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ZusammenfassungDigitalisierung und nachhaltige Entwicklung sind zentrale gesellschaftliche Herausforderungen der heutigen Zeit. Dieser Beitrag zeigt, wie diese Querschnittsthemen in Form von digitaler Hochschulbildung, insbesondere E-Learning, die Vermittlung und Etablierung von Bildung für nachhaltige Entwicklung (BNE) in der Bildungslandschaft fördern können. Das Ziel von BNE ist es, Lernende zu befähigen, die Auswirkungen des eigenen Handelns auf die Welt zu verstehen und verantwortungsvolle, zukunftsgerichtete Entscheidungen treffen zu können. In diesem Beitrag wird diskutiert, wie die verschiedenen Prinzipien von erfolgreichem E-Learning sowie Elementen der Gamifizierung zur Vermittlung von BNE beitragen und welche Formate zur Überprüfung des Lernerfolgs genutzt werden können.

Digital media increasingly transform daily routines as well as everyday actions and working environments, including education. Apps, games, computer programs, and social media, etc. can support and improve learning processes. The COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting restrictions of social life accelerated a shift towards the application of digital media in education as well as in distance learning. This paper answers questions about the current usage of digital media in non-formal education in Germany, especially in the context of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). The results of a 2020 survey in Germany with 111 participants show that digital media are an integral part of non-formal education; in particular, audio and video recording and filesharing are used often. Notably, the usage of web calls and webinars has increased since the pandemic. Regarding the disadvantages of digitals formats, participants note the investment in time and effort as well as the expensive equipment needed for development. Despite being dissatisfied with existing offers, a lot of institutions have not developed their own digital education formats (yet). This indicates a possible need for further training and education of educators in non-formal ESD, enabling them to independently create digital formats. This would also contribute to the quality of digital formats, of which many were possibly developed without proper expertise.

Plants are generally assumed to influence the surrounding soil microflora through rhizodeposition. However, the role of rhizodeposits, and especially organic acids, in structuring the bacterial communities is still poorly understood. In this study, we asked the question whether plants differing in organic acid secretion have a different impact on the soil bacterial communities, and if this is the case, to which extent this impact is due to different organic acid concentrations in the rhizosphere. To investigate this question, we compared white lupin and wheat. The former is a high organic acid-secreting species, while the latter secretes only low amounts of carboxylates. We grew the plants in large microcosms including root-free control compartments for one year (replanted every second month) and analyzed the spatio-temporal changes in soil ATP concentrations, as well as in diversity and structure of bacterial communities (using DNA- and RNA-based DGGE) along a root-soil gradient after two, six and twelve month's cultivation. Our results showed: i) that white lupin and wheat differed in their impact on soil ATP concentrations and on the structure of root bacterial communities; ii) that cultivation time was a key factor in explaining the observed differences in all the parameters studied; and iii) that the amounts of organic acids accounted for a significant proportion (15%) of the variability within root active communities. These results indicate that plants influence their associated bacterial communities in a species-specific way and that for communities living in the direct vicinity of roots (rhizoplane-endorhizosphere), a significant part of this influence can be attributed to root-secreted organic acids.

1. Over the last decades, biodiversity in agricultural landscapes has declined drastically. Initiatives to enhance biodiversity, such as agri-environment schemes, often have little effect, especially in intensively farmed landscapes. The effectiveness of conservation management may be improved by scheme implementation near high-quality habitats that can act as a source of species. We evaluated up to what distance high-quality habitats (nature reserves and artificially created flower-rich patches) affect the diversity of forbs and pollinators in intensively farmed landscapes of the Netherlands.

Flower-visiting insects play a crucial role in ecosystem processes by providing essential services such as pollination. During the last decades, agricultural intensification has caused a widespread decline of insect diversity. Agri-environment schemes (AES) have been implemented in many European countries to counteract the loss of biodiversity. Here, we present results of a study evaluating effects of AES on pollinators and the insect-pollinated plants in grasslands of two contrasting European countries: Switzerland and The Netherlands. We compare species composition and abundance of bees and insect-pollinated plants in 37 field pairs, one with an AES, the other conventionally managed. AES significantly affected species-richness and abundance of non-Apis bees in Switzerland. Schemes did not have an effect in The Netherlands where bee species number and abundance was much lower than in Switzerland. The different effectiveness between countries can be explained by different contextual conditions and different effects of AES management prescriptions on the food resource of wild bees. We conclude that in order to stop the overall loss of agro-biodiversity, it can be recommended to include additional measures which focus specifically on the enhancement of bees or other arthropods.

