The influence of agri-environmental measures based grassland management on grassland plant communities

Grassland is an important component of agrarian landscape, performing wide range of ecological, economic and social functions. Long-term changes of the conditions of habitats, determined by human economic activities, influence the state of grassland plants. Rural Development Programme for Lithuania 2007–2013 sets measure to preserve biological diversity of grassland. The purpose of it is to reduce negative anthropogenic effect on grassland plant communities using the EU funds. Having researched the differences of grassland plant diversity and economic value, influenced by different intensity economic activities, the main objective of this paper is to evaluate the efficiency of EU regulated, agri-environmental measures based, grassland management methods in small farming sector of Lithuania. The research, involving the assessment of the number of plant species, diversity of plant families, distribution of relative plant abundance, and dominance of plant species in plant communities in grassland managed traditionally and according to the requirements of agri-environmental farming, showed that both types of grassland had similar plant communities. Such conclusion was drawn from the analysis of Jaccard and Sörensen similarity coefficients. The difference of plant adaptation to soil dampness, acidity, and nutrition was not statistically significant in grasslands of both types. Most of the plants in grassland researched were mesophytes; soil acidity was not a determining factor to the most of plant species; mesooligotrophic and mesotrophic plant communities prevailed. Biological diversity favourable farming does not reduce the economic value of grassland. Grassland of both types was of average high or high economic value. Agri-environmental measures are not efficient enough taking into consideration the amount of financial resources allocated and the result of the preservation of plant diversity obtained