A cost-effective approach to identify conservation priority for 30 × 30 biodiversity target on the premise of food security

There is a growing consensus on expanding protected and conserved areas for biodiversity conservation. Nevertheless, it remains uncertain where to expand conserved areas as well as what appropriate management modalities to choose. Moreover, conserved areas expansion should be balanced with crop-related food security challenges. We developed a framework to identify cost-effective areas for expanding protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs), and applied it to China. By combining templates for biodiversity conservation priorities at global scale and the priority conservation areas based on 2413 vertebrates' extinction risk in China, we identified areas with high biodiversity conservation value. We then categorized the priority areas according to human impact, indicating the potential cost of management. As a result of combining the two aspects above, we identified the most cost-effective areas for expanding protected areas and OECMs while excluding both the current and predicted croplands that can be used for food security. The results show that China could expand its protected areas to 22.81 % of the country's land area and establish OECMs in areas accounting for 9.82 % and 17.37 % of the country's land area in a cost-effective approach in two scenarios. In the ambitious scenario, protected and conserved areas would account for a maximum of 40.18 % of terrestrial area, with an average 62.67 % coverage of the 2413 species' suitable habitat. To achieve the goals of protected and conserved areas in Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, countries could apply this framework to identify their protected areas and OECM expansion priorities.

Solar parks can enhance bird diversity in agricultural landscape

Solar photovoltaic power parks are a relatively new anthropogenic habitat that will become more widespread in the future. The greatest potential for solar photovoltaic power production is on arable land and grassland. Knowledge on the impacts of solar parks on biodiversity is scarce and spatially limited. We investigated the impact of ground-mounted solar parks on species richness, abundance, Shannon diversity and composition of bird communities in Slovakia (Central Europe), taking into account pre-construction land cover, elevation and landscape context. We recorded breeding, foraging or perching birds on 32 solar park plots and 32 adjacent control plots (two hectares each) during single breeding season. We found that solar parks supported higher total bird species richness and diversity, and richness and abundance of invertebrate-eaters, and that the abundance of ground-foragers was higher in solar parks developed on grassland than in grassland control plots. Ordination analysis showed that solar parks had a different composition of bird communities and thus increased overall species diversity and beta diversity in the agricultural landscapes studied. Plot type and landscape context accounted for most of the variation in bird community composition. Black redstart, European stonechat, white wagtail and Eurasian tree sparrow were identified as indicator species for solar parks. The observed pattern could be due to the higher structural diversity of solar parks. The solar parks studied were designed and managed exclusively for electricity production. It can therefore be assumed that solar parks designed and managed in synergy with a stronger focus on wildlife would have an even greater positive impact on bird diversity in an agricultural landscape.

Enhancing multifunctionality in European boreal forests: The potential role of Triad landscape functional zoning

Land-use policies aim at enhancing the sustainable use of natural resources. The Triad approach has been suggested to balance the social, ecological, and economic demands of forested landscapes. The core idea is to enhance multifunctionality at the landscape level by allocating landscape zones with specific management priorities, i.e., production (intensive management), multiple use (extensive management), and conservation (forest reserves). We tested the efficiency of the Triad approach and identified the respective proportion of above-mentioned zones needed to enhance multifunctionality in Finnish forest landscapes. Through a simulation and optimization framework, we explored a range of scenarios of the three zones and evaluated how changing their relative proportion (each ranging from 0 to 100%) impacted landscape multifunctionality, measured by various biodiversity and ecosystem service indicators. The results show that maximizing multifunctionality required around 20% forest area managed intensively, 50% extensively, and 30% allocated to forest reserves. In our case studies, such landscape zoning represented a good compromise between the studied multifunctionality components and maintained 61% of the maximum achievable net present value (i.e., total timber economic value). Allocating specific proportion of the landscape to a management zone had distinctive effects on the optimized economic or multifunctionality values. Net present value was only moderately impacted by shifting from intensive to extensive management, while multifunctionality benefited from less intensive and more diverse management regimes. This is the first study to apply Triad in a European boreal forest landscape, highlighting the usefulness of this approach. Our results show the potential of the Triad approach in promoting forest multifunctionality, as well as a strong trade-off between net present value and multifunctionality. We conclude that simply applying the Triad approach does not implicitly contribute to an overall increase in forest multifunctionality, as careful forest management planning still requires clear landscape objectives.

