Suchergebnisse

Context: The provision of multiple ecosystem services (ES) within a landscape is commonly referred to as landscape multifunctionality. Modifying landscapes to increase multifunctionality and reduce trade-offs with concurrent services bears the potential to enhance sustainability in human-dominated landscapes. Assessing landscape multifunctionality is thus crucial for land management and planning, but lack of a clear definition and operationalization of multifunctionality impedes comparisons of different study results. Objectives: We want to address how elements of the study design affect results of multifunctionality assessments. Furthermore, we want to quantify future multifunctionality in the European Union (EU) and indicate the role of land use change and land use diversity on multifunctionality. Methods: We analyzed diverging scenarios depicting land use change in the EU between 2000 and 2040 for their effects on landscape multifunctionality. We tested different multifunctionality indicators at various spatial scales based on the modelling of 12 ES and biodiversity indicators. Results: Particularly the analysis scale determines the interpretation of landscape multifunctionality. Coldspots identified by different indicators are in higher agreement than hotspots. We could not confirm links between land use diversity and landscape multifunctionality. While, at EU scale, multifunctionality slightly increases in future scenarios, agricultural intensification and (peri-)urban growth pose large threats to multifunctional landscapes. Conclusions: The choice of indicator and analysis scale strongly determine possible interpretations of the results. Rather than focusing on the impacts of land use change on multifunctionality, it is recommended to base land use policy on the impacts of location-specific change on ES supply and demands.

International audience ; The intensification, extensification and abandonment of agricultural land will each play a major role in the future development of European landscapes. However, their impacts on various dimensions of sustainability vary spatially. This creates challenges but also opportunities for landscape managers and policymakers to optimize biodiversity and ecosystem services. In this study, we conduct a spatial assessment of the impacts of these three major agricultural development trajectories on ten ecosystem service and biodiversity indicators across the European Union (EU) and the UK. Using a spatial resolution of 1 km2, we exposed high spatial variation in impacts and strong differences in the spatial patterns depending on the indicator. Aggregating all positive and negative impacts of a trajectory, hot-and cold spots of total positive and negative impacts could be distinguished. An assessment of trade-offs and synergies between impacts of each trajectory was used to map areas dominated by beneficial impacts, detrimental impacts, or high trade-offs between impacts. The results indicate very diverse spatial trade-off and synergy patterns, with generally high sub-regional variation, emphasizing (i) the need for reflecting trade-offs and context-specificity in landscape planning and management and (ii) the potential advantages of spatial targeting of agricultural development and conservation strategies. Biodiversity and ecosystem service impact mapping exercises can, thus, be a major tool to effectively navigate trade-offs and synergies and explore effective sustainable landscape solutions.

International audience ; The intensification, extensification and abandonment of agricultural land will each play a major role in the future development of European landscapes. However, their impacts on various dimensions of sustainability vary spatially. This creates challenges but also opportunities for landscape managers and policymakers to optimize biodiversity and ecosystem services. In this study, we conduct a spatial assessment of the impacts of these three major agricultural development trajectories on ten ecosystem service and biodiversity indicators across the European Union (EU) and the UK. Using a spatial resolution of 1 km2, we exposed high spatial variation in impacts and strong differences in the spatial patterns depending on the indicator. Aggregating all positive and negative impacts of a trajectory, hot-and cold spots of total positive and negative impacts could be distinguished. An assessment of trade-offs and synergies between impacts of each trajectory was used to map areas dominated by beneficial impacts, detrimental impacts, or high trade-offs between impacts. The results indicate very diverse spatial trade-off and synergy patterns, with generally high sub-regional variation, emphasizing (i) the need for reflecting trade-offs and context-specificity in landscape planning and management and (ii) the potential advantages of spatial targeting of agricultural development and conservation strategies. Biodiversity and ecosystem service impact mapping exercises can, thus, be a major tool to effectively navigate trade-offs and synergies and explore effective sustainable landscape solutions.

