A rewilding site since 2016 owned by Natural History Museum of Aarhus where horses and cattle roam free year-round in 120 ha of mosaic landscapes of grasslands, shrublands and forests. The management changed from traditional nature management of summer grazing, mowing or shrub-clearing to a hands-off approach where cattle and horses are allowed to roam free all-year around the whole area in spontaneously developing vegetation without a destined end goal. The herbivores reproduce without human interference meaning grazing pressures will vary between years with high or low densities of animals. Molslaboratoriet is frequently used by Aarhus university as a study site for student projects, and is also visited by students for a mandatory week of entomology.
Since the start of the project the vegetation has been surveyed annually at a series of grazing exclosure blocks consisting of 5 different conservation schemes i.e., annual mowing, summer-, winter grazing only, all-year grazing or no management (permanent exclosure). The hands-off approach at Molslaboratoriet has resulted in rapid encroachment and densification of shrubs and trees, with the use of remote-sensing techniques such as LiDAR-drones we assessed whether woody vegetation can be identified to a species-level and accurately detect the densities of the vegetation. This presents a possibility to monitor large areas with a fine-scale, and thus represents a novel tool to assess the effects of large herbivores and shrub encroachment.
