One of the other countries with limestone pavement habitats is Sweden. Swedish Alvar habitats include a range of habitats on limestone, from meadows to limestone pavements so I was very keen to understand how similar these communities are to British limestone pavements and whether we can learn from the extensive management investigations that have been undertaken over the last two decades.

This week Hannah Risser and I were very fortunate to be hosted by Helena Larger, head of the nature and outdoor life unit at Kalmar County Administrative board which covers the island of Öland, home to Stora Alvaret, part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site. There are six habitat types within the Alvar including species rich calcareous meadows, highly basic frost gravels which contain a number of endemic species, and of course limestone pavement. Limestone pavements tends to be quite small fragments within other alvar habitats. There were some interesting parallels with our limestone pavement communities including many common species but there were also significant differences. The warmer drier climate and very flat terrain leads to both structural and vegetation differences in the pavements. Of particular interest were the large number of warmer climate species and the high invertebrate diversity. The snails Balea perversa and Chondrina arcadica clienta live in the grikes and emerge to eat the algae in the lichens on the rocks. These tiny snails leave pale edges to the grikes which were clearly visible. It was fascinating to see these communities.

The alvar is grazed by cattle and, to a lesser extent, ponies and sheep at a low intensity in the summer. In contrast to UK pavements, Juniper thrives and has to be actively managed through removal on occasion. The collective community approach to grazing the alvars is one that we can certainly learn more from.

It was a fascinating trip, Öland is a beautiful and ecologically interesting place. While the climate and terrain mean that the limestone pavements differ from British ones there is still a lot to learn from this well managed community.

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