Cattle influences gap dynamics in pastures in two ways: (1) by creating gaps and (2) by affecting the colonization process. This effect of cattle activity on gap revegetation can be subdivided in three main factors: herbage removal, trampling and dung and urine deposition. The objective of this study was to assess how these three effects moderate the plant succession following gap creation. In an exclosure, four controlled treatments simulating cattle activity (repeated mowing, trampling, manuring and untreated control) were applied on plots of 2 × 2 m. In the centre of each plot, one artificial gap of 60 × 60 cm was created. During three years, vegetation changes were monitored in spring and in autumn, with a square grid of 100 cells of 0.01 m2 centred on the gap. Our experiment confirmed that fine-scale gap creation may have a high impact on relative abundances of species in the community. The gap environment acts on species as a filter and this filtering was described in terms of regenerative attributes. Colonizers were species with small seeds, unspecialized seed dispersal, persistent seed bank and high vegetation spread. However, the role of dung deposition, herbage removal or trampling by cattle did not seem to be of primary importance in the revegetation process, but could moderate vegetation response. Therefore, the different cattle effects act as secondary filters that selectively favoured or disadvantaged different species from the gap-regenerating community. These complex interactions are probably keys to understand plant coexistence in perennial grasslands.

The response of total (DNA-based analysis) and active (RNA-based analysis) bacterial communities to a pCO2 increase under field conditions was assessed using two perennial grasses: the nitrophilic Lolium perenne and the oligonitrophilic Molinia coerulea. PCR- and reverse transcriptase-PCR denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis analysis of 16S rRNA genes generated contrasting profiles. The pCO2 increase influenced mainly the active and root-associated component of the bacterial community. Bacterial groups responsive to the pCO2 increase were identified by sequencing of corresponding denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis bands. About 50% of retrieved sequences were affiliated to Proteobacteria. Our data suggest that Actinobacteria in soil and Myxococcales (Deltaproteobacteria) in root are stimulated under elevated pCO2.

A cell-grid method was used to survey seasonal changes in four herbaceous communities of a wooded pasture. Permanent plots consisted in 1-m3 grids subdivided into 100 cells of 1 dm2. In each cell of each plot and every month from May to September, we estimated dominance, and grazing occurrence of all species. Plant communities included an eutrophic grazed meadow, a temporary refused meadow, an underwood herb community and an oligotrophic lawn. Our results showed that seasonal changes in species composition were very strong and scale-dependent. Changes at plot scale were mainly driven by a seasonal shift. Changes at cell scale suggested high small-scale dynamics of species. Despite high changes at cell scale, the structure of the community did not change and local species richness did not show any trend. We found no correlation between the turnover at cell scale and cattle activity. We conclude that dynamics and internal species turnover of the community at fine scale and short time seem more driven by internal characteristics of the community than by disturbances induced by cattle. Furthermore, at seasonal scale, plant communities may be stable in their structure despite fluctuations in their texture. © Akademiai Kiado, Budapest.

Changes in agricultural practices of semi-natural mountain grasslands are expected to modify plant community structure and shift dominance patterns. Using vegetation surveys of 11 sites in semi-natural grasslands of the Swiss Jura and Swiss and French Alps, we determined the relative contribution of dominant, subordinate and transient plant species in grazed and abandoned communities and observed their changes along a gradient of productivity and in response to abandonment of pasturing. The results confirm the humpbacked diversity–productivity relationship in semi-natural grassland, which is due to the increase of subordinate species number at intermediate productivity levels. Grazed communities, at the lower or higher end of the species diversity gradient, suffered higher species loss after grazing abandonment. Species loss after abandonment of pasturing was mainly due to a higher reduction in the number of subordinate species, as a consequence of the increasing proportion of dominant species. When plant biodiversity maintenance is the aim, our results have direct implications for the way grasslands should be managed. Indeed, while intensification and abandonment have been accelerated since few decades, our findings in this multi-site analysis confirm the importance of maintaining intermediate levels of pasturing to preserve biodiversity.