A framework for identifying bird conservation priority areas in croplands at national level

Global biodiversity is declining at an unprecedented rate, and the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework requires each country to fulfill the conservation targets in biodiversity-inclusive spatial planning. Croplands provide habitat and food for many species, making them crucial for biodiversity conservation in addition to food production. Assessing conservation priorities in cropland is a prerequisite to allocate conservation resources and plan actions for better conservation outcomes. Yet quantitative methods to assess cropland conservation priority for biodiversity conservation at a national scale are still lacking. We proposed a framework for identifying the conservation priority in cropland for bird species at a national scale and applied the framework in China. We calculated the suitable habitat for each species and used a complementarity-based approach to designate the irreplaceable conservation priority areas considering richness, threatened level, and conservation percentage targets. We identified cropland taking up 6.76% of China's land area as a bird conservation priority, partially covering the suitable habitat of all the study species. By analyzing the landscape pattern of the priority areas and species' foraging traits, we provided policy-making suggestions according to area-specific characteristics. This framework can be used to identify priority areas for large-scale biodiversity conservation for different countries.

Disentangling direct and indirect drivers of farmland biodiversity at landscape scale

To stop the ongoing decline of farmland biodiversity there are increasing claims for a paradigm shift in agriculture, namely from conserving and restoring farmland biodiversity at field scale (α-diversity) to doing it at landscape scale (γ-diversity). However, knowledge on factors driving farmland γ-diversity is currently limited. Here, we quantified farmland γ-diversity in 123 landscapes and analysed direct and indirect effects of abiotic and land-use factors shaping it using structural equation models. The direction and strength of effects of factors shaping γ-diversity were only partially consistent with what is known about factors shaping α-diversity, and indirect effects were often stronger than direct effects or even opposite. Thus, relationships between factors shaping α-diversity cannot simply be up-scaled to γ-diversity, and also indirect effects should no longer be neglected. Finally, we show that local mitigation measures benefit farmland γ-diversity at landscape scale and are therefore a useful tool for designing biodiversity-friendly landscapes.

Opportunities for agrivoltaic systems to achieve synergistic food-energy-environmental needs and address sustainability goals

Achieving decarbonization goals to address global climate change and increasing energy needs requires significant continued investments in solar energy. The expansion of utility-scale solar development across the globe has increased the pressure on land resources for energy generation and other land uses (e.g., agriculture, biodiversity conservation). To address this growing issue, greater emphasis has been placed on solar development strategies that maximize the benefits of solar energy generation and multiple ecosystem services, such as the development of agrivoltaics systems that co-locate solar energy production and various forms of conservation and agricultural land uses. The purpose of this paper is to systematically synthesize the potential ecosystem services of agrivoltaics and summarize how these development strategies could address several United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Our review will focus on four broad potential ecosystem services of agrivoltaics: (1) energy and economic benefits; (2) agricultural provisioning services of food production and animal husbandry; (3) biodiversity conservation; and (4) regulating ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration and water and soil conservation. In particular, we will highlight the state of the science, challenges, and knowledge gaps that represent opportunities for further study to better understand how solar energy deployment can facilitate sustainable development.

Conservation of complementary habitat types and small-scale spatial heterogeneity enhance soil arthropod diversity

Humanity relies on soil fauna for important ecosystem services, as such our soils need sustainable management to ensure long-term biotic viability. However, environmental factors influencing the distribution and diversity of soil fauna are poorly understood, which limits effective conservation management. To address this issue, we assessed the influence of variables at different spatial scales (site, soil, and landscape) in different biotopes (natural forest patches and grasslands) in two contrasting geographical regions (inland Midlands and coastal Zululand, South Africa) on ant and springtail diversity in large-scale conservation corridors among commercial plantations. Midlands sites, with complex topography and nutrient-rich and deep soils, had higher soil arthropod diversity than sandy, shallow Zululand soils. Indigenous forest and grassland supported complementary arthropod assemblages. The responses of arthropod diversity and assemblage composition to local environmental variables varied greatly among biotopes, taxa, and regions, but responses were more pronounced in the Midlands than in Zululand, and arthropods were more responsive to site- and soil-related variables than to landscape variables. Lower soil biodiversity in Zululand compared to the Midlands emphasizes that management efforts to limit further homogenization from inappropriate management is particularly important in this sandy region. Lack of common drivers of soil arthropod diversity suggests that conservation strategies need to be tailored to different locations. Nonetheless, the conservation of both indigenous forest and grassland, together with promotion of small-scale spatial heterogeneity, will maximally benefit the widest range of soil-inhabiting organisms.

