**2. Study Sites and Data**

#### *2.1. Study Sites*

Floodplain grasslands can be found all over Estonia, and most of them lie on the larger rivers—Emajõgi, Põltsamaa, Pedja, Kasari, Halliste, Raudna, Piusa, Koiva, Mustjõgi, and Narva headwaters—but some also near lakes (Peipsi, etc.). We chose the three largest floodplain grasslands (Alam-Pedja, Soomaa, and Matsalu) as our study sites. Figure 1 shows study areas with the areas of environmental restrictions, maps of natural grasslands and forests (CLC 2018 from CLMS), and the official shoreline from the Estonian Topographic Database (ETD). Matsalu is a coastal test site located at the River Kasari delta. The defined region of interest used in the analysis of the current study was 1068 km2 (Figure 1). The inland riverbank test sites of Alam-Pedja (located by the River Emajõgi) and Soomaa (located by the Halliste and Navesti rivers) have regions of interest of 546 km<sup>2</sup> and 255 km2, respectively (Figure 1, Table 1).

**Figure 1.** Location of the test sites.

**Table 1.** Share of natural grassland and forest types at study sites according to CLC 2018.


Natural grasslands along rivers have a high nature conservation interest (Figure 1). The habitats of floodplain grassland vegetation are considerably more variable in comparison to boreo-nemoral grasslands—26 different plant communities have been noted as opposed to the 13 found in boreo-nemoral grasslands. Approximately 20–22, maximally 30, bird species are native to the floodplains in Estonia. The share of natural grassland differs between study sites—at Matsalu the share of natural grassland is 7.8% of the study area, while at Soomaa the natural grassland covers 0.8% of the total study area (Table 1).

The share of forest types according to CLC 2018 are shown in Table 1. The dominant forest type at Matsalu and Soomaa is the broad-leaf forest, while at Alam-Pedja the mixed forest type is dominant. The coniferous forest represents the smallest share of forest (Table 1).