It is now widely accepted that agricultural intensification drives the decline of biodiversity and related ecosystem services like pollination. Conservation management, such as agri-environment schemes (AES), has been introduced to counteract these declines, but in Western European countries these tend to produce mixed biodiversity benefits. Not much is known about the effects of AES in Central and Eastern European countries. We evaluated the effect of reduced stocking rates (0.5 cow/ha vs. >1 cow/ha) on bees and insect-pollinated plants in semi-natural pastures in Hungary. We sampled bees using sweep net and transect surveys in the edge and interior of the fields three times in 2003. On the same transects, we also estimated the cover of all plant species. We found no management effect on species richness and abundance with respect to cover of bees and insect-pollinated plants, but grazing intensity resulted in differences in species composition of insect-pollinated plants. Furthermore, we compared our results with those of a similar study carried out in Switzerland, and the Netherlands, but with different management regimes. There were positive effects of management in Switzerland, but conservation effects were lacking in the Netherlands. Species richness of both bees and insect-pollinated plants was highest in Hungary, intermediate in Switzerland and lowest in the Netherlands. Across all countries, the richness of insect-pollinated plants was a good predictor of bee species richness. Grassland extensification schemes were effective for bees and insect-pollinated plants in the country with intermediate land-use intensity and biodiversity only (Switzerland). The absence of effects in the Netherlands may have been caused by the management being highly intensive on both field types. In Hungarian grasslands biodiversity levels were high regardless of management and both investigated stocking rates may be qualified as conservation management. Therefore, agricultural policy in Hungary should encourage the maintenance of a variety of traditional grazing practices for conserving this still highly diverse pollinator fauna.

Cattle activity greatly influences plant species composition and biomass production of grassland ecosystems. Dung deposition by cattle together with grazing and trampling can be considered as one of the important factors driving vegetation dynamics in pastures. The objective of this study was to investigate at 10-cm and 1-month resolution the plant community dynamics induced by dung deposition in two plant communities (a mesotrophic and an oligotrophic grassland) in a pasture of the Swiss Jura Mountains. Vegetation was sampled four or three times during the vegetation period in contiguous 10 cm x 10 cm quadrats from the centre of the dung pat to a distance of 60 cm. A lower grazing intensity near the dung pat was recorded for all observation periods. In the mesotrophic grassland the canopy was higher near the dung pat already one week after dung deposition. Vegetation around dung pats was submitted to two opposite fertilizing and grazing gradients, which induced changes in vegetation texture and structure at fine scale and short term. We observed a positive rank correlation between species turnover and distance to the dung for both communities, suggesting a seasonal stabilizing effect of dung on the plant composition of their direct surroundings (0-10 cm) likely due to cattle avoidance. Since dung pats are dropped every year in different locations, they create in the pasture a shifting mosaic of nutrient availability and grazing intensity inducing at seasonal scale micro-successions in plant communities. (c) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Worldwide agriculture is one of the main drivers of biodiversity decline. Effective conservation strategies depend on the type of relationship between biodiversity and land-use intensity, but to date the shape of this relationship is unknown. We linked plant species richness with nitrogen (N) input as an indicator of land-use intensity on 130 grasslands and 141 arable fields in six European countries. Using Poisson regression, we found that plant species richness was significantly negatively related to N input on both field types after the effects of confounding environmental factors had been accounted for. Subsequent analyses showed that exponentially declining relationships provided a better fit than linear or unimodal relationships and that this was largely the result of the response of rare species (relative cover less than 1%). Our results indicate that conservation benefits are disproportionally more costly on high-intensity than on low-intensity farmland. For example, reducing N inputs from 75 to 0 and 400 to 60 kg ha −1 yr −1 resulted in about the same estimated species gain for arable plants. Conservation initiatives are most (cost-)effective if they are preferentially implemented in extensively farmed areas that still support high levels of biodiversity.