Turnover and nestedness drive plant diversity benefits of organic farming from local to landscape scales

Biodiversity-benefits of organic farming have mostly been documented at the field scale. However, these benefits from organic farming to species diversity may not propagate to larger scales because variation in the management of different crop types and seminatural habitats in conventional farms might allow species to cope with intensive crop management. We studied flowering plant communities using a spatially replicated design in different habitats (cereal, ley and seminatural grasslands) in organic and conventional farms, distributed along a gradient in proportion of seminatural grasslands. We developed a novel method to compare the rates of species turnover within and between habitats, and between the total species pools in the two farming systems. We found that the intrahabitat species turnover did not differ between organic and conventional farms, but that organic farms had a significantly higher interhabitat turnover of flowering plant species compared with conventional ones. This was mainly driven by herbicide-sensitive species in cereal fields in organic farms, as these contained 2.5 times more species exclusive to cereal fields compared with conventional farms. The farm-scale species richness of flowering plants was higher in organic compared with conventional farms, but only in simple landscapes. At the interfarm level, we found that 36% of species were shared between the two farming systems, 37% were specific to organic farms whereas 27% were specific to conventional ones. Therefore, our results suggest that that both community nestedness and species turnover drive changes in species composition between the two farming systems. These large-scale shifts in species composition were driven by both species-specific herbicide and nitrogen sensitivity of plants. Our study demonstrates that organic farming should foster a diversity of flowering plant species from local to landscape scales, by promoting unique sets of arable-adapted species that are scarce in conventional systems. In terms of biodiversity conservation, our results call for promoting organic farming over large spatial extents, especially in simple landscapes, where such transitions would benefit plant diversity most.

Winners and losers of land use change: A systematic review of interactions between the world’s crane species ( Gruidae ) and the agricultural sector

While agricultural intensification and expansion are major factors driving loss and degradation of natural habitat and species decline, some wildlife species also benefit from agriculturally managed habitats. This may lead to high population densities with impacts on both human livelihoods and wildlife conservation. Cranes are a group of 15 species worldwide, affected both negatively and positively by agricultural practices. While eleven species face critical population declines, numbers of common cranes (Grus grus) and sandhill cranes (Grus canadensis) have increased drastically in the last 40 years. Their increase is associated with higher incidences of crane foraging on agricultural crops, causing financial losses to farmers. Our aim was to synthesize scientific knowledge on the bilateral effects of land use change and crane populations. We conducted a systematic literature review of peer‐reviewed publications on agriculture‐crane interactions (n = 135) and on the importance of agricultural crops in the diet of cranes (n = 81). Agricultural crops constitute a considerable part of the diet of all crane species (average of 37%, most frequently maize (Zea mays L.) and wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)). Crop damage was identified in only 10% of all agriculture‐crane interactions, although one‐third of interactions included cranes foraging on cropland. Using a conceptual framework analysis, we identified two major pathways in agriculture‐crane interactions: (1) habitat loss with negative effects on crane species dependent on specific habitats, and (2) expanding agricultural habitats with superabundant food availability beneficial for opportunistic crane species. The degree to which crane species can adapt to agricultural land use changes may be an important factor explaining their population response. We conclude that multi‐objective management needs to combine land sparing and land sharing strategies at landscape scale. To support viable crane populations while guaranteeing sustainable agricultural production, it is necessary to include the perspectives of diverse stakeholders and streamline conservation initiatives and agricultural policy accordingly.

The future of farming: Who will produce our food?

Achieving SDG2 (zero hunger) in a situation of rapid global population growth requires a continued focus on food production. Farming not merely needs to sustainably produce nutritious diets, but should also provide livelihoods for farmers, while retaining natural ecosystems and services. Rather than focusing on production principles, this article explores the interrelations between farms and farming systems in the global food system. Evaluating farming systems around the world, we reveal a bewildering diversity. While family farms predominate, these range in size from less than 0.1 ha to more than 10,000 ha, and from hand hoe use to machine-based cultivation, enabling one person to plant more than 500 ha in a day. Yet, farming in different parts of the world is highly interdependent, not least because prices paid for farm produce are largely determined by global markets. Furthermore, the economic viability of farming is a problem, globally. We highlight trends in major regions of the world and explore possible trajectories for the future and ask: Who are the farmers of the future? Changing patterns of land ownership, rental and exchange mean that the concept of ‘what is a farm’ becomes increasingly fluid. Next to declining employment and rural depopulation, we also foresee more environmentally-friendly, less external input dependent, regionalised production systems. This may require the reversal of a global trend towards increasing specialisation to a recoupling of arable and livestock farming, not least for the resilience it provides. It might also require a slow-down or reversal of the widespread trend of scale enlargement in agriculture. Next to this trend of scale enlargement, small farms persist in Asia: consolidation of farms proceeds at a snail’s pace in South-east Asia and 70% of farms in India are ‘ultra-small’ – less than 0.05 ha. Also in Africa, where we find smallholder farms are much smaller than often assumed (< 1 ha), farming households are often food insecure. A raft of pro-poor policies and investments are needed to stimulate small-scale agriculture as part of a broader focus on rural development to address persistent poverty and hunger. Smallholder farms will remain an important source of food and income, and a social safety net in absence of alternative livelihood security. But with limited possibilities for smallholders to ‘step-up’, the agricultural engine of growth appears to be broken. Smallholder agriculture cannot deliver the rate of economic growth currently assumed by many policy initiatives in Africa.

