Assessing the relationship between habitats conservation status and ecosystem services in Natura 2000

Doutoramento em Engenharia Florestal e dos Recursos Naturais - Instituto Superior de Agronomia. Universidade de Lisboa

Natura 2000 is the pan-European network of protected areas and classifies different habitat types, including shrub-grasslands as of conservation interest. The use and management to which these habitat types are subject potentially affect their conservation status and the ecosystem services they generated, including regulating services as carbon storage or wildfire prevention. Wildfire prevention is an important ecosystem service in the Mediterranean region and management practices such as grazing or prescribed burning have been applied in several shrub-grassland areas in Natura 2000. These practices are known to reduce fuel vegetation, but little is known about their effects on the conservation status of these habitats. The main goal of this thesis was to investigate if there are potential trade-offs between fire hazard reduction and conservation in different shrub-grassland habitat types. For this, we assessed changes on plant species composition, vegetation structure, aboveground biomass and potential fire behaviour in plots treated with grazing or prescribed burning in two Natura 2000 sites located in central-west Portugal. Moderate grazing has effectively contributed to the conservation of some shrub-grassland habitat types through reduction of wildfire hazard and maintenance of favourable conservation status. In contrast, higher grazing and browsing pressure negatively affected the conservation status by altering plant species composition and structure of the analysed habitat. Likewise prescribed burning reduced fuel loads and minimized short-term fire hazard, but negatively affected the conservation status of the habitat types considered. Results showed that there are potential management conflicts between fire prevention and conservation in Natura 2000 and that these trade-offs must be considered during fuel management decisions

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