| 1. |
- Alakukku, Laura, et al.
(författare)
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Maatalouden ympäristötuen vaikuttavuuden seurantatutkimus (MYTVAS 3) : loppuraportti
- 2014
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Since 1995, agri-environmental support partly funded by the EU has formed the core of Finland’s agri-environmental policy. This system has had a variety of impacts on the relationship between agriculture and the environment. Today’s agri-environmental support is one of the packages included in the Rural Development Programme for Mainland Finland (2007–2013/2014), which both in itself and through the underlying EU legislation requires monitoring of the impacts of the measures implemented. The study monitoring the impact of the 2nd Finnish agri-environmental scheme (MYTVAS 3), which ran from 2008 to 2013, forms part of this monitoring. The MYTVAS 3 monitoring study was also financed by the Ministry of the Environment. The monitoring study was carried out by a consortium coordinated by MTT Agrifood Research Finland and including the Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE), the University of Helsinki, the Finnish Game and Fisheries Research Institute and the University of Turku.The purpose of the MYTVAS 3 monitoring study was to find out how agri-environmental support and its various measures have affected the state of the environment in agricultural areas, how agri-environmental support has affected the potential for farming and how agri-environmental support should be developed to increase its impact. The monitoring focused on the impacts of agri-environmental support on the nutrient load from agriculture on the waterways and on biodiversity. When evaluating the findings presented, we should remember that while monitoring data shows that something happened, it does not necessarily explain what caused it. It is not always possible to show that particular developments were a specific outcome of the current agri-environmental support system and the implementation of its measures. The delay between a measure and its observed impact is often long, and the cause-and-effect relationships are complicated and partly unknown. Also, other agricultural policy and fluctuations on the market may affect the state of the agricultural environment directly or indirectly.The monitoring data show that agri-environmental support has not had a detrimental impact on the potential for farming. Despite a slight increase in the incidence of weeds, they do not cause problems of the kind that would require amendments to the content of agri-environmental measures. Carbon levels in the surface stratum of arable land seems to be continuing their slow decline, and there is still need for measures to preserve organic material in the soil.Compliance with the fertilisation limits in the agri-environmental support system would seem to have had very little impact on crop quality. Variations in the weight and protein content per hectolitre and per 1,000 seeds were of the same order between 2006 and 2012 as they were between 1995 and 2005. Crop quantities have also not been noticeably affected by compliance with the fertilisation limits. Average crop yields remained stable between 1986 and 2013, and no clearly different crop years were observed in the 2000s. It is possible, however, that the lower fertilisation levels could have lowered crop potential in the years with advantageous weather conditions in the 2000s and that protein contents have been lower in advantageous years.The monitoring data also show that the nutrient load potential of agriculture, measured by nutrient balances, has decreased continuously for nitrogen and particularly for phosphorus. The decrease in the nutrient load potential is due above all to a decrease in the use of synthetic fertilisers. The decline in nitrogen fertilisation has bottomed out in recent years, and low protein levels measured in high crop yield years show that there is no point in further reducing nitrogen fertilisation. Optimising nitrogen fertilisation according to how advantageous the growing season is and effectively using the soluble nitrogen in cattle manure are key measures in achieving reasonable nitrogen balances and good crop quality despite fluctuations in growing season conditions. New crop variants have been found to make more efficient use of nitrogen than old ones, and thus the introduction of new variants should be promoted. Despite the decrease in the nutrient balances, there are indications that nutrient loads in runoff water from domestic animal production sites are becoming an increasing problem. Indeed, the fundamental problem with the nutrient load from agriculture is the diversification of livestock farming and crop farming, which has made it more difficult to use nutrients appropriately. Therefore attention must be paid to measures that both boost the use of nutrients in manure and reduce the levels of nutrients that end up in manure. Based on nutrient load monitoring in the catchment areas of rivers, the phosphorus load per hectare of cropland has decreased in each programme period, being about 80% of the level of the first period (1995–1999) in the third period (2007–2013). Because of the increase in the area of cropland, the nitrogen load on waterways from agriculture continued to grow during the second programme period (2000–2006) but peaked in the third (2007–2013). A similar trend was found in the nitrogen load per hectare of cropland.The most important threat to biodiversity is caused by the development of landscape structure, typically involving a decrease in the number of open or half-open areas excluded from actual cultivation. The consequence of the clearing of margins and ecological islands located in crop fields, drainage measures aimed at increasing arable land and all rationalisation of cultivated areas is the diminishing of exactly those areas that are the most important from the perspective of the biodiversity of the agricultural environment. However, the measure-specific findings in the monitoring study show that biodiversity benefits have been locally achieved where measures have been implemented on a broad enough scale (biodynamic farming, traditional biotopes, wetlands, buffer zones, green fallow / nature management areas). Particular care should therefore be taken that all cultivated land continues to have a sufficient percentage of non-cultivated areas, whether they be natural meadows, nature management areas, biodiversity strips, buffer zones, filter strips, headlands, ecological islands, etc. Including the rather popular nature management areas as a new voluntary measure under basic measures was a significant contribution to biodiversity.Regarding the rural landscape, it may be noted that by visual inspection the area of cropland has remained largely unchanged, at the level of the landscape as a whole it is far more common for the landscape to become more closed than to become more open. This trend was also observed in the visual inspection of traditional biotopes, even if the openness of the meadows monitored largely remained unchanged.The only measures that directly address the reduction of gaseous emissions in the agri-environmental support system are the longterm grass cultivation on peat fields and special aid agreements for slurry injection in cropland. While other measures have indirectly affected gaseous emissions, the impact of agri-environmental support as a whole on reducing gaseous emissions from agriculture has been negligible. In general, we may conclude that the goals, content and support levels of agri-environmental support measures must be increasingly adapted and customised by region, by type of farming and by farm, because both the state of the agricultural environment and the needs of society differ greatly between different types of rural area.