Spatial Scale Mismatches in the EU Agri-Biodiversity Conservation Policy. The Case for a Shift to Landscape-Scale Design

Agriculture is a major driver of the ongoing biodiversity decline, demanding an urgent transition towards a system that reconciles productivity and profitability with nature conservation; however, where public policies promoting such transitions are in place, their design often poorly fits the relevant biogeophysical systems, decreasing the policies’ expected effectiveness. Spatial scale mismatches are a primary example in this regard. The literature reviewed in this paper, drawing from both ecology and policy studies, suggests to foster policy implementation at the landscape scale, where most functional ecological processes—and the delivery of related ecosystem services—occur on farmland. Two strategies are identified for coordinating policy implementation at the landscape scale: the promotion of farmers’ collective action and the partition of space on an ecologically sound basis through spatial planning. As the new European Union Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) post-2023 is currently being defined, we assess if and how the draft agri-biodiversity legislation includes any of the strategies above. We find no comprehensive uptake of the landscape-scale perspective at the EU level, thereby suggesting that a powerful tool to overcome the CAP underperformance on biodiversity is being overlooked.

The Effect of Forest Management on the Avifauna of a Brazilian Dry Forest

The conversion of tropical habitats has dramatic implications on biodiversity and represents one of the greatest conservation challenges of our time. Seasonally Dry Tropical Forests (SDTF), which are disjointly distributed throughout the Neotropics, are especially susceptible to human activities. The Caatinga Dry Forest, located in the semi-arid interior of northeastern Brazil, represents not only the largest and most biologically diverse nucleus of SDTF, but also the world’s most densely populated semi-arid region, with ever-growing pressure on its natural resources. To prevent illegal logging, conservation agencies looked at forest management, where an area is divided in smaller stands which are gradually logged and allowed to regrow for a period of time, when a new cutting cycle should reinitiate. The impacts of these management schemes on biodiversity, however, remain largely untested. We conducted standardized avian surveys to evaluate the effects of forest management on the avian community at a 1,670 ha privately owned property located on the Chapada do Araripe, northeastern Brazil. This area was divided in 22 forest stands, half of which had already been logged at the time of our sampling, creating a gradient of logged and natural forests and an 11-yr chrono-sequence of forest regeneration. Our results show that logged areas present fewer individuals, fewer species, and different avian assemblages than unlogged forests. Such differences are mostly driven by forest-dependent species, which were overwhelmingly affected by forest management. Our results show that although logged forests tend to recover its height after a decade, they do not recover the originally forest cover, measured by the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index. Likewise, decade-long recovering stands continue to show lower species richness, lower bird abundance, and different avian composition than unlogged forests. We identified a set of bird species that are more affected by forest management (ecological losers) and a group of birds that apparently benefit from the referred changes in land use (ecological winners). We conclude that completely managing an entire area may cause the extirpation of several forest-dependent species. We therefore suggest keeping logged and unlogged plots intermingled, to avoid local extinctions and the complete modification of the original avifauna.

Landscape Structure Is a Major Driver of Bee Functional Diversity in Crops

Land-use change is having a negative effect on pollinator communities, and these changes in community structure may have unexpected impacts on the functional composition of those communities. Such changes in functional composition may impact the capacity of these assemblages to deliver pollination services, affecting the reproduction of native and wild plants. However, elucidating those relationships requires studies in multiple spatial scales because effects and consequences are different considering biological groups and interactions. In that sense, by using a multi-trait approach, we evaluated whether the landscape structure and/or local environmental characteristics could explain the functional richness, divergence, and dispersion of bee communities in agroecosystems. In addition, we investigated to what extent this approach helps to predict effects on pollination services. This study was conducted in an agroecosystem situated in the Chapada Diamantina region, State of Bahia, Brazil. Bees were collected using two complementary techniques in 27 sample units. They were classified according to their response traits (e.g., body size, nesting location) and effect traits (e.g., means of pollen transportation, specialty in obtaining resources). The Akaike information criterion was used to select the best models created through the additive combination of landscape descriptors (landscape diversity, mean patch shape, and local vegetation structure) at the local, proximal, and broad landscape levels. Our results indicate that both landscape heterogeneity and configuration matter in explaining the three properties of bee functional diversity. We indicate that functional diversity is positively correlated with compositional and configurational heterogeneity. These results suggest that landscape and local scale management to promote functional diversity in pollinator communities may be an effective mechanism for supporting increased pollination services.

