Search

There has been a seismic shift in the center of gravity of scientific writing and thinking about agriculture over the past decades, from a prevailing focus on maximizing yields toward a goal of balancing trade‐offs and ensuring the delivery of multiple ecosystem services. Maximizing crop yields often results in a system where most benefits accrue to very few (in the form of profits), alongside irreparable environmental harm to agricultural ecosystems, landscapes, and people. Here, we present evidence that an un‐yielding, which we define as de‐emphasizing the importance of yields alone, is necessary to achieve the goal of a more Food secure, Agrobiodiverse, Regenerative, Equitable and just (FARE) agriculture. Focusing on yields places the emphasis on one particular outcome of agriculture, which is only an intermediate means to the true endpoint of human well‐being. Using yields as a placeholder for this outcome ignores the many other benefits of agriculture that people also care about, like health, livelihoods, and a sense of place. Shifting the emphasis to these multiple benefits rather than merely yields, and to their equitable delivery to all people, we find clear scientific evidence of win‐wins for people and nature through four strategies that foster FARE agriculture: reduced disturbance, systems reintegration, diversity, and justice (in the form of securing rights to land and other resources). Through a broad review of the current state of agriculture, desired futures, and the possible pathways to reach them, we argue that while trade‐offs between some ecosystem services in agriculture are unavoidable, the same need not be true of the end benefits we desire from them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The magnitude and pace of global change demand rapid assessment of nature and its contributions to people. We present a fine-scale global modeling of current status and future scenarios for several contributions: water quality regulation, coastal risk reduction, and crop pollination. We find that where people’s needs for nature are now greatest, nature’s ability to meet those needs is declining. Up to 5 billion people face higher water pollution and insufficient pollination for nutrition under future scenarios of land use and climate change, particularly in Africa and South Asia. Hundreds of millions of people face heightened coastal risk across Africa, Eurasia, and the Americas. Continued loss of nature poses severe threats, yet these can be reduced 3- to 10-fold under a sustainable development scenario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea that noncrop habitat enhances pest control and represents a win-win opportunity to conserve biodiversity and bolster yields has emerged as an agroecological paradigm. However, while noncrop habitat in landscapes surrounding farms sometimes benefits pest predators, natural enemy responses remain heterogeneous across studies and effects on pests are inconclusive. The observed heterogeneity in species responses to noncrop habitat may be biological in origin or could result from variation in how habitat and biocontrol are measured. Here, we use a pest-control database encompassing 132 studies and 6,759 sites worldwide to model natural enemy and pest abundances, predation rates, and crop damage as a function of landscape composition. Our results showed that although landscape composition explained significant variation within studies, pest and enemy abundances, predation rates, crop damage, and yields each exhibited different responses across studies, sometimes increasing and sometimes decreasing in landscapes with more noncrop habitat but overall showing no consistent trend. Thus, models that used landscape-composition variables to predict pest-control dynamics demonstrated little potential to explain variation across studies, though prediction did improve when comparing studies with similar crop and landscape features. Overall, our work shows that surrounding noncrop habitat does not consistently improve pest management, meaning habitat conservation may bolster production in some systems and depress yields in others. Future efforts to develop tools that inform farmers when habitat conservation truly represents a win-win would benefit from increased understanding of how landscape effects are modulated by local farm management and the biology of pests and their enemies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many decision-makers are looking to science to clarify how nature supports human well-being. Scientists' responses have typically focused on empirical models of the provision of ecosystem services (ES) and resulting decision-support tools. Although such tools have captured some of the complexities of ES, they can be difficult to adapt to new situations. Globally useful tools that predict the provision of multiple ES under different decision scenarios have proven challenging to develop. Questions from decision-makers and limitations of existing decision-support tools indicate three crucial research frontiers for incorporating cutting-edge ES science into decision-support tools: (1) understanding the complex dynamics of ES in space and time, (2) linking ES provision to human well-being, and (3) determining the potential for technology to substitute for or enhance ES. We explore these frontiers in-depth, explaining why each is important and how existing knowledge at their cutting edges can be incorporated to improve ES decision-making tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous studies show that landscape simplification reduces abundance and diversity of natural enemies in agroecosystems, but its effect on natural pest control remains poorly quantified. Further, natural enemy impacts on pest populations have usually been estimated for a limited number of taxa and have not considered interactions among predator species. In a quantitative synthesis with data collected from several cropping systems in Europe and North America, we analyzed how the level and within-field spatial stability of natural pest control services was related to the simplification of the surrounding landscape. All studies used aphids as a model species