What conservationists need to know about farming

Balmford, Andrew; Green, Rhys E.; Phalan, Ben

doi:10.1098/rspb.2012.0515

Cited by 234 publications

(190 citation statements)

References 91 publications

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“…While nature organizations are increasingly willing to cooperate with livestock farmers, many farmers show little interest in managing nutrient-poor or wet grasslands. In addition, land sharing strategies, in particular agri-environmental schemes, are not achieving the expected results (Balmford et al, 2012;Kleijn et al, 2011Kleijn et al, , 2001Pe'er et al, 2014). This makes it difficult for land planners to assess whether a land sharing or sparing policy is preferable.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Meanwhile, concepts of multifunctionality and ecosystem services already bridge the distinction between classical sectors like agriculture, nature and forestry. In the light of food and biomass production, the principal challenge is to simultaneously assess and maximize production as well as the other ES provided by bioproductive land (Balmford et al, 2012) which inevitably implies trade-offs. A conceptual framework as proposed by (Foley et al, 2005) argues how agro-ecological cropland management might support a larger portfolio of ES.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Revisiting production and ecosystem services on the farm scale for evaluating land use alternatives

Lerouge

Sannen²,

Gulinck

et al. 2016

Environmental Science & Policy

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Land is a scarce resource and should be used in such a way that the increasing global demand for food and feed can be fulfilled, while ensuring sufficient levels of ecosystem services. While the demand on open space to deliver a multitude of services is increasing, drivers like global change and urbanization are undermining these services. Decision makers, from individual farmers to spatial planners, are in need of appropriate diagnostic tools to estimate trade-offs and synergies associated with land allocation and land use intensity decisions. This often implies trade-offs between food and biomass production and other non-provisioning ecosystem services. This paper presents an assessment on the farm scale using an integrated approach that combines spatial and economic analyses. It relies on the ecosystem services concept to evaluate land use alternatives. The analysis highlights current challenges to reach a societal optimal land allocation. INTRODUCTIONPopulation pressure results in an increasing demand for food and bio-energy products and hence also in an increasing demand for agricultural land (Meyfroidt et al., 2013;Tscharntke et al., 2012). This demand is in competition with the additional demand for land for residential, conservation, forestry, recreational, and other purposes (Zasada, 2011). With land as an increasingly scarce resource, spatial planners seek to balance land use allocation among competing stakeholders. This has led to a polarization in land use policies between demands for expanding urbanized fabric and the remaining open space used for agriculture, whilst natural areas are largely pushed back to relatively small and fragmented relics. Spatial planning has mainly focused on allocation of land to space demanding sectors and minimizing spatial conflicts. This approach falls short in considering present-day demands for multifunctionality, sustainability, ecosystem services, resilience and adaptive governance. While an integrative and spatially explicit approach to land allocation is highly needed, it is largely missing (Bomans et al., 2010b;Termorshuizen and Opdam, 2009). Particularly in strongly urbanized regions, the relation between the availability and use of space, and the potential services this space is able to provide to society, needs to be explored further. Increasing service delivery per unit of space can allow a decreasing spatial requirement for delivering this service, and hence, freeing space for other services. Fragmented peri-urban landscapes in particular, where interfaces between different forms of land use and associated actors are plenty, are in need of innovative concepts for land use allocation. Meanwhile, concepts of multifunctionality and ecosystem services already bridge the distinction between classical sectors like agriculture, nature and forestry. In the light of food and biomass production, the principal challenge is to simultaneously assess and maximize production as well as the other ES provided by bioproductive land (Balmford et al., 2012) which inevi...

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Revisiting production and ecosystem services on the farm scale for evaluating land use alternatives

Lerouge

Sannen²,

Gulinck

et al. 2016

Environmental Science & Policy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The opportunity cost of the labour element of conservation effort is difficult to observe and highly variable (White and Sadler, 2012). This is a region where land sparing rather than land sharing (Balmford et al, 2012) is the best strategy, as the ecosystem benefits are relatively low on land planted to crops or used for grazing.…”

Section: A Case Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Should We Pay for Ecosystem Service Outputs, Inputs or Both?

White

Hanley

2016

Environ Resource Econ

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“…They observed that extreme ages of urbanisation (young and old) cause higher niche differentiation concerning specialisation of birds, leading to a more vulnerable state for the ecosystem. Because farming is highly damaging to wild Nature, the high number of papers concerning agricultural land use is justifiable (Balmford et al, 2012;Swinton et al, 2007). Still, more studies about the responses of functional diversity to urban impacts are wanted.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An overview of the applicability of functional diversity in Biological Conservation

Freitas

Mantovani

2017

Braz. J. Biol.

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Functional diversity is increasingly pointed as a useful approach to reach Biological Conservation goals. Here, we provide an overview of the functional diversity approach status in the Biological Conservation field. We sought for peer-reviewed papers published over a period of twenty years (from 1994 to 2014). First we used the general topic "functional diversity" and then refined our search using the key-word "conservation". We have identified the conservation strategies addressed, the organism studied, and the continent of study site in each paper. Thirteen classes of conservation strategies were identified. Plants were the most commonly studied organism group and most study-sites were located in Europe. The functional diversity approach was introduced in the Biological Conservation field in the early 2000's and its inclusion in conservation strategies is broadly advised. However, the number of papers that operationalise such inclusion by developing models and systems is still low. Functional diversity responds differently and eventually better than other measures to changes in land use and management, which suggests that this approach can potentially better predict the impacts. More studies are needed to corroborate this hypothesis. We pointed out knowledge gaps regarding identification of the responses for functional diversity about urban impacts and in research on the level of management intensity of land needed to maintain functional diversity. We recommend the use of functional diversity measures to find ecological indicators. Future studies should focus on the development of functional diversity measures of other taxa beyond plants as well as test hypothesis in tropical ecosystems.Keywords: biodiversity assessments, biodiversity measures, conservation strategies, ecosystem functioning, trait-based approach. Uma visão geral sobre a aplicabilidade da diversidade funcional na Conservação Biológica ResumoA diversidade funcional é crescentemente apontada como uma abordagem útil para alcançar os objetivos da Conservação Biológica. Neste artigo, nós mostramos uma visão geral do status desta abordagem no campo da Conservação Biológica. Nós buscamos por artigos revisados por pares publicados ao longo de vinte anos (desde 1994 até 2014) usando, primeiramente, o tópico geral "functional diversity" e em seguida, refinamos a pesquisa com a palavra-chave "conservation". Identificamos a estratégia de conservação abordada, o organismo estudado e o continente da área de estudo de cada artigo. Treze classes de estratégias de conservação foram identificadas. As plantas foram o grupo de organismos mais amplamente estudado e a maior parte das áreas de estudo estavam localizadas no continente europeu. A abordagem da diversidade funcional entrou no campo da Conservação Biológica no início dos anos 2000 e sua inclusão nas estratégias de conservação é amplamente recomendada. Entretanto, o número de artigos que operacionalizam tal inclusão ainda é pequeno. A diversidade funcional responde diferentemente e, eventualmente,...

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What conservationists need to know about farming

Cited by 234 publications

References 91 publications

Revisiting production and ecosystem services on the farm scale for evaluating land use alternatives

Revisiting production and ecosystem services on the farm scale for evaluating land use alternatives

Should We Pay for Ecosystem Service Outputs, Inputs or Both?

An overview of the applicability of functional diversity in Biological Conservation

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