Multi-Scape Interventions to Match Spatial Scales of Demand and Supply of Ecosystem Services

The original focus on supply of ecosystem services is shifting toward matching supply and demand. This new focus underlines the need to consider not only the amount of ecosystem services but also their spatial and temporal distributions relative to demand. Ecosystem functions and services have characteristic or salient scales that are defined by the scales at which the producing organisms or communities exist and function. Provision of ecosystem services (ES) and functions can be managed optimally by controlling the spatio-temporal distribution of landscape and community components. A simple model represents distributions of ES as kernels centered at the location of interventions such as grassland restoration or establishment of nesting habitat for pollinators. Distribution kernels allow non-habitat patches to receive ecosystem services from species they cannot support. Simulations for three contrasting ES producing organisms (bumblebees, Northern Harriers, and oak trees) show the effects of interacting distribution of interventions and demand for ES. More ES demand is met when the intervention is spread out in the landscape and demand is evenly distributed, particularly when the kernel radius is much larger than the minimum intervention required for the ES producing unit to be established. Because different functions have different reaches and saturation points, the level of ES demand met at any point in space can be modulated by controlling the spatial distribution of landscape components created by interventions. Different ES can be promoted by the same type and quantity of intervention by controlling the continuum of scales in the distribution of interventions. This work provides a conceptual and quantitative basis to consider the spatial design of interventions to match ES supply and demand.

Recent collapse of crop belts and declining diversity of US agriculture since 1840

Over the last century, US agriculture greatly intensified and became industrialized, increasing in inputs and yields while decreasing in total cropland area. In the industrial sector, spatial agglomeration effects are typical, but such changes in the patterns of crop types and diversity would have major implications for the resilience of food systems to global change. Here, we investigate the extent to which agricultural industrialization in the United States was accompanied by agglomeration of crop types, not just overall cropland area, as well as declines in crop diversity. Based on county-level analyses of individual crop land cover area in the conterminous United States from 1840 to 2017, we found a strong and abrupt spatial concentration of most crop types in very recent years. For 13 of the 18 major crops, the widespread belts that characterized early 20th century US agriculture have collapsed, with spatial concentration increasing 15-fold after 2002. The number of counties producing each crop declined from 1940 to 2017 by up to 97%, and their total area declined by up to 98%, despite increasing total production. Concomitantly, the diversity of crop types within counties plummeted: in 1940, 88% of counties grew >10 crops, but only 2% did so in 2017, and combinations of crop types that once characterized entire agricultural regions are lost. Importantly, declining crop diversity with increasing cropland area is a recent phenomenon, suggesting that corresponding environmental effects in agriculturally dominated counties have fundamentally changed. For example, the spatial concentration of agriculture has important consequences for the spread of crop pests, agrochemical use, and climate change. Ultimately, the recent collapse of most agricultural belts and the loss of crop diversity suggest greater vulnerability of US food systems to environmental and economic change, but the spatial concentration of agriculture may also offer environmental benefits in areas that are no longer farmed.

Sparing and sharing land for maintaining the multifunctionality of large floodplain rivers

Large floodplain rivers (LFRs) are among the most threatened ecosystems on Earth and their utilization is expected to grow. Therefore, the need to develop more effective spatial prioritization tools to maintain their multifunctionality becomes increasingly important. We present a novel approach to land use design and conservation planning of LFRs and demonstrate its applicability using a case study for the Danube River, Central-Europe. Specifically, we use indicators of habitat naturalness and complexity to define four main land use functions for LFRs: (1) relatively intact areas with high habitat complexity, which are of high priority for conservation (C), (2) degraded and simplified areas, which are not suited for conservation, but for human utilization (HU), (3) relatively natural areas with low habitat complexity, which are suited both for conservation and for sustainable use of goods and services (LS), (4) degraded areas with relatively high habitat complexity potential, which should be used for rehabilitation (R). While C and HU spare land primarily for conservation and for human utilization, respectively, categories LS and R share land both for biodiversity conservation and for human use and well-being. Results of the case study show that the different land use functions did not clearly separate spatially along the evaluated segment, but distributed relatively equally. Area weighted indices highlighted the importance of large floodplains, while non-weighted indices indicated the importance of many smaller segments with narrow floodplain riparian zone, which can still be important for conservation or rehabilitation purposes. Our multiscale analysis revealed how land use categorizations depend on index use, index weightings and spatial resolution of land use function maps, which should be considered by management. The suggested methodology provides a transparent framework to any stakeholder groups on how to plan out management actions in the context of land conservation and ecosystem services delivery of LFRs.