and exclusion cages to measure aphid pest control. Landscape simplification was quantified by the proportion of cultivated land within a 1 km radius around each plot. We found a consistent negative effect of landscape simplification on the level of natural pest control, despite interactions among enemies. Average level of pest control was 46% lower in homogeneous landscapes dominated by cultivated land, as compared with more complex landscapes. Landscape simplification did not affect the amount of positive or negative interactions among ground-dwelling and vegetation-dwelling predators, or the within-field stability of pest control. Our synthesis demonstrates that agricultural intensification through landscape simplification has negative effects on the level of natural pest control with important implications for management to maintain and enhance ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes. Specifically, preserving and restoring semi-natural habitats emerges as a fundamental first step to maintain and enhance pest control services provided by predatory arthropods to agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing base of information about ecosystem services generated by ecologists, economists, and other scientists could improve the implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of commodity-sourcing standards being adopted by corporations to mitigate risk in their supply chains and achieve sustainability goals. This review examines various ways that information about ecosystem services could facilitate compliance with and auditing of commodity-sourcing standards. We also identify gaps in the current state of knowledge on the ecological effectiveness of sustainability standards and demonstrate how ecosystem-service information could complement existing monitoring efforts to build credible evidence. This paper is a call to the ecosystem-service scientists to engage in this decision context and tailor the information they are generating to the needs of the standards community, which we argue would offer greater efficiency of standards implementation for producers and enhanced effectiveness for standard scheme owners and corporations, and should thus lead to more sustainable outcomes for people and nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing call for ecosystem services models that are both simple and scientifically credible, in order to serve public and private sector decision-making processes. Sediment retention receives particular interest given the impact of this service on water quality. We developed a new version of the sediment retention model for the InVEST (Integrated Valuation of Environmental Services and Tradeoffs) tool to address previous limitations and facilitate model uncertainty assessment. We tested the model in the Cape Fear basin, North Carolina (NC), performing sensitivity analyses and assessing its ability to detect the spatial variability in sediment retention service for eight subcatchments. The main advantages of the revised model include the use of spatially-explicit, globally available input data, and the explicit consideration of hydrological connectivity in the landscape. The sensitivity analyses in the study catchment identified the erosivity and erodibility factors, together with the cover factor for agricultural land as the most influential parameter for sediment export. Relative predictions, representing the spatial variability in sediment exports, were correctly represented by the model. Absolute sediment exports were also highly correlated with observations, although their interpretation for socio-economic assessments is more uncertain without local knowledge of the dominant erosion processes. This work confirms that the sediment connectivity approach used in the revised InVEST model has great potential to quantify the sediment retention service. Although resources to conduct model calibration and testing are typically scarce, these practices should be encouraged to improve model interpretation and for confident application in different decision-making contexts. Without calibration, the InVEST sediment model still provides relevant information for ecosystem services assessments, especially in decision contexts that involve ranking of sediment export areas, such as spatial prioritization of conservation, development or restoration activities, taking into account non-linear sediment responses to changes in land use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The agricultural expansion and intensification required to meet growing food and agri-based product demand present important challenges to future levels and management of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Influential actors such as corporations, governments, and multilateral organizations have made commitments to meeting future agricultural demand sustainably and preserving critical ecosystems. Current approaches to predicting the impacts of agricultural expansion involve calculation of total land conversion and assessment of the impacts on biodiversity or ecosystem services on a per-area basis, generally assuming a linear relationship between impact and land area. However, the impacts of continuing land development are often not linear and can vary considerably with spatial configuration. We demonstrate what could be gained by spatially explicit analysis of agricultural expansion at a large scale compared with the simple measure of total area converted, with a focus on the impacts on biodiversity and carbon storage. Using simple modeling approaches for two regions of Brazil, we find that for the same amount of land conversion, the declines in biodiversity and carbon storage can vary two- to fourfold depending on the spatial pattern of conversion. Impacts increase most rapidly in the earliest stages of agricultural expansion and are more pronounced in scenarios where conversion occurs in forest interiors compared with expansion into forests from their edges. This study reveals the importance of spatially explicit information in the assessment of land-use change impacts and for future land management and conservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] Weekly surveys reveal trends in aphid dynamics that seasonal averages do not. [•] Aphid-predating syrphid fly larvae increase with natural habitat surrounding farms. [•] Aphid population growth decreases as syrphid densities increase. [•] This ultimately results in fewer aphids as natural habitat increases within 1.5km. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The San Francisco Bay Area in California, USA is a highly heterogeneous region in climate, topography, and habitats, as well as in its political and economic interests. Successful conservation strategies must consider various current and future competing demands for the land, and should pay special attention to livestock grazing, the dominant non-urban land-use. The main objective of this study was to predict changes in rangeland forage production in response to changes in temperature and precipitation projected by downscaled output from global climate models. Daily temperature and precipitation data generated by four climate models were used as input variables for an existing rangeland forage production model (linear regression) for California’s annual rangelands and projected on 244 12 km x 12 km grid cells for eight Bay Area counties. Climate model projections suggest that forage production in Bay Area rangelands may be enhanced by future conditions in most years, at least in terms of peak standing crop. However, the timing of production is as important as its peak, and altered precipitation patterns could mean delayed germination, resulting in shorter growing seasons and longer periods of inadequate forage quality. An increase in the frequency of extremely dry years also increases the uncertainty of forage availability. These shifts in forage production will affect the economic viability and conservation strategies for rangelands in the San Francisco Bay Area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecology Letters (2011) 14: 922-932 Abstract Many studies in recent years have investigated the relationship between landscape complexity and pests, natural enemies and/or pest control. However, no quantitative synthesis of this literature beyond simple vote-count methods yet exists. We conducted a meta-analysis of 46 landscape-level studies, and found that natural enemies have a strong positive response to landscape complexity. Generalist enemies show consistent positive responses to landscape complexity across all scales measured, while specialist enemies respond more strongly to landscape complexity at smaller scales. Generalist enemy response to natural habitat also tends to occur at larger spatial scales than for specialist enemies, suggesting that land management strategies to enhance natural pest control should differ depending on whether the dominant enemies are generalists or specialists. The positive response of natural enemies does not necessarily translate into pest control, since pest abundances show no significant response to landscape complexity. Very few landscape-scale studies have estimated enemy impact on pest populations, however, limiting our understanding of the effects of landscape on pest control. We suggest focusing future research efforts on measuring population dynamics rather than static counts to better characterise the relationship between landscape complexity and pest control services from natural enemies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

1. The occurrence of enemy-free space presents a challenge to the top-down control of agricultural pests by natural enemies, making bottom-up factors such as phytochemistry and plant distributions important considerations for successful pest management. Specialist herbivores like the cabbage aphid Brevicoryne brassicae co-opt the defence system of plants in the family Brassicaceae by sequestering glucosinolates to utilize in their own defence. The wild mustard Brassica nigra, an alternate host for cabbage aphids, contains more glucosinolates than cultivated Brassica oleracea, and these co-occur in agricultural landscapes. We examined trade-offs between aphid performance and predator impact on these two host plants to test for chemically mediated enemy-free space. 2. Glucosinolate content of broccoli B. oleracea and mustard B. nigra was measured in plant matter and in cabbage aphids feeding on each food source. Aphid development, aphid fecundity, predation and predator mortality, and field densities of aphids and their natural enemies were also tested for each food source. 3. Cabbage aphids growing on high glucosinolate plants like B. nigra contained more glucosinolates than aphids on lower glucosinolate B. oleracea. Aphids on B. nigra had shorter generation times and greater daily fecundity, while their predators (Diptera: Syrphidae) had lower feeding and higher mortality rates. Lower syrphid densities were found on B. nigra than on B. oleracea in the field. 4. Synthesis and applications. This study presents physiological and field evidence to suggest that weedy B. nigra may provide enemy-free space from an important predator. Habitat near crops should be examined for its potential to provide enemy-free space and compromise otherwise effective biological control. The issue of pest control must be considered from the bottom up as well as the top down. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the authors' counterpoint regarding the review of their paper which focuses on the research frontiers on the application of ecosystem service (ES) decision-support tools for urban perspective. Topics mentions include the application of the social-ecological system principles on other systems such as marine and forestry, the usability of remote sensing in urban areas, and the calls to simplify the tools for wider accessibility among stakeholders.

The article offers information on challenges faced by universities and institutions regarding institutional innovation in the context of environmental science, revolution and real-world problems. Topics discussed include institutions could provide training and career paths for scientists; codevelop research with external partners; and people make decisions, people shape policies, and people face consequences of environmental change.

