Functional connectivity and green infrastructure (FUNgreen)

The FUNgreen project will assess how green infrastructure and functional connectivity interact to facilitate the persistence of plants and maintenance of ecosystem services in fragmented European landscapes. The project will investigate the respective roles of green infrastructure - the configuration of the landscape - and plant functional connectivity - the effective dispersal of seeds and pollen - in the the maintenance of biodiversity and ecosystem services. We will focus on plant communities of semi-natural grasslands, a habitat of high European and global conservation interest, in Sweden, Belgium, Germany, United Kingdom and Spain.

Specifically, we will compare functional connectivity in fragmented landscapes with either good or poor green infrastructure, and either high or low levels of management that promote fucntional connectivity (i.e. movement of livestock). Seed and pollen dispersal in these landscapes will be eveluated trough genetic analyses, in situ pollination and recruitment experiments and models parameterized from field data. The effects of functional connectivity on biodiversity, genetic diversity and a range of ecosystem services will be invesitgated and used as the basis of predictive models which can shape future landscape management.

Results will be relevant to farmers, land owners, nature organizations and policy makers, to whom project outputs will be made available. Farmers and conservation managers will take part in the development of alternative modelling scenarios for improving functional connectivity within economically realistic scenarios.