Kvalitetsförändringar i ängs- och betesmarker med och utan miljöersättning

Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) has on behalf of the Board of Agriculture analysed quality changes in semi-natural grasslands with or without Agrienvironmental payment for continued grazing or mowing. Data come from two environmental monitoring programmes: the sample-based monitoring of qualities in meadows and pastured and the general national monitoring programme NILS.Weak tendencies of change and no reliable interactions between change and agri-environmental payment No changes in species-richness of butterfies, bumblebees and plants between the two time-periods (2006–2010 and 2011–2015) were associated with type of environmental subsidies. The only signifcant change of the vegetation in the analyses is a weak increase in the total cover of the feld layer and a decrease in the cover of low grassland vegetation (Butterfies and bumblebees are infuenced by landscape and fower richness, but not by agri-environmental payment Butterfies and bumblebees have the highest species richness in mosaic landscapes with large proportions of grasslands. The species richness of butterfies and bumblebees are positively related to fower richness and cover of tall grassland vegetation, and negatively related to the presence of grazing animals within grasslands. Thus, butterfies and bumblebees prefer grasslands that are still open, but where the grazing pressure is relatively weak.Considerations for further evaluation and monitoring The distribution of data of different grassland types and geographical regions between sites with or without agri-environmental payment is unevenly distributed, and the amount of data for northern Sweden is insuffcient. Payment for alvar grazing and forest grazing is poorly represented and has a very uneven geographical distribution for sites in the dataset, which complicates the interpretation of the results. The general sample of the NILS monitoring programme includes too little data for grasslands to be useful for estimating the area, quality, changes and differences among grasslands. For an accurate comparison of grasslands with or without agri-environmental payment, more effort must be spent on making different subsets more comparable.