Effects of sustainable coastal land management strategies at the German coast - The interplay between birds, invertebrates and plants

Consequences of climate change threaten the stability of current human land use at the German coast. This thesis explores the effects of alternative sustainable coastal land use strategies designed to provide ecosystem services like water retention or carbon sequestration on breeding and wintering birds. At the German North Sea and Baltic Sea coast, occurrence of breeding birds in relation to vegetation structure, soil parameters, agricultural land use intensity and invertebrate food abundance was investigated. Habitat preferences of wintering geese and the consequences of goose grazing on coastal grasslands for farmers were studied at the North Sea coast. Alternative land use strategies have the potential to offer valuable habitat for endangered breeding birds and mitigate the ongoing goose-agriculture-conflict if management aims and target species are properly defined. Both agricultural intensification and land abandonment will lead to a loss of coastal avian biodiversity.