Effects of future agricultural change scenarios on beneficial insects

Insects provide vital ecosystem services to agricultural systems in the form of pollination and natural pest control. However, there are currently widespread declines in the beneficial insects which deliver these services (i.e. pollinators and 'natural enemies' such as predators and parasitoids). Two key drivers of these declines have been the expansion of agricultural land and intensification of agricultural production. With an increasing human population requiring additional sources of food, further changes in agricultural land use appear inevitable. Identifying likely trajectories of change and predicting their impacts on beneficial insects provides a scientific basis for making informed decisions on the policies and practices of sustainable agriculture. We created spatially explicit, exploratory scenarios of potential changes in the extent and intensity of agricultural land use across Great Britain (GB). Scenarios covered 52 possible combinations of change in agricultural land cover (i.e. agricultural expansion or grassland restoration) and intensity (i.e. crop type and diversity). We then used these scenarios to predict impacts on beneficial insect species richness and several metrics of functional diversity at a 10km (hectad) resolution. Predictions were based on species distribution models derived from biological records, comprising data on 116 bee species (pollinators) and 81 predatory beetle species (natural enemies). We identified a wide range of possible consequences for beneficial insect species richness and functional diversity as result of future changes in agricultural extent and intensity. Current policies aimed at restoring semi-natural grassland should result in increases in the richness and functional diversity of both pollinators and natural enemies, even if agricultural practices remain intensive on cropped land (i.e. land-sparing). In contrast, any expansion of arable land is likely to be accompanied by widespread declines in richness of beneficial insects, even if cropping practices become less intensive (i.e. land-sharing), although effects of functional diversity are more mixed.

Biologia Futura: landscape perspectives on farmland biodiversity conservation

European nature conservation has a strong focus on farmland harbouring threatened species that mainly co-occur with traditional agriculture shaped way before the green revolution. Increased land-use intensity in agriculture has caused an alarming decline in farmland biodiversity during the last century. How can a landscape perspective contribute to fostering our understanding on causes and consequences of farmland biodiversity decline and improving the effectiveness of conservation measures? To answer these questions, we discuss the importance of landscape compositional and configurational heterogeneity, understanding ecological mechanisms determining how landscape structure affects farmland biodiversity and considering the interplay of farmland biodiversity and ecosystem service conservation.

Organic farming expansion drives natural enemy abundance but not diversity in vineyard-dominated landscapes

Organic farming is seen as a prototype of ecological intensification potentially able to conciliate crop productivity and biodiversity conservation in agricultural landscapes. However, how natural enemies, an important functional group supporting pest control services, respond to organic farming at different scales and in different landscape contexts remain unclear. Using a hierarchical design within a vineyard-dominated region located in southwestern France, we examine the independent effects of organic farming and semi-natural habitats at the local and landscape scales on natural enemies. We show that the proportion of organic farming is a stronger driver of species abundance than the proportion of semi-natural habitats and is an important facet of landscape heterogeneity shaping natural enemy assemblages. Although our study highlights a strong taxonomic group-dependency about the effect of organic farming, organic farming benefits to dominant species while rare species occur at the same frequency in the two farming systems. Independently of farming systems, enhancing field age, reducing crop productivity, soil tillage intensity, and pesticide use are key management options to increase natural enemy biodiversity. Our study indicates that policies promoting the expansion of organic farming will benefit more to ecological intensification strategies seeking to enhance ecosystem services than to biodiversity conservation.

Priorities and opportunities in the application of the ecosystem services concept in risk assessment for chemicals in the environment

The ecosystem services approach has gained broad interest in regulatory and policy circles for use in ecological risk assessment. Whilst identifying several challenges, scientific experts from European regulatory authorities, the chemical industry and academia considered the approach applicable to all chemical sectors and potentially contributing to greater ecological relevance for setting and assessing environmental protection goals compared to current European regulatory frameworks for chemicals. These challenges were addressed in workshops to develop a common understanding across stakeholders on how the ecosystem services concept might be used in chemical risk assessment and what would need to be done to implement it. This paper describes the consensus outcome of those discussions. Knowledge gaps and research needs were identified and prioritised, exploring the use of novel approaches from ecology, ecotoxicology and ecological modelling. Where applicable, distinction is made between prospective and retrospective ecological risk assessment. For prospective risk assessment the development of environmental scenarios accounting for chemical exposure and ecological conditions was designated as a top priority. For retrospective risk assessment the top priority research need was development of reference conditions for key ecosystem services and guidance for their derivation. Both prospective and retrospective risk assessment would benefit from guidance on the taxa and measurement endpoints relevant to specific ecosystem services and from improved understanding of the relationships between measurement endpoints from standard toxicity tests and the ecosystem services of interest (i.e. assessment endpoints). The development of mechanistic models, which could serve as ecological production functions, was identified as a priority. A conceptual framework for future chemical risk assessment based on an ecosystem services approach is presented.

