The Green Belt as a European Ecological Network strengths and gaps

Norbert Grosser, Valeska Krebs
ENERGY WOOD USE AS A MEASURE OF LANDSCAPE MANAGEMENT – AN APPROACH TO PRESERVATION
OF BIODIVERSITY IN THE GREEN BELT?
ABSTRACT
ENERGY WOOD USE AS A MEASURE OF LANDSCAPE
MANAGEMENT – AN APPROACH TO PRESERVATION OF
BIODIVERSITY IN THE GREEN BELT?
Norbert Grosser, Valeska Krebs
University of Applied Sciences Erfurt
Faculty of landscape architecture
Leipziger Str. 77, DE-99085 Erfurt, Germany
grosser@fh-erfurt.de, valeska.krebs@fh-erfurt.de
Research project granted by BMU FKZ-Nr.: 03KB020C
The compound research project “Energy wood and biodiversity – the use of energy wood as an
approach to conservation and development of habitats of national significance” may be an approach as
an agent to enhance or to save biodiversity of habitats and species. Redevelopment and support of
open habitats such as dry grassland, heather and others should be achieved as project aims to push
places of high biodiversity in the culture landscape with different management methods.
INTRODUCTION GREEN BELT
The green belt along the inner German boundary dividing western and eastern parts of
Germany has a long history of nature development. We can´t forget the role of political and
military separation causing a lack of agricultural and forestry use for a long time. Nearly
nothing of the former biotopes remained in this stripe of 50 to 200 meters width. But this was
also a chance to develop nearly undisturbed in phase of beginning secondary succession
process for fauna and flora. After ending the separation a monitoring action of fauna and flora
showed a very high level of biodiversity in biotopes, succession stages and species.
Because the lack of military use, cleaning the area of mines, metal fences and so on the
succession was reset to an early stage and has begun to start again [1]. In the following time
the biodiversity was growing up because the mosaic of biotopes gives place for a lot of open
land and also forest species. The green belt developed to a very complex habitat mosaic.
Therefore some parts of the greenbelt were protected as conservation areas for nature. A lot of
organizations and persons supported the idea to develop the former boundary as part of
biotope network [2]. So the Federal republic of Germany gave a big part of the area to the
federal states and nature foundations got the possibility to develop these areas. But the
success of this process seems to be endangered by a formal protection without any regulation
of succession development. It would be possible to save natural dynamic processes with the
result of undisturbed woodland over a long time but only connected with a loss of
biodiversity.
In the analyses of faunal change in Thuringian butterflies as inhabitants of open
biotopes, it was deplored that the existence conditions for this insect group have become
worse and worse in the green belt [3].
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