Edge effects

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An edge effect refers to the impact in the ecology of the surrounding landscape on habitat islands. It occurs at the edges in Saumbiotop the actual biotope.

Edge effects occur in several ways: Intensive land use (agriculture) acts into protected habitat islands by eg pesticides or fertilizers is blowing and are flooded. Therefore, the value is very small or narrow habitat islands is sometimes greatly reduced in practice.

Another type of edge effect emanates from the species composition of the agricultural landscape, which can ( in contrast to the oceanic species between real islands ) colonize the habitat islands. Edge effects tries nature protection through the establishment of buffer zones to counteract. In a biotope network, they must be considered in order to evaluate the effectiveness of habitat islands and corridors can.

Edge effects can be effective on a larger scale than is often assumed intuitively. Studies in New Zealand have shown that even small ground-dwelling beetles have occurred in a kilometer away from the border of a protected area detectable effects on the fauna. Greater effects are naturally to be expected in species that exceed the reserve boundaries regularly, such as carnivores.

In addition to the negative and the positive edge effects have already been actually proved: There may be an enrichment of adjacent habitats with species. Therefore, the BUND demands the field margins in our " cleaned- cultural landscape " to obtain. Due to the edge effect a lively exchange of species would take place here. Field margins provide, inter alia, also retreats is to look into the many animal species Disturbances caused by field order or grassland management of adjacent land protection. In running waters in Germany trying to make the exchange of species by the edge effect under the name " jet effect " advantage, although a reliable empirical evidence on effectiveness but are still outstanding.

Swell

• Ecology
• Biogeography