Vol.:(0123456789) Biodiversity and Conservation https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-019-01718-7 1 3 ORIGINAL PAPER Efects of grazing on plant composition, conservation status and ecosystem services of Natura 2000 shrub‑grassland habitat types Vasco Silva 1  · Filipe X. Catry 1  · Paulo M. Fernandes 1,2  · Francisco C. Rego 1  · Paula Paes 3  · Leónia Nunes 1,2  · Ana D. Caperta 3  · Cecília Sérgio 4  · Miguel N. Bugalho 1 Received: 12 August 2018 / Revised: 1 February 2019 / Accepted: 14 February 2019 © Springer Nature B.V. 2019 Abstract The Natura 2000 network is crucial to conserve biodiversity in the European Union and provides hotspots for certain ecosystem services. Grazing, a common land use in difer- ent Natura 2000 habitat types, may contribute to the maintenance of protected plant com- munities and reduce fuel loads and wildfre hazard. Our study aims to assess the efects of grazing on plant composition and conservation status of calcareous shrub-grassland Natura 2000 habitat types, as well as its efects on fre hazard reduction and aboveground carbon storage. We surveyed plant communities grazed by goats in fenced (ungrazed) and open (grazed) plots in a mosaic of calcareous shrub-grassland habitat types and assessed plant species composition and habitat conservation status. We also assessed aboveground plant biomass in grazed and ungrazed plots and modelled potential fre behaviour in those plots for each habitat. With the exception of cryptogams, grazing did not afect plant cover, but positively afected species richness (mean ± SD: 26.80 ± 11.65 vs. 29.37 ± 8.59, P = 0.01; fenced vs. unfenced) and Shannon diversity (2.11 ± 0.81 vs. 2.33 ± 0.55, P < 0.01) in the habitat mosaic. Furthermore, grazing did not afect the conservation status of two out of three of the studied habitat types. Additionally, grazing decreased the fre hazard in grass and dwarf shrub communities without reducing aboveground carbon stocks signifcantly. Our results show that moderate grazing is a management practice that efectively contrib- ute to the conservation of Natura 2000 shrub-grassland habitat types through reduction of wildfre hazard and maintenance of habitat conservation status. Keywords Carbon storage · Fire hazard · Functional traits · Indicator species · Vegetation structure Communicated by Daniel Sanchez Mata. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s1053 1-019-01718-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Vasco Silva silvadavasco@gmail.com Extended author information available on the last page of the article