Land use management to ensure ecosystem service delivery under new societal and environmental pressures in heathlands

The combined impact of climate and land-use change poses increasing threats to nature and nature's benefit to people. The LandPress project makes use of the severe Norwegian winter-drought in 2014 as a case study; and combines geographical, ecological and social science approaches to explore the drivers of ecosystem resilience to drought die-back, the ecological processes and implications of drought responses, and management options for mitigating damage and costs. First, by means of remote sensing, we assess the role of climate, environment and land-use in regulating resilience of Calluna heaths to drought die-back locally and along a biogeographic gradient. We find that drought-damage in heather varies across landscapes, and can be quantified by aerial photos, allowing us to establish that both environment (slope) and land-use (prescribed fire) influence ecosystem resistance to drought. Second, we conduct a drought experiment to understand and assess the impacts of severe drought events on coastal heathland ecosystem dynamics and functioning. After the three first years we find only weak effects on plant communities, but distinct responses in plant functional traits suggesting that ecosystem resistance to drought decreases with time since the last prescribed fire. Third, we experimentally assess whether prescribed burning can be used to promote Calluna's resilience after severe drought, and find that prescribed burning efficiently removes damaged heather, stimulating post-fire vegetation development and restore ecosystem functioning after drought. Finally, we conduct a cost-benefit analysis to understand the contribution of land management to the provision of ecosystem services, with focus on securing low fire-risk landscapes. We find that management has more benefits than food production; land-use can reduce the extent of extreme drought, reduce fire risk and help us keep the ecosystem functioning. Our project demonstrates the importance of understanding how interactions between climate-change and land-use and is crucial in developing new management strategies.