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| 2. |
- Jonason, Dennis, et al.
(författare)
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Weak functional response to agricultural landscape homogenisation among plants, butterflies and birds
- 2017
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Ingår i: Ecography. - : Wiley. - 0906-7590 .- 1600-0587. ; 40:10, s. 1221-1230
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Measures of functional diversity are expected to predict community responses to land use and environmental change because, in contrast to taxonomic diversity, it is based on species traits rather than their identity. Here, we investigated the impact of landscape homogenisation on plants, butterflies and birds in terms of the proportion of arable field cover in southern Finland at local (0.25 km2) and regional (> 10 000 km2) scales using four functional diversity indices: functional richness, functional evenness, functional divergence and functional dispersion. No uniform response in functional diversity across taxa or scales was found. However, in all cases where we found a relationship between increasing arable field cover and any index of functional diversity, this relationship was negative. Butterfly functional richness decreased with increasing arable field cover, as did butterfly and bird functional evenness. For butterfly functional evenness, this was only evident in the most homogeneous regions. Butterfly and bird functional dispersion decreased in homogeneous regions regardless of the proportion of arable field cover locally. No effect of landscape heterogeneity on plant functional diversity was found at any spatial scale, but plant species richness decreased locally with increasing arable field cover. Overall, species richness responded more consistently to landscape homogenisation than did the functional diversity indices, with both positive and negative effects across species groups. Functional diversity indices are in theory valuable instruments for assessing effects of land use scenarios on ecosystem functioning. However, the applicability of empirical data requires deeper understanding of which traits reliably capture species' vulnerability to environmental factors and of the ecological interpretation of the functional diversity indices. Our study provides novel insights into how the functional diversity of communities changes in response to agriculturally derived landscape homogenisation; however, the low explanatory power of the functional diversity indices hampers the ability to reliably anticipate impacts on ecosystem functioning.
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| 3. |
- Kuussaari, Mikko, et al.
(författare)
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Butterfly species’ responses to urbanization : differing effects of human population density and built-up area
- 2021
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Ingår i: Urban Ecosystems. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1083-8155 .- 1573-1642. ; 24:3, s. 515-527
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Good knowledge on how increasing urbanization affects biodiversity is essential in order to preserve biodiversity in urban green spaces. We examined how urban development affects species richness and total abundance of butterflies as well as the occurrence and abundance of individual species within the Helsinki metropolitan area in Northern Europe. Repeated butterfly counts in 167 separate 1-km-long transects within Helsinki covered the entire urbanization gradient, quantified by human population density and the proportion of built-up area (within a 50-m buffer surrounding each butterfly transect). We found consistently negative effects of both human population density and built-up area on all studied butterfly variables, though butterflies responded markedly more negatively to increasing human population density than to built-up area. Responses in butterfly species richness and total abundance showed higher variability in relation to proportion of built-up area than to human density, especially in areas of high human density. Increasing human density negatively affected both the abundance and the occurrence of 47% of the 19 most abundant species, whereas, for the proportion of built-up area, the corresponding percentages were 32% and 32%, respectively. Species with high habitat specificity and low mobility showed higher sensitivity to urbanization (especially high human population density) than habitat generalists and mobile species that dominated the urban butterfly communities. Our results suggest that human population density provides a better indicator of urbanization effects on butterflies compared to the proportion of built-up area. The generality of this finding should be verified in other contexts and taxonomic groups.
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| 4. |
- Merckx, Thomas, et al.