International audience ; The intensification, extensification and abandonment of agricultural land will each play a major role in the future development of European landscapes. However, their impacts on various dimensions of sustainability vary spatially. This creates challenges but also opportunities for landscape managers and policymakers to optimize biodiversity and ecosystem services. In this study, we conduct a spatial assessment of the impacts of these three major agricultural development trajectories on ten ecosystem service and biodiversity indicators across the European Union (EU) and the UK. Using a spatial resolution of 1 km2, we exposed high spatial variation in impacts and strong differences in the spatial patterns depending on the indicator. Aggregating all positive and negative impacts of a trajectory, hot-and cold spots of total positive and negative impacts could be distinguished. An assessment of trade-offs and synergies between impacts of each trajectory was used to map areas dominated by beneficial impacts, detrimental impacts, or high trade-offs between impacts. The results indicate very diverse spatial trade-off and synergy patterns, with generally high sub-regional variation, emphasizing (i) the need for reflecting trade-offs and context-specificity in landscape planning and management and (ii) the potential advantages of spatial targeting of agricultural development and conservation strategies. Biodiversity and ecosystem service impact mapping exercises can, thus, be a major tool to effectively navigate trade-offs and synergies and explore effective sustainable landscape solutions.

AbstractForests are among the most species rich habitats and the way they are managed influences their capacity to protect biodiversity. To fulfill increasing wood demands in the future, planted and non-planted wood production will need to expand. While biodiversity assessments usually focus on the impacts of deforestation, the effects of wood harvest are mostly not considered, especially not in a spatially explicit manner. We present here a global approach to refine the representation of forest management through allocating future wood production to planted and non-planted forests. Wood production, following wood consumption projections of three Shared Socioeconomic Pathways, was allocated using likelihood maps for planted and production forests. On a global scale, plantations for wood production were projected to increase by 45–65% and harvested area in non-planted forests by 1–17%. The biodiversity impacts of changes in wood production patterns were estimated by applying two commonly used indicators: (1) changes in species richness and (2) changes in habitat-suitable ranges of single species. The impact was analyzed using forest cover changes as reference. Our results show that, although forest cover changes have the largest impact on biodiversity, changes in wood production also have a significant effect. The magnitude of impacts caused by changes of wood production substantially differs by region and taxa. Given the importance of forest production changes in net negative emission pathways, more focus should be put on assessing the effects of future changes in wood production patterns as part of overall land use change impacts.

In Southeast Asia, the rapid expansion of boom crops like hybrid maize, rubber, oil palm, or banana, has brought about daunting environmental and socioeconomic impacts such as deforestation, land degradation, and indebtedness. Why do farmers engage in and keep on pursuing this farming strategy despite the adverse effects on local landscapes and livelihoods? In the context of the northern uplands of Lao People's Democratic Republic (Lao PDR), we developed an innovative approach to understanding the decisions that lead to the emergence of the maize boom. We successively studied the adoption, expansion, intensification, diversification, and abandonment of intensive maize practices in locations in which these phases were ongoing at the time of study. To better contextualize decision making, we designed and applied local, serious games with farmers in seven different villages that were going through a maize boom. Then we designed a metagame that summarized our findings across all decision phases and local games in a generalized form. National agricultural experts validated the structure of the metagame by taking on the role of farmers and they witnessed that their cumulative decision making within the metagame lead to a maize boom too. Core findings include: (1) the maize boom and bust can be reproduced in a game environment that simulates the change of six factor combinations; and (2) Farmers in northern Laos reinvest maize profits into their long-term, socioeconomic goals. The approach presented combines micro- and macrolevel analysis of land-use change. On the one hand, it allows the exploration of the local, social-ecological contexts of land-use decisions. On the other hand, it provides a systematic procedure to scale up, generalize, and test the contextual knowledge and systemic understanding of a complex, large-scale land-use change process.