**4. Conclusions**

the meadows, most people did not incur real financial costs to visit the meadows. About 20% of the visitors use the meadows more than 100 times per year for recreational purposes. The main activities in the meadows are cycling, walking, watching nature, and excursions with children. More than 60% of the visitors state that they would have stayed at home if they had not had the chance to go to the meadows on the day they were interviewed. This shows the substantial value of the meadows for the local population. However, more than 40% of the visitors traveled more than 20 minutes, 15% even more than 1 h to visit the meadows. About 3% of the visitors stayed overnight in the area and came to visit the meadows mainly to watch the gathering of the white stork population in spring and early autumn. Next to the storks, the beauty of the semi-open landscape as such, the diversity and the traditional irrigation

**Figure 7.** Irrigation ditch after first cut in June. Remaining standing water from the last irrigation in may serves as a habitat and food source for a large variety of organisms. It clearly contributes to the heterogeneity of the landscape

Apart from these mentioned socio-economic values, the value of the **cultural heritage** can be considered to be substantial. In a two-volume book, Leibundgut and Vonderstrass [9]

infrastructure are mentioned to attract the visitors (**Figure 8**).

(photo: Melanie Meier).

170 Irrigation in Agroecosystems

Traditional meadow irrigation proved to increase productivity in a very effective and more sustainable way than mineral fertilization did. Summarizing our manifold data on flora, fauna, and soil characteristics, the management method creates multifunctional habitats and production sites. They offer multiple ecosystem services of all four categories defined in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment report by the UN: supporting, provisioning, regulation as well as cultural services [27]. We explain this by the positive effect of this management practice on soil carbon or humus [28] and the related positive effect on soil organisms [29]. Next to the multiple services for productivity and biodiversity found at the single meadows, there are larger scale services provided at the landscape scale. The heterogeneity of the irrigation, the variety of habitats that are created by the ditches (irrigation and drainage), and the mixture with other habitats in the region provide a beautiful landscape for animal life and human well-being (recreation and tourism).