Influenced by the combined action of grazing and forest management, wooded pastures represent a traditional form of multiple use of natural resources in some European mountains. This fragile semi-natural ecosystem is characterized by the coexistence of high biodiversity and extensive land use. Based on experimental and observational studies carried out at various spatial scales in the Swiss Jura Mountains, this chapter provides an insight into patterns and processes occurring in this typical silvopastoral ecosystem. Summer grazing by cattle is the main driving force affecting vegetation dynamics. Large herbivores influence vegetation in three ways: grazing and browsing, dung and urine deposition and trampling. Field observations reveal a high heterogeneity of cattle activities at both fine and large scales. Cattle habitat use controls the dynamics of plant species and functional groups in the herb layer. Natural tree regeneration is also closely affected by cattle activity and related to the heterogeneous environment. Distribution of tree seedlings is spatially associated with specific physical structures or nurse plants that facilitate their survival in the herb and the shrub layers. Moreover, the growth of tree saplings is related to grazing intensity. Knowledge of ecological functioning of wooded pastures has allowed the development of a novel, spatially explicit, mosaic compartment model of the dynamics of silvopastoral ecosystems. This model is able to explain some aspects of the origin of vegetation heterogeneity in pasture-woodland landscapes. The conservation of such ecosystems is an important challenge considering its complexity and the present change in agricultural practices in mountain regions. A better integration of ecological and socio-economic processes into predictive multi-level models will permit the exploration of the conditions for sustainable management schemes compatible with biodiversity conservation.

The response of total (DNA-based analysis) and active (RNA-based analysis) bacterial communities to a pCO2 increase under field conditions was assessed using two perennial grasses: the nitrophilic Lolium perenne and the oligonitrophilic Molinia coerulea. PCR- and reverse transcriptase-PCR denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis analysis of 16S rRNA genes generated contrasting profiles. The pCO2 increase influenced mainly the active and root-associated component of the bacterial community. Bacterial groups responsive to the pCO2 increase were identified by sequencing of corresponding denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis bands. About 50% of retrieved sequences were affiliated to Proteobacteria. Our data suggest that Actinobacteria in soil and Myxococcales (Deltaproteobacteria) in root are stimulated under elevated pCO2.

Management-oriented models of cattle habitat use often treat grazing pressure as a single variable summarizing all cattle activities. This paper addresses the following questions: How does the spatial pattern of cattle effects vary between cattle activities in a highly heterogeneous landscape? Do these patterns change over the grazing season as forage availability decreases? What are the respective roles of natural and management-introduced structures? We estimated the intensity of herbage removal, dung deposition and trampling after each of three grazing periods on a grid of 25 m × 25 m cells covering an entire paddock in the Swiss Jura Mountains. We found no significant positive correlations between cattle effects. Spatial patterns weakened through the season for grazing and trampling, whereas dunging patterns changed little between grazing periods. Redundancy analysis showed that different cattle effects were correlated with different environmental variables and that the importance of management-introduced variables was highest for herbage removal. Autocorrelograms and partial redundancy analyses using principal coordinates of neighbour matrices suggested that dunging patterns were more coarse-grained than the others. Systematic differences in the spatial and seasonal patterns of cattle effects may result in complex interactions with vegetation involving feedback effects through nutrient shift, with strong implications for ecosystem management. In heterogeneous environments, such as pasture-woodland landscapes, spatially explicit models of vegetation dynamics need to model cattle effects separately.

Cattle influences gap dynamics in pastures in two ways: (1) by creating gaps and (2) by affecting the colonization process. This effect of cattle activity on gap revegetation can be subdivided in three main factors: herbage removal, trampling and dung and urine deposition. The objective of this study was to assess how these three effects moderate the plant succession following gap creation. In an exclosure, four controlled treatments simulating cattle activity (repeated mowing, trampling, manuring and untreated control) were applied on plots of 2 X 2 in. In the centre of each plot, one artificial gap of 60 X 60 cm was created. During three years, vegetation changes were monitored in spring and in autumn, with 2 a square grid of 100 cells of 0.01 m(2) centred on the gap. Our experiment confirmed that fine-scale gap creation may have a high impact on relative abundances of species in the community. The gap environment acts on species as a filter and this filtering was described in terms of regenerative attributes. Colonizers were species with small seeds, unspecialized seed dispersal, persistent seed bank and high vegetation spread. However, the role of dung deposition, herbage removal or trampling by cattle did not seem to be of primary importance in the revegetation process, but could moderate vegetation response. Therefore, the different cattle effects act as secondary filters that selectively favoured or disadvantaged different species from the gap-regenerating community. These complex interactions are probably keys to understand plant coexistence in perennial grasslands.

