Is an old manor house landscape south of Aarhus currently owned by Aarhus municipality. The areas have until recently been leased for agriculture but a political decision was made to cease this management in 2023. These areas will be rewetted, extensively grazed and actively forested as a part of a municipal climate strategy to mitigate flooding, decrease nutrient effluents to the sea and benefit biodiversity.
Together with students a baseline of vegetation is established that covers the landscapes at Vilhelmsborg. The 80 vegetation plots are randomly placed in categories created by stratifying gradients of moisture, openness, and grazing regime but also in relation to future restoration implementations such as rewetting and afforestation measures so the transition from agriculture to more natural landscapes can be followed and the implementations can be assessed.
Another student visited nearby protected areas around Vilhelmsborg to create a more detailed map on the species community that potentially can disperse into the project area that currently, because of the agricultural history, has poor biodiversity values. Additionally, using a model on water terrain movements together with predictions of future precipitation quantities a map was created that predicted where different plant communities should be prioritized e.g. which areas should be afforested and further where wet or dry conditions will appear and finally the productivity. The future projection of nature types is also being applied to a much wider context since there is a political ambition on both a municipal and national level to convert large areas of the Danish landscape from agriculture to something else to remediate eutrophication of coastal waters and climate emissions. If biodiversity is allowed to be prioritized rather than solely carbon emissions there is a need to intelligently plan which areas to point out to maximize the biodiversity gains. With information on where existing biodiversity is situated and giving weight to creating large areas of nature a map is created to point out which areas are best suited for forests, open areas and whether it should be a wet or dry plant community.
Another student has followed the social aspect of renaturalizing landscapes by interviewing local residents at the local town centers, riding school, and popular routes in the local forests. People were asked about their general relationship with nature and their perspectives on changes to the local landscapes such as all-year grazing animals and rewetting. In addition, there will be developed digital visualisations of the changing landscapes that can concretise to the local residents what will happen in their surroundings.
