Landscape-scale modelling of agroforestry ecosystems services in Swiss orchards: a methodological approach

Abstract

Context Agroforestry systems in temperate Europe are known to provide both, provisioning and regulating ecosystem services (ES). Yet, it is poorly understood how these systems affect ES provision at a landscape scale in contrast to agricultural practises. Objectives This study aimed at developing a novel, spatially explicit model to assess and quantify bundles of provisioning and regulating ES provided by landscapes with and without agroforestry systems and to test the hypothesis that agroforestry landscapes provide higher amounts of regulating ES than landscapes dominated by monocropping. Methods Focussing on ES that are relevant for agroforestry and agricultural practices, we selected six provisioning and regulating ES-"biomass production", "groundwater recharge", "nutrient retention", "soil preservation", "carbon storage", "habitat and gene pool protection". Algorithms for quantifying these services were identified, tested, adapted, and applied in a traditional cherry orchard landscape in Switzerland, as a case study. Eight landscape test sites of 1 km × 1 km, four dominated by agroforestry and four dominated by agriculture, were mapped and used as baseline for the model. Results We found that the provisioning ES, namely the annual biomass yield, was higher in landscape test sites with agriculture, while the regulating ES were better represented in landscape test sites with agroforestry. The differences were found to be statistically significant for the indicators annual biomass yield, groundwater recharge rate, nitrate leaching, annual carbon sequestration, flowering resources, and share of semi-natural habitats. Conclusions This approach provides an example for spatially explicit quantification of provisioning and regulating ES and is suitable for comparing different land use scenarii at landscape scale.

Ecosystem services in vineyard landscapes: a focus on aboveground carbon storage and accumulation

“…Furthermore, this study is the first to apply age-specific wood density measurements for estimating vine biomass and C content. While further improvements in C measurement precision are both possible and needed (e.g., volumetric precision, quantifying differences between the range of varietals, greater resolution of rates for vines of different ages), this study nevertheless advances the state of our understanding with regards to quantifying C storage in both vineyard systems in particular, and in perennial woody crops generally, where there is similar potential to provide ecosystem services including carbon storage while generating agricultural productivity [ 43 ].…”

Towards an enhanced indication of provisioning ecosystem services in agro-ecosystems

“…fragmentation, diversity, habitat connectivity, habitat richness and landscape heterogeneity (e.g. Frank et al 2012;Koschke et al 2013;Duarte et al 2018;Kay et al 2018). Geostatistical indicators can be used to explore patterns of ES (Ungaro et al 2014(Ungaro et al , 2017.…”

Automatic Delineation of Forest Patches in Highly Fragmented Landscapes Using Coloured Point Clouds

“…The manual delineation of features is the most obvious and direct method for mapping small-sized patches (e.g., [16,17]). For this reason, it was the basis for the first highly detailed landscape maps during the twentieth century.…”

“…For this reason, it was the basis for the first highly detailed landscape maps during the twentieth century. Manual delineation is often based on the use of aerial imagery (mainly ortho-images) with very high spatial resolution (typically with pixel sizes of 0.05-0.5 m [17]). However, these types of images are not always available in open repositories.…”