The Center of Excellence for Sustainable Land Use (FutureScapes)

Duration: 2023 – 2027

Decline in biodiversity and ecosystem services is generating negative impacts on human wellbeing. One of the key drivers of these trends is land use change, imposing harmful effects on biodiversity through high land use intensity and homogenization of landscapes. Furthermore, this process is causing the loss of biological interactions vital for important ecosystem functions, such as pollination. Only transdisciplinary approaches enable to create functional solutions for land management in agroecosystems. Thus, this project explores community-, species- and gene-level consequences of land use change on the functioning and resilience of plant-pollinator interactions in Estonian agricultural landscapes, while also tackling socio-ecological drivers of pollinator-friendly landscape management. In an era of global change, this project provides necessary input for sustaining biodiversity in agroecosystems and improves our understanding of the eco-evolutionary effects of land use change.

Project participants: Tsipe Aavik, Virve Sõber, Mari-Liis Viljur, Iris Reinula, Marianne Kaldra, Vete-Mari Kuningas

Funding: Estonian Research Council

Duration: 2022-2027

The urbanLIFEcircles project demonstrates a systematic approach for how to lead a biodiversity-oriented change in urban nature management. It brings together a consortium of lighthouse cities Tartu (EE), Aarhus (DK) and Riga (LV), with the aim of improving city wide biodiversity management for restored connectivity and improved ecosystem health. We plan to improve the support for biodiversity in these cities through habitat restoration and increased citizen awareness. Additional support for urban biodiversity comes from the governance level, by setting up necessary strategic approach and integrating biodiversity goals to practical procedures. We envision a continuous interconnected wildlife habitat in each city that starts from peri-urban nature reserves and reaches throughout the cities, connected through green corridors and a network of high-nature value connectivity “stepping stones”. In this vision, urban citizens are seen as part of the urban ecosystem, participating in restoration activities and benefitting from ecosystem services offered by these “urban LIFE circles”. We have set ambitious objectives to achieve this by: (I) engaging communities in cities to actively participate in conservation; (II) assisting businesses towards developing necessary products & services supporting biodiversity in cities; (III) establishing synergies for biodiversity-oriented governance and management; (IV) deploying science-based methods for the adaptive management. All this builds a sufficient baseline, so it is possible to (V) demonstrate with concrete actions and practical examples that the system change for biodiversity is possible in cities. We plan to build on existing best practices on both urban biodiversity conservation as well as participatory urban governance. Our cities have varying challenges and different capacity in biodiversity matters, making the solutions we develop, demonstrate and propose applicable in most urban areas in Europe.

Project participants: Aveliina Helm, Elisabeth Prangel, Polina Degtjarenko, Oliver Kalda, Liis Kasari-Toussaint

Funding: Environmental Investment Center, European Commission

Project description in ETIS. 

Duration: 2020 January - 2029 December

The project is developed to tackle different conservation challenges that influence the values of Estonian most diverse ecosystems. Estonia is a sparsely populated country with vast territories covered with forests, wetlands and arable land, and where the historic land use has resulted in heterogenic and diverse landscapes. Socio-economic situation is changing – Estonia has been rapidly developing and rural areas face new challenges, mainly intensifying management due to different reasons that takes place both in forest and farming landscapes. The project will focus on forests and arable land with high biodiversity, this includes seminatural grasslands, fields, pastures and other types of arable land and a range of different forest ecosystems. The practices and methodologies to be developed and tested in the project will be of high demonstration value also for other regions and countries of the EU. 

In this project, our workgroup is involved with the sustainable management of semi-natural grasslands and ensuring the biodiversity in agricultural landscapes. Together with our partners, we will help launch a councelling system for semi-natural grasslands, restore grasslands and help with communication. In agricultural landscapes, we will create sample areas where crop yield and biodiversity are guaranteed thanks to science-based agroecological approaches. Together with farmers, we will test which agricultural practices are most effective in Estonia. We will work closely together with BirdLife to monitor the effectiveness of agri-environmental measures.

Project participants: Aveliina Helm, Tsipe Aavik, Marianne Kaldra, Rufus Trepp, Liis Kasari-Toussaint, Linda Pall, Kristiina Jürisoo, Remek Meel, Tanel Vahter

Partners: Ministry of the Environment (coordinator), Environmental Board, Ministry of Rural Affairs, State Forest Management Centre, BirdLife Estonia, Private Forest Centre, University of Tallinn, KEMIT

Funding: European Commission