(författare)
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Urbanization extends flight phenology and leads to local adaptation of seasonal plasticity in Lepidoptera
- 2021
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Ingår i: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. - : Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. - 0027-8424 .- 1091-6490. ; 118:40
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Urbanization is gaining force globally, which challenges biodiversity, and it has recently also emerged as an agent of evolutionary change. Seasonal phenology and life cycle regulation are essential processes that urbanization is likely to alter through both the urban heat island effect (UHI) and artificial light at night (ALAN). However, how UHI and ALAN affect the evolution of seasonal adaptations has received little attention. Here, we test for the urban evolution of seasonal life-history plasticity, specifically changes in the photoperiodic induction of diapause in two lepidopterans, Pieris napi (Pieridae) and Chiasmia clathrata (Geometridae). We used long-term data from standardized monitoring and citizen science observation schemes to compare yearly phenological flight curves in six cities in Finland and Sweden to those of adjacent rural populations. This analysis showed for both species that flight seasons are longer and end later in most cities, suggesting a difference in the timing of diapause induction. Then, we used common garden experiments to test whether the evolution of the photoperiodic reaction norm for diapause could explain these phenological changes for a subset of these cities. These experiments demonstrated a genetic shift for both species in urban areas toward a lower daylength threshold for direct development, consistent with predictions based on the UHI but not ALAN. The correspondence of this genetic change to the results of our larger-scale observational analysis of in situ flight phenology indicates that it may be widespread. These findings suggest that seasonal life cycle regulation evolves in urban ectotherms and may contribute to ecoevolutionary dynamics in cities.
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| 5. |
- Ekroos, Johan, et al.
(författare)
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Weak effects of farming practices corresponding to agricultural greening measures on farmland bird diversity in boreal landscapes
- 2019
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Ingår i: Landscape Ecology. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0921-2973 .- 1572-9761. ; 34:2, s. 389-402
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Context: The current Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the European Union includes three greening measures, which are partly intended to benefit farmland biodiversity. However, the relative biodiversity effects of the greening measures, including joint effects of landscape context, are not well understood. Objectives: We studied the effects of increasing crop diversity, proportions of production grasslands and fallows, corresponding to CAP greening measures, on open farmland bird diversity, whilst controlling for the effects of distance to forests, field edge density and proportion of built-up areas. Methods: We surveyed open farmland birds using territory mapping in Southern Finland. We modelled effects of greening measures and landscape structure on farmland birds (7642 territories) using generalised linear mixed models. Results: Increasing proportions of grasslands increased farmland bird species richness and diversity in open farmland, whereas increasing proportions of fallows increased bird diversity. Increasing crop diversity benefited individual species, but not species richness or diversity. Increasing field edge densities consistently increased the species richness of all farmland species, in-field nesters and non-crop nesters, as well as total farmland bird diversity. The relative effect of edge density was much stronger compared to the three greening measures. Conclusions: Our results show that promoting fallows and grasslands, in particular grazed grasslands and various types of semi-natural grasslands, has the highest potential to benefit farmland bird diversity. Maintaining or increasing field edge densities, currently not supported, seems to be of even more benefit. In open farmland, with little or no field edges, fallows and grasslands are particularly beneficial.
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| 6. |
- Ollila, Henriikka, et al.
(författare)
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Brain magnetic resonance imaging findings six months after critical COVID-19: A prospective cohort study.
- 2024
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Ingår i: Journal of critical care. - 1557-8615. ; 80
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- COVID-19 patients suffered from neurological symptoms in the acute phase. Whether this led to long-term consequences was unknown. We studied long-term brain MRI findings in ICU-treated COVID-19 patients and compared them with findings in groups with less severe acute disease.In this prospective cohort study, 69 ICU-treated, 46 ward-treated, and 46 home-isolated patients, as well as 53 non-COVID-19 controls, underwent brain MRI six months after acute COVID-19. Plasma neurofilament light chain (NfL), a biomarker of neuroaxonal injury, was measured simultaneously.Ischaemic infarctions existed in 5.8% of ICU-treated patients. Cerebral microbleeds (CMBs) existed in 27 (39.1%) ICU-treated, 13 (28.3%) ward-treated, 8 (17.4%) home-isolated COVID-19 patients, and 12 (22.6%) non-COVID controls. Patients with CMBs were older (p<0.001), had a higher level of plasma NfL (p=0.003), and higher supplementary oxygen days (p<0.001). In multivariable analysis, age (OR 1.06, 95% CI 1.02-1.09) and supplementary oxygen days (OR 1.07, 95% CI 1.02-1.13) were associated with CMBs. The ICU group showed prevalent distribution of CMBs in deep regions.Age and supplementary oxygen days were independently associated with CMBs; COVID-19 status showed no association. Accumulation of risk factors in the ICU group may explain the higher prevalence of CMBs.
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