Based on an extensive model intercomparison, we assessed trends in biodiversity and ecosystem services from historical reconstructions and future scenarios of land-use and climate change. During the 20th century, biodiversity declined globally by 2 to 11%, as estimated by a range of indicators. Provisioning ecosystem services increased several fold, and regulating services decreased moderately. Going forward, policies toward sustainability have the potential to slow biodiversity loss resulting from land-use change and the demand for provisioning services while reducing or reversing declines in regulating services. However, negative impacts on biodiversity due to climate change appear poised to increase, particularly in the higher-emissions scenarios. Our assessment identifies remaining modeling uncertainties but also robustly shows that renewed policy efforts are needed to meet the goals of the Convention on Biological Diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diversifying agricultural landscapes may mitigate biodiversity declines and improve pest management. Yet landscapes are rarely managed to suppress pests, in part because researchers seldom measure key variables related to pest outbreaks and insecticides that drive management decisions. We used a 13‐year government database to analyse landscape effects on European grapevine moth (Lobesia botrana) outbreaks and insecticides across c. 400 Spanish vineyards. At harvest, we found pest outbreaks increased four‐fold in simplified, vineyard‐dominated landscapes compared to complex landscapes in which vineyards are surrounded by semi‐natural habitats. Similarly, insecticide applications doubled in vineyard‐dominated landscapes but declined in vineyards surrounded by shrubland. Importantly, pest population stochasticity would have masked these large effects if numbers of study sites and years were reduced to typical levels in landscape pest‐control studies. Our results suggest increasing landscape complexity may mitigate pest populations and insecticide applications. Habitat conservation represents an economically and environmentally sound approach for achieving sustainable grape production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Natural habitat at the landscape scale can promote biological control of crop pests, but farmers often regard natural habitat as a cost or a lost economic opportunity. Evaluating the benefits of promoting natural habitats in economic terms should make different management alternatives easier to compare. However, it is important to understand the mechanisms underlying the connection between natural habitat and natural pest control. In this study, we link measurements of natural habitat and ground cover with abundances of multiple natural enemy groups and biological control of the olive pest Prays oleae to describe spatial patterns in biocontrol and the economic value associated. Natural habitat increased biocontrol and crop yields by an average of 186.36 €/ha. This could be attributable to the entire community of predatory natural enemies present in the olive regardless of natural habitat. One predator species of this community, Anthocoris nemoralis, whose abundance was influenced by natural habitat, was strongly associated with elevated biocontrol. We hypothesize that this predator species could be the link between natural habitat and the biological control. Our results suggest that olive growers could stand to gain from conserving natural habitat. Moreover, our evidence suggests that minimizing the use of chopped pruning remains may result in increased biocontrol by bolstering the abundance of A. nemoralis. More generally, our study indicates that diversifying olive orchards and surrounding landscapes may improve olive yields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The benefits nature provides to people, called ecosystem services, are increasingly recognized and accounted for in assessments of infrastructure development, agricultural management, conservation prioritization, and sustainable sourcing. These assessments are often limited by data, however, a gap with tremendous potential to be filled through Earth observations (EO), which produce a variety of data across spatial and temporal extents and resolutions. Despite widespread recognition of this potential, in practice few ecosystem service studies use EO. Here, we identify challenges and opportunities to using EO in ecosystem service modeling and assessment. Some challenges are technical, related to data awareness, processing, and access. These challenges require systematic investment in model platforms and data management. Other challenges are more conceptual but still systemic; they are byproducts of the structure of existing ecosystem service models and addressing them requires scientific investment in solutions and tools applicable to a wide range of models and approaches. We also highlight new ways in which EO can be leveraged for ecosystem service assessments, identifying promising new areas of research. More widespread use of EO for ecosystem service assessment will only be achieved if all of these types of challenges are addressed. This will require non-traditional funding and partnering opportunities from private and public agencies to promote data exploration, sharing, and archiving. Investing in this integration will be reflected in better and more accurate ecosystem service assessments worldwide. Graphical abstract Unlabelled Image Highlights • Limited Earth observation (EO) products are used in ecosystem service assessments. • We identify challenges and solutions to using EO products in ecosystem service models. • Technical challenges must be addressed systematically by data and model producers. • Solutions applicable across models address challenges stemming from model structure. • EO and data fusion offer opportunities to reimagine assessment of ecosystem services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Satellite-derived Ecosystem Functional Types (EFTs) are increasingly used in ecology and conservation to characterize ecosystem heterogeneity. The diversity of EFTs, also known as Ecosystem Functional Diversity (EFD), has been suggested both as a potential metric of ecosystem-level biodiversity and as a predictor for ecosystem functioning, ecosystem services, and resilience. However, the impact of key methodological