100 years of biodiversity change in Graz

Lina MÜHLBAUER (Graz): Biodiversity is changing at an unprecedented rate and is threatening ecosystems and human well-being worldwide. Although drivers of this change are well known, the magnitude of these global drivers and the corresponding changes differ on regional and local scales. Additionally, the understanding of biodiversity respons-es to global change is limited by shifting baselines and the distribution of chang-es among species.

We georeferenced and repeated vegetation surveys in grasslands from 1925 to assess the biodiversity change in the last 100 years in and around Graz. We also infer the magnitude of driver effects on biodiversity from a variety of data sources using causal inference. Altogether we document massive losses in species rich-ness and evenness, driven mainly by nitrogen addition, area loss and climate change.