Effects of vegetation management intensity on biodiversity and ecosystem services in vineyards: A meta-analysis

Abstract

At the global scale, vineyards are usually managed intensively to optimize wine production without considering possible negative impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services (ES) such as high soil erosion rates, degradation of soil fertility or contamination of groundwater. Winegrowers regulate competition for water and nutrients between the vines and inter-row vegetation by tilling, mulching and/or herbicide application. Strategies for more sustainable viticulture recommend maintaining vegetation cover in inter-rows, however, there is a lack of knowledge as to what extent this less intensive inter-row management affects biodiversity and associated ES.We performed a hierarchical meta-analysis to quantify the effects of extensive vineyard inter-row vegetation management in comparison to more intensive management (like soil tillage or herbicide use) on biodiversity and ES from 74 studies covering four continents and 13 wine-producing countries.Overall, extensive vegetation management increased above- and below-ground biodiversity and ecosystem service provision by 20% in comparison to intensive management. Organic management together with management without herbicides showed a stronger positive effect on ES and biodiversity provision than inter-row soil tillage.Soil loss parameters showed the largest positive response to inter-row vegetation cover. The second highest positive response was observed for biodiversity variables, followed by carbon sequestration, pest control and soil fertility. We found no trade-off between grape yield and quality vs. biodiversity or other ES. Synthesis and applications. Our meta-analysis concludes that vegetation cover in inter-rows contributes to biodiversity conservation and provides multiple ecosystem services. However, in drier climates grape yield might decrease without irrigation and careful vegetation management. Agri-environmental policies should therefore focus on granting subsidies for the establishment of locally adapted diverse vegetation cover in vineyard inter-rows. Future studies should focus on analysing the combined effects of local vineyard management and landscape composition and advance research in wine-growing regions in Asia and in the southern hemisphere.

Keywords: biodiversity; carbon sequestration; ecosystem services; meta‐analysis; pest control; soil erosion; tillage intensity; vineyard.

Figure 1

Political map of the world showing the number of involved studies per country and the wine‐growing regions in green shading, number of outcomes symbolize the sample size per country (source: Corine Land Cover for European vineyard area; world‐wide vineyard area based on national maps)

Figure 2

Effects of extensive vegetation management in vineyard inter‐rows on overall effect size. Significant differences between moderator levels are indicated by whiskers with the associated level of significance (*p < .05, ***p < .001). Numbers in brackets show the sample size of the datasets

Figure 3

Mean and 95% confidence intervals of the effects of extensive vegetation management in vineyards on biodiversity and ecosystem services (ES) types. Significant pairwise differences between groups are indicated by different letter combinations or by whiskers with the associated level of significance (*p < .05, ***p < .001) for the subsets. Due to the small sample size, pollination was excluded from the pairwise comparisons. Erosion protection and pest control were further split up because subsets (see Table 1) differed significantly from each other in their overall effect sizes. Numbers in brackets show the sample size