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The practice of rewilding has been both promoted and criticized in recent years. Benefits include flexibility to react to environmental change and the promotion of opportunities for society to reconnect with nature. Criticisms include the lack of a clear conceptualization of rewilding, insufficient knowledge about possible outcomes, and the perception that rewilding excludes people from landscapes. Here, we present a framework for rewilding that addresses these concerns. We suggest that rewilding efforts should target trophic complexity, natural disturbances, and dispersal as interacting processes that can improve ecosystem resilience and maintain biodiversity. We propose a structured approach to rewilding projects that includes assessment of the contributions of nature to people and the social-ecological constraints on restoration.

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Over the past decades, landscapes worldwide have experienced changes (e.g., urbanization, agricultural intensification, expansion of renewable energy uses) at magnitudes that put their sustainability at risk. The understanding of the drivers of these landscape changes remains challenging, partly because landscape research is spread across many domains and disciplines. We here provide a systematic synthesis of 144 studies that identify the proximate and underlying drivers of landscape change across Europe. First, we categorize how driving forces have been addressed and find that most studies consider medium-term time scales and local spatial scales. Most studies assessed only one case study area, one spatial scale, and less than four points in time. Second, we analyze geographical coverage of studies and reveal that countries with a non-European Union/European Free Trade Association membership; low Gross Domestic Product; boreal, steppic, and arctic landscapes; as well as forestland systems are underrepresented in the literature. Third, our review shows that land abandonment/extensification is the most prominent (62% of cases) among multiple proximate drivers of landscape change. Fourthly, we find that distinct combinations of mainly political/institutional, cultural, and natural/spatial underlying drivers are determining landscape change, rather than single key drivers. Our systematic review indicates knowledge gaps that can be filled by: (a) expanding the scope of studies to include underrepresented landscapes; (b) clarifying the identification and role of actors in landscape change; (c) deploying more robust tools and methods to quantitatively assess the causalities of landscape change; (d) setting up long-term studies that go beyond mapping land-cover change only; (e) strengthening cross-site and crosscountry comparisons of landscape drivers; (f) designing multi-scale studies that consider teleconnections; (g) considering subtle and novel processes of landscape change.

Agroforestry has been proposed as a sustainable agricultural system over conventional agriculture and forestry, conserving biodiversity and enhancing ecosystem service provision while not compromising productivity. However, the available evidence for the societal benefits of agroforestry is fragmented and does often not integrate diverse ecosystem services into the assessment. To upscale existing case-study insights to the European level, we conducted a meta-analysis on the effects of agroforestry on ecosystem service provision and on biodiversity levels. From 53 publications we extracted a total of 365 comparisons that were selected for the meta-analysis. Results revealed an overall positive effect of agroforestry (effect size=0.454, p<0.01) over conventional agriculture and forestry. However, results were heterogeneous, with differences among the types of agroforestry practices and ecosystem services assessed. Erosion control, biodiversity, and soil fertility are enhanced by agroforestry while there is no clear effect on provisioning services. The effect of agroforestry on biomass production is negative. Comparisons between agroforestry types and reference land-uses showed that both silvopastoral and silvoarable systems increase ecosystem service provision and biodiversity, especially when compared with forestry land. Mediterranean tree plantation systems should be especially targeted as soil erosion could be highly reduced while soil fertility increased. We conclude that agroforestry can enhance biodiversity and ecosystem service provision relative to conventional agriculture and forestry in Europe and could be a strategically beneficial land use in rural planning if its inherent complexity is considered in policy measures.

ABSTRACT. Participatory scenario planning (PSP) is an increasingly popular tool in place-based environmental research for evaluating alternative futures of social-ecological systems. Although a range of guidelines on PSP methods are available in the scientific and grey literature, there is a need to reflect on existing practices and their appropriate application for different objectives and contexts at the local scale, as well as on their potential perceived outcomes. We contribute to theoretical and empirical frameworks by analyzing how and why researchers assess social-ecological systems using place-based PSP, hence facilitating the appropriate uptake of such scenario tools in the future. We analyzed 23 PSP case studies conducted by the authors in a wide range of social-ecological settings by exploring seven aspects: (1) the context; (2) the original motivations and objectives; (3) the methodological approach; (4) the process; (5) the content of the scenarios; (6) the outputs of the research; and (7) the monitoring and evaluation of the PSP process. This was complemented by a reflection on strengths and weaknesses of using PSP for the place-based social-ecological research. We conclude that the application of PSP, particularly when tailored to shared objectives between local people and researchers, has enriched environmental management and scientific research through building common understanding and fostering learning about future planning of social-ecological systems. However, PSP still requires greater systematic monitoring and evaluation to assess its impact on the promotion of collective action for transitions to sustainability and the adaptation to global environmental change and its challenges.

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