Exploring sustainable land use in forested tropical social-ecological systems: A case-study in the Wet Tropics

Tropical countries lie at the nexus of three pressing issues for global sustainability: agricultural production, climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation. The forces that drive forest protection do not necessarily oppose those that drive forest clearance for development. This decoupling, enhanced by the stronger economic forces compared to conservation, is detrimental for the social-ecological sustainability of forested tropical landscapes. This paper presents an integrated, and spatially-explicit, Agent-Based Model that examines the future impacts of land-use change scenarios on the sustainability of the Wet Tropics region of tropical Queensland, Australia. In particular, the model integrates Bayesian Belief Networks, Geographical Information Systems, empirical data and expert knowledge, under a land-sharing/land-sparing analysis, to study the impact of different landscape configurations on trade-offs and synergies among biodiversity and two ecosystem services (sugarcane production and carbon sequestration). Contrary to most tropical regions, model simulations show that Business As Usual is helping to reconcile these contrasting goals in the forested landscape of the Wet Tropics. The paper analyses which combination of governance and socio-economic factors is causing these positive results. This is an outstanding achievement for a tropical region, considering that most tropical areas are characterized for having stronger economic-land clearing forces compared to conservation forces, which reduce important ecosystem services for human wellbeing and the health of ecosystems.

Wavelet-Based Correlation Identification of Scales and Locations between Landscape Patterns and Topography in Urban-Rural Profiles: Case of the Jilin City, China

Landscapes display overlapping sets of correlations in different regions at different spatial scales, and these correlations can be delineated by pattern analysis. This study identified the correlations between landscape pattern and topography at various scales and locations in urban-rural profiles from Jilin City, China, using Pearson correlation analysis and wavelet method. Two profiles, 30 km (A) and 35 km (B) in length with 0.1-km sampling intervals, were selected. The results indicated that profile A was more sensitive to the characterization of the land use pattern as influenced by topography due to its more varied terrain, and three scales (small, medium, and large) could be defined based on the variation in the standard deviation of the wavelet coherency in profile A. Correlations between landscape metrics and elevation were similar at large scales (over 8 km), while complex correlations were discovered at other scale intervals. The medium scale of cohesion and Shannon’s diversity index was 1–8 km, while those of perimeter-area fractal dimension and edge density index were 1.5–8 km and 2–8 km, respectively. At small scales, the correlations were weak as a whole and scattered due to the micro-topography and landform elements, such as valleys and hillsides. At medium scales, the correlations were most affected by local topography, and the land use pattern was significantly correlated with topography at several locations. At large spatial scales, significant correlation existed throughout the study area due to alternating mountains and plains. In general, the strength of correlation between landscape metrics and topography increased gradually with increasing spatial scale, although this tendency had some fluctuations in several locations. Despite a complex calculating process and ecological interpretation, the wavelet method is still an effective tool to identify multi-scale characteristics in landscape ecology.

Examining the Potential for Agricultural Benefits from Pollinator Habitat at Solar Facilities in the United States

Of the many roles insects serve for ecosystem function, pollination is possibly the most important service directly linked to human well-being. However, land use changes have contributed to the decline of pollinators and their habitats. In agricultural landscapes that also support renewable energy developments such as utility-scale solar energy [USSE] facilities, opportunities may exist to conserve insect pollinators and locally restore their ecosystem services through the implementation of vegetation management approaches that aim to provide and maintain pollinator habitat at USSE facilities. As a first step toward understanding the potential agricultural benefits of solar-pollinator habitat, we identified areas of overlap between USSE facilities and surrounding pollinator-dependent crop types in the United States (U.S.). Using spatial data on solar energy developments and crop types across the U.S., and assuming a pollinator foraging distance of 1.5 km, we identified over 3,500 km² of agricultural land near existing and planned USSE facilities that may benefit from increased pollination services through the creation of pollinator habitat at the USSE facilities. The following five pollinator-dependent crop types accounted for over 90% of the agriculture near USSE facilities, and these could benefit most from the creation of pollinator habitat at existing and planned USSE facilities: soybeans, alfalfa, cotton, almonds, and citrus. We discuss how our results may be used to understand potential agro-economic implications of solar-pollinator habitat. Our results show that ecosystem service restoration through the creation of pollinator habitat could improve the sustainability of large-scale renewable energy developments in agricultural landscapes.

