The modern landscape is strongly influenced by various human activities resulting in extensive exploitation of natural resources at the expense of biodiversity loss. This leads to the need to search for trade-offs between sustained use of natural resources and biodiversity conservation. Knowledge of community structure and of risks due to habitat management and species´ population attributes indicating environmental changes may be important for the sustainability of both natural resources use and bird richness patterns (species composition, diversity, rarity in different types of habitats). Our research team has long-term experience with research in three main topics:
1. Landscape influenced by agriculture – our studies are focused on population dynamics, habitat requirements, breeding biology, survival and mortality causes including predation in populations of two model species with different habitat requirements: the northern lapwing (Vanellus vanellus; need for wetlands and moist habitats) and the grey partridge (Perdix perdix; need for habitat heterogeneity).
2. Post-industrial and post-mining landscape – our studies concentrate on avian community structure and associated effects of predation risks, vegetation structure and management history (e.g., spontaneous natural development versus conventional technical reclamation) throughout succession series from postdisturbance stands to mature forests.
3. Secondary production forests – we are concerned with the bird richness patterns in these forests nad the responsible management approaches including forest fragmentation, habitat heterogeneity and tree species composition.
Applied outcomes of the research and further potential applications of the research:
- Published detailed and specific recommendations for the research community and for reclamation professionals.
- Applications for proposed effective agri-environmental schemes (northern lapwing on arable land, etc.).
- Baseline data for agriculture and environment subsidy policies (national, EU).
- Methodological tools for post-mining areas and other applications in reclamation practice.
- Advisory material for foresters and forest owners about forest management in relation to biodiversity conservation.
Keywords:
agricultural landscape, avian biodiversity, bird richness patterns, farmland, forest management, habitat management, nature conservation, post-mining landscape, sustainable landscape