODIVERSITÀ E PER MITIGARE IL CAMBIAMENTO CLIMATICO

New WILDCARD paper on the role of passive restoration

Gesche Schifferdecker on March 11, 2025

The European Union has adopted the Nature Restoration Law (NRL) to combat the widespread degradation of ecosystems, aiming to restore at least 20% of land and sea areas by 2030. A major challenge now is ensuring its proper implementation across member states. Traditionally, active restoration—such as replanting or reintroducing species—has been the dominant approach. However, new research by WILDCARD scientists highlights the effectiveness of spontaneous ecological succession, or passive restoration, where nature recovers on its own under suitable conditions.

Based on a previous analysis from 2020, which encompassed 530 global studies across various terrestrial ecosystems (Prach and Walker 2020), WILDCARD’s Karel Prach and Petra Janečková did an analysis of 156 European studies. They found that spontaneous succession successfully restored vegetation in 67% of cases, with slightly higher results than the global study (where 60% of the cases were successfully restored). This method is cost-effective and, when applied correctly, can lead to long-term ecological recovery. Yet, passive restoration is rarely prioritized in large-scale projects, the researchers emphasize.

The study authors advocate for a greater reliance on natural processes, which can enhance biodiversity, improve ecosystem functions, and support climate resilience. With the NRL in place, the experts see an opportunity to rethink how restoration is approached across Europe, ensuring ecological integrity while maximizing cost efficiency.

Monitoring vegetation succession in abandoned fields: what method works best?

Santiago Alarcón on October 8, 2024

In Europe’s rural landscape, the sight of abandoned agricultural fields is increasingly common. In some cases, the abandonment of less fertile or less accessible cultivation sites is caused by mechanisation and intensification of agriculture. In others, it is rural population exodus that leads to a decline in land management. Such transformations of the agricultural environment create a unique opportunity to study vegetation succession: the process through which the species and habitats in formerly cultivated fields change over time.

Studying vegetation succession is relevant for both environmental conservation and ecological restoration initiatives, as it provides researchers with important information such as species richness, the rate of succession, and what kinds of habitat tend to become established through natural processes. But research in the field does not come without challenges. One of them is how to observe long-term vegetation changes in a consistent and comparable manner. Another is how to cover a wide range of environmental conditions.

To better understand the strengths and weaknesses of different observation methods, WILDCARD researchers from the University of South Bohemia conducted a study gathering data from abandoned fields of the Bohemian Karst Protected Landscape Area, in the Czech Republic, since 1975. The research paper, recently published in the Journal of Vegetation Science, represents the first study of vegetation change in old fields spanning multiple decades that combines two frequently used survey methods. It compares fields in various successional stages at the same point in time (chronosequence), which results in faster acquisition of results but has limits in predicting restoration processes in disturbed sites, and the use of semi-permanent plots, which requires greater effort as researchers resurvey comparable areas at different points in time.

Our researchers found that a chronosequence approach can reliably reveal general successional patterns comparable to those obtained from semi-permanent plots. The combined method showed that both approaches studied in detail show similar succession patterns, regardless of the sampling methods used. However, to avoid pitfalls in measurement and sampling methods, the authors suggest combining different approaches to generate more reliable results. Their analysis of vegetation succession has also shown that, in fields with a moderate supply of moisture (mesic areas) a woodland landscape with the presence of trees and shrubs emerged within 25-30 years. Dry fields, conversely, continued to be dominated by perennial grasses, accompanied by scattered trees and shrubs.

Access the study

Řehounková K., Tichý L. & Prach K. 2024. Succession in abandoned fields: Chronosequence data verified by monitoring of semi-permanent plots. Journal of Vegetation Science 35: e13303. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jvs.13303

New paper: Comparing carbon monitoring approaches in old-growth forests of the Dinaric Alps

Santiago Alarcón on May 15, 2024

Carbon storage is one of the most important ecosystem services provided by forests to society. However, methods to monitor and report forest carbon stocks are still poorly understood. A new paper by WILDCARD researchers of the Universities of Turin and Udine, in Italy, compares different methods to estimate carbon stocks in old-growth forests of the Dinaric Alps in the Balkans, finding that direct and indirect methods result in significantly different carbon estimates.

The paper compares direct carbon assessment methods, such as field measurements, with indirect approaches, such as IPCC standard methods, finding that the latter tend to underestimate and overestimate carbon stocks, depending on the site considered. It also revealed that a few large trees (5%) concentrate a high amount of carbon stock (36% of carbon) in the study areas, which store a total of 507 Mg C ha−1. The results indicate that old-growth forests in the Dinaric Alps are the largest forest carbon sinks in Europe.

The paper “The largest European forest carbon sinks are in the Dinaric Alps old-growth forests: comparison of direct measurements and standardised approaches” was co-authored by researchers from the Universities of Montenegro and Banja.

Read the paper