Land-use strategies to balance livestock production, biodiversity conservation and carbon storage in Yucatán, Mexico

Balancing the production of food, particularly meat, with preserving biodiversity and maintaining ecosystem services is a major societal challenge. Research into the contrasting strategies of land sparing and land sharing has suggested that land sparing-combining high-yield agriculture with the protection or restoration of natural habitats on nonfarmed land-will have lower environmental impacts than other strategies. Ecosystems with long histories of habitat disturbance, however, could be resilient to low-yield agriculture and thus fare better under land sharing. Using a wider suite of species (birds, dung beetles and trees) and a wider range of livestock-production systems than previous studies, we investigated the probable impacts of different land-use strategies on biodiversity and aboveground carbon stocks in the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico-a region with a long history of habitat disturbance. By modelling the production of multiple products from interdependent land uses, we found that land sparing would allow larger estimated populations of most species and larger carbon stocks to persist than would land sharing or any intermediate strategy. This result held across all agricultural production targets despite the history of disturbance and despite species richness in low- and medium-yielding agriculture being not much lower than that in natural habitats. This highlights the importance, in evaluating the biodiversity impacts of land use, of measuring population densities of individual species, rather than simple species richness. The benefits of land sparing for both biodiversity and carbon storage suggest that safeguarding natural habitats for biodiversity protection and carbon storage alongside promoting areas of high-yield cattle production would be desirable. However, delivering such landscapes will probably require the explicit linkage of livestock yield increases with habitat protection or restoration, as well as a deeper understanding of the long-term sustainability of yields, and research into how other societal outcomes vary across land-use strategies.

Variegated tropical landscapes conserve diverse dung beetle communities

BACKGROUND

Conserving biodiversity in tropical landscapes is a major challenge to scientists and conservationists. Current rates of deforestation, fragmentation, and land use intensification are producing variegated landscapes with undetermined values for the conservation of biological communities and ecosystem functioning. Here, we investigate the importance of tropical variegated landscapes to biodiversity conservation, using dung beetle as focal taxa.

METHODS

The study was carried out in 12 variegated landscapes where dung beetles were sampled using six pitfall traps, 30 m apart from each other, along a transect in each studied landscape use and cover classes-LUCC (forest fragment and corridor, coffee plantation, and pasture). We baited each pitfall trap with 30 g of human feces and left open for a 48 h period. We also measured three environmental variables reflecting structural differences among the studied classes: canopy cover, local vegetation heterogeneity and soil sand content.

RESULTS

We collected 52 species and 2,695 individuals of dung beetles. We observed significant differences in the mean species richness, abundance and biomass among classes, with forest fragments presenting the highest values, forest corridors and coffee plantations presenting intermediate values, and pastures the lowest values. Regarding community structure, we also found significant differences among classes. Canopy cover was the only variable explaining variation in dung beetle species richness, abundance, biomass, and community structure. The relative importance of spatial turnover was greater than nestedness-resultant component in all studied landscapes.

DISCUSSION

This study evaluated the ecological patterns of dung beetle communities in variegated tropical landscapes highlighting the importance of these landscapes for conservation of tropical biodiversity. However, we encourage variegation for the management of landscapes that have already been fragmented or as a complementary initiative of current conservation practices (e.g., protection of natural habitats and establishment of reserves).

Seasonal changes in avian communities living in an extensively used farmland of Western Poland

To study the seasonal changes in avian communities, we collected data in an extensively used farmland in Western Poland during 2006-2013. Generalized additive mixed models were used in order to study the effects of seasonality and protected areas on the overall bird species richness. A similarity percentage analysis was also conducted in order to identify the species that contribute most strongly to dissimilarity among each bird according to the phenological season. Furthermore, the differences in bird communities were investigated applying the decomposition of the species richness in season, trend, and remainder components. Each season showed significant differences in bird species richness (seasonality effect). The effect of the protected areas was slightly positive on the overall species richness for all seasons. However, an overall negative trend was detected for the entire period of eight years. The bird community composition was different among seasons, showing differences in terms of dominant species. Greater differences were found between breeding and wintering seasons, in particular, the spatial pattern of sites with higher bird richness (hotspots) were different between breeding and wintering seasons. Our findings showed a negative trend in bird species richness verified in the Polish farmlands from 2006. This result mirrors the same negative trend already highlighted for Western Europe. The role of protected areas, even if slightly positive, was not enough to mitigate this decline process. Therefore, to effectively protect farmland birds, it is necessary to also consider inter-seasons variation, and for this, we suggest the use of medium-term temporal studies on bird communities’ trends.