International audience; The effect of cattle activity on pastures can be subdivided into three categories of disturbances: herbage removal, dunging and trampling. The objective of this study was to assess separately or in combination the effect of these factors on the potential activities of soil microbial communities and to compare these effects with those of soil properties and plant composition or biomass. Controlled treatments simulating the three factors were applied in a fenced area including a light gradient (sunny and shady situation): (i) repeated mowing; (ii) trampling; (iii) fertilizing with a liquid mixture of dung and urine. In the third year of the experiment, community level physiological profiles (CLPP) (Biolog Ecoplates (TM)) were measured for each plots. Furthermore soil chemical properties (pH, total organic carbon, total nitrogen and total phosphorus), plant species composition and plant biomass were also assessed. Despite differences in plant communities and soil properties, the metabolic potential of the microbial community in the sunny and in the shady situations were similar. Effects of treatments on microbial communities were more pronounced in the sunny than in the shady situation. In both cases, repeated mowing was the first factor retained for explaining functional variations. In contrast, fertilizing was not a significant factor. The vegetation explained a high proportion of variation of the microbial community descriptors in the sunny situation, while no significant variation appeared under shady condition. The three components of cattle activities influenced differently the soil microbial communities and this depended on the light conditions within the wooded pasture. Cattle activities may also change spatially at a fine scale and short-term and induce changes in the microbial community structure. Thus, the shifting mosaic that has been described for the vegetation of pastures may also apply for below-ground microbial communities.

Massive usage along with careless handling storage spills and leakages made chloroethenes (CEs) one of the most abundant classes of groundwater contaminants. Anaerobic organohalide respiring bacteria (OHRB) can couple reductive dechlorination of CEs with energy conservation a central microbial process in (enhanced) natural attenuation of CE contaminated aquifers. Spatial variability of OHRB guild members present in contaminated sites has not yet been investigated in detail and it is not known whether the spatial localization of contaminated sites could impact differentially remediation capacities.The goal of this study was to investigate how spatially distant microbial communities responded to the presence of CEs. Bacterial communities associated with five geographically distant European CE contaminated aquifers were analyzed with terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism. Numerical ecology tools were used to assess the separate and combined effects on the communities of their spatial localization their local environmental conditions and their contaminant concentrations. Three spatial scales were used for the assessment of the structuration of the communities as a function of geographical distances namely at the aquifer scale at medium (50 km) and long (ca. 1000 km) distances between aquifers. As a result bacterial communities were structured with an almost identical contribution by both the geographical position of the aquifer and local environmental variables especially electron donors and acceptors. The impact of environmental factors decreased with distance between aquifers with the concomitant increase in importance of a geographical factor. Contrastingly CEs contributed at a low extent at the medium scale and became important only when all aquifers were considered together at a large geographical scale suggesting that distant communities were structured partially by a common niche specialization in organohalide respiration. © 2012 Rossi Shani Kohler Imfeld and Holliger.

Arable fields maintaining species-rich weed communities have almost disappeared from European mountain areas due to their abandonment or replacement by extensive grazing systems during the last decades. The restoration of arable weed communities have become an important issue in these habitats which have a large potential to contain rare and threatened (red-list) species. In a site in the Swiss Alps, formerly managed for crop production, we investigated in experimental plowed plots the 1-year effects of fertilizing, sowing a mixture of arable weed species and sowing a crop species (triticale) on the natural regeneration (species richness and cover) of arable weed and non-weed species. The high number of newly appeared arable weed species, of which four were red-list species, indicated that propagule availability was still important after about 50 years of arable field abandonment. Plowed plots which did not receive any treatment and those with fertilization alone favored the regeneration of both wild weed and non-weed species. The crop species limited, but did not inhibit, the recovery success of weed and non-weed species and this negative effect tended to be higher under fertilization. Sowing of arable weed seeds decreased the natural regeneration of both weeds and non-weeds in the absence of triticale. Our results show that plowing is a promising method to successfully restore the weed community in abandoned arable mountain areas. Moreover, the sowing of weed species in combination with a crop species might produce sustainable food and restore and maintain the diversity of threatened arable weeds at the same time.