choices on patterns of EFTs and EFD have not been formally assessed. Using Costa Rica as a study system, we compared EFTs and EFD, derived from MODIS and Landsat data using different methodological assumptions, at both national and local extents. Our results showed that the regional spatial patterns of EFTs and EFD derived from 250 m MODIS and 30 m Landsat are notably different. The selection of sensors for deriving EFTs and EFD is dependent on the study area, data quality, and the research objective. Given its finer spatial resolution, Landsat has greater capacity to differentiate more EFTs than MODIS, though MODIS could be a better choice in frequently cloudy areas due to its shorter revisiting time. We also found that the selection of spatial extent used to derive EFD is critical, as smaller extents (e.g., at a local rather than a national scale) can show much higher diversity. However, diversity levels derived at smaller extents appear to be nested within the diversity levels derived at larger extents. As EFTs and EFD continue to develop as a tool for ecosystem ecology, we highlight the important methodological choices to ensure that these metrics best fit research objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Managing ecosystem services in the context of global sustainability policies requires reliable monitoring mechanisms. While satellite Earth observation offers great promise to support this need, significant challenges remain in quantifying connections between ecosystem functions, ecosystem services, and human well-being benefits. Here, we provide a framework showing how Earth observation together with socioeconomic information and model-based analysis can support assessments of ecosystem service supply, demand, and benefit, and illustrate this for three services. We argue that the full potential of Earth observation is not yet realized in ecosystem service studies. To provide guidance for priority setting and to spur research in this area, we propose five priorities to advance the capabilities of Earth observation-based monitoring of ecosystem services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecologists and farmers often have contrasting perceptions about the value of natural habitat in agricultural production landscapes, which so far has been little acknowledged in ecology and conservation. Ecologists and conservationists often appreciate the contribution of natural habitat to biodiversity and potential ecosystem services such as biological pest control, whereas many farmers see habitat remnants as a waste of cropland or source of pests. While natural habitat has been shown to increase pest control in many systems, we here identify five hypotheses for when and why natural habitat can fail to support biological pest control, and illustrate each with case studies from the literature: (1) pest populations have no effective natural enemies in the region, (2) natural habitat is a greater source of pests than natural enemies, (3) crops provide more resources for natural enemies than does natural habitat, (4) natural habitat is insufficient in amount, proximity, composition, or configuration to provide large enough enemy populations needed for pest control, and (5) agricultural practices counteract enemy establishment and biocontrol provided by natural habitat. In conclusion, we show that the relative importance of natural habitat for biocontrol can vary dramatically depending on type of crop, pest, predator, land management, and landscape structure. This variation needs to be considered when designing measures aimed at enhancing biocontrol services through restoring or maintaining natural habitat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nature-based tourism has potential to sustain biodiversity and economic development, yet the degree to which biodiversity drives tourism patterns, especially relative to infrastructure, is poorly understood. Here, we examine relationships between different types of biodiversity and different types of tourism in Costa Rica to address three questions. First, what is the contribution of species richness in explaining patterns of tourism in protected areas and country-wide in Costa Rica? Second, how similar are the patterns for birdwatching tourism compared to those of overall tourism? Third, where in the country is biodiversity contributing more than other factors to birdwatching tourism and to overall tourism? We integrated environmental data and species occurrence records to build species distribution models for 66 species of amphibians, reptiles, and mammals, and for 699 bird species. We used built infrastructure variables (hotel density and distance to roads), protected area size, distance to protected areas, and distance to water as covariates to evaluate the relative importance of biodiversity in predicting birdwatching tourism (via eBird checklists) and overall tourism (via Flickr photographs) within Costa Rica. We found that while the role of infrastructure is larger than any other variable, it alone is not sufficient to explain birdwatching and tourism patterns. Including biodiversity adds predictive power and alters spatial patterns of predicted tourism. Our results suggest that investments in infrastructure must be paired with successful biodiversity conservation for tourism to generate the economic revenue that countries like Costa Rica derive from it, now and into the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We review models of natural pest control assessing usability across agroecosystems. • Ecological complexity and context sensitivity impede correlation-based predictions. • A trade-off of generality with realism hinders mechanistic modeling across systems. • Similarities in causal relationships can inform contextually bound generalizations. • This framework will allow knowledge synthesis and transfer in less studied regions. Natural control of invertebrate crop pests has the potential to complement or replace conventional insecticide-based practices, but its mainstream application is hampered by predictive unreliability across agroecosystems. Inconsistent responses of natural pest control to changes in landscape characteristics have been attributed to ecological complexity and system-specific conditions. Here, we review agroecological models and their potential to provide predictions of natural pest control across agricultural landscapes. Existing models have used a multitude of techniques to represent specific crop-pest-enemy systems at various spatiotemporal scales, but less wealthy regions of the world are underrepresented. A realistic representation of natural pest control across systems appears to be hindered by a practical trade-off between generality and realism. Nonetheless, observations of context-sensitive, trait-mediated responses of natural pest control to land-use gradients indicate the potential of ecological models that explicitly represent the underlying mechanisms. We conclude that modelling natural pest control across agroecosystems should exploit existing mechanistic techniques towards a framework of contextually bound generalizations. Observed similarities in causal relationships can inform the functional grouping of diverse agroecosystems worldwide and the development of the respective models based on general, but context-sensitive, ecological mechanisms. The combined use of qualitative and quantitative techniques should allow the flexible integration of empirical evidence and ecological theory for robust predictions of natural pest control across a wide range of agroecological contexts and levels of knowledge availability. We highlight challenges and promising directions towards developing such a general modelling framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global social and economic changes, alongside climate change, are affecting the operating environment for agriculture, leading to efforts to increase production and yields, typically through the use of agrochemicals like pesticides and fertilizers, expanded irrigation, and changes in seed varieties. Intensification, alongside the expansion of agriculture into new areas, has increased harvest, but has also had numerous well-known impacts on the environment, ultimately resulting in a loss of resilience and lack of sustainability in agro-ecosystems. Combined with features of agricultural systems such as the differential movement of ecosystem services, and interactions among ecosystem services driven in part by management choices, such intensification has disrupted key feedbacks in agricultural systems. These changes have tended to perpetuate the management choices that have led to efficient, productive agriculture, often at the expense of nature and the provision of important nonfood ecosystem services. Here, we explore how agriculture functions as a complex adaptive system. We assess how recent changes have interacted with agro-ecosystem features to result in a loss of resilience, and suggest key research directions to help harmonize production and ecosystem function, drawing primarily on Canadian examples. Enhancing the resilience of agricultural landscapes is critical to the long-term sustainability of agriculture in a rapidly changing world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent synthesis studies have shown inconsistent responses of crop pests to landscape composition, imposing a fundamental limit to our capacity to design sustainable crop protection strategies to reduce yield losses caused by insect pests. Using a global dataset composed of 5242 observations encompassing 48 agricultural pest species and 26 crop species, we tested the role of pest traits (exotic status, host breadth and habitat breadth) and environmental context (crop type, range in landscape gradient and climate) in modifying the pest response to increasing semi-natural habitats in the surrounding landscape. For natives, increasing semi-natural habitats decreased the abundance of pests that exploit only crop habitats or that are highly polyphagous. On the contrary, populations of exotic pests increased with an increasing cover of semi-natural habitats. These effects might be related to changes in host plants and other resources across the landscapes and/or to modified top-down control by natural enemies. The range of the landscape gradient explored and climate did not affect pests, while crop type modified the response of pests to landscape composition. Although species traits and environmental context helped in explaining some of the variability in pest response to landscape composition, the observed large interspecific differences suggest that a portfolio of strategies must be considered and implemented for the effective control of rapidly changing communities of crop pests in agroecosystems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Palm oil, the most widely used vegetable oil, is one of the largest drivers of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from global land use and land cover change. Here, we provide fine-resolution (100 m × 100 m) estimates of GHG footprints of current (2015) and potential future scenarios (2030) of crude palm oil (CPO) production in Indonesia. The current estimated average GHG footprint excluding production on Java is 5.7 t CO 2 eq t−1 CPO; ranging from 0.7 t CO 2 eq t−1 CPO in Hulu Sungai Tengah, Kalimantan to 26.0 t CO 2 eq t−1 CPO in Pontianak, Kalimantan, and these vast differences are only discernible at fine spatial scales. The future GHG footprint of Indonesian CPO could be reduced by 42% without compromising increased output by limiting expansion to non-forest and non-peat land. Our fine-scale analysis provides a spatial screening approach to inform new oil palm concessions and sourcing decisions, before more cost-intensive patch analysis and carbon stock assessments are conducted. Unlabelled Image • CPO GHG footprint varies spatially by a factor of 35 (0.7–26.0 t CO 2 eq t−1 CPO). • Avoiding development on peat and forest reduces the GHG footprint in 2030 by 42%. • Expansion on current concessions increases the average GHG footprint by 25%. • 35% of Papua's 2030 footprint is from direct C loss from expansion on concessions. • Forest edge effects are projected to account for 19% of GHG emissions in Papua. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article informs that the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has announced that none of the 20 Aichi targets for biodiversity it set in 2010 has been reached and only six have been partially achieved. Topics include the new CBD outcome goals have focused on individual facets of nature, such as ecosystems, species, or genetic diversity; and CBD enshrined an "apex" goal focusing on a single facet of nature.

Agriculture's influence on humanity is a dichotomy of promise and peril. Research on the food‐environment dilemma has highlighted the environmental consequences of food production, yet the identification of management solutions is an ongoing challenge.We suggest "bright spots" as a promising tool to identify levers of change by finding areas that exceed expectations for goals, such as agricultural landscape multifunctionality and biodiversity.We identified bright, dark and average spots within a complex agricultural landscape and explored the associated socioeconomic patterns. We found that areas exceeding expectations for biodiversity and landscape multifunctionality were neither spatially congruent nor in conflict. It was more common for areas to underperform (dark spots) for both biodiversity and multifunctionality than over perform for both (bright spots).While dark spots for multifunctionality were alike in their ecosystem service composition, bright spots were bright in multiple, diverse ways. The socioeconomic attributes that characterize bright and darks spots included both farm characteristics as well as farming practices, suggesting that both have potential to be levers of change.Synthesis and applications. Our results suggest that while biodiversity and landscape multifunctionality show similar spatial patterns due to underlying biophysical drivers, managing for biodiversity or landscape multifunctionality alone will not implicitly achieve the other in this system. Bright spots (areas exceeding expectations) in multifunctionality were associated with many different combinations of ecosystem services, but dark spots were uniquely agricultural intensive areas devoted to maximizing crop production at the expense of all other services. From a management perspective, specific farm characteristics and farming practices may impact the potential for multifunctionality: increased mechanization, increased agricultural inputs and larger farm size and capital were associated with dark spots, while smaller farms with potentially greater space for innovation were associated with bright spots. Our results suggest that while biodiversity and landscape multifunctionality show similar spatial patterns due to underlying biophysical drivers, managing for biodiversity or landscape multifunctionality alone will not implicitly achieve the other in this system. Bright spots (areas exceeding expectations) in multifunctionality were associated with many different combinations of ecosystem services, but dark spots were uniquely agricultural intensive areas devoted to maximizing crop production at the expense of all other services. From a management perspective, specific farm characteristics and farming practices may impact the potential for multifunctionality: increased mechanization, increased agricultural inputs and larger farm size and capital were associated with dark spots, while smaller farms with potentially greater space for innovation were associated with bright spots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To support the assessments of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the IPBES Expert Group on Scenarios and Models is carrying out an intercomparison of biodiversity and ecosystem services models using harmonized scenarios (BES-SIM). The goals of BES-SIM are (1) to project the global impacts of land-use and climate change on biodiversity and ecosystem services (i.e., nature's contributions to people) over the coming decades, compared to the 20th century, using a set of common metrics at multiple scales, and (2) to identify model uncertainties and research gaps through the comparisons of projected biodiversity and ecosystem services across models. BES-SIM uses three scenarios combining specific Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs) and Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) – SSP1xRCP2.6, SSP3xRCP6.0, SSP5xRCP8.6 – to explore a wide range of land-use change and climate change futures. This paper describes the rationale for scenario selection, the process of harmonizing input data for land use, based on the second phase of the Land Use Harmonization Project (LUH2), and climate, the biodiversity and ecosystem services models used, the core simulations carried out, the harmonization of the model output metrics, and the treatment of uncertainty. The results of this collaborative modeling project will support the ongoing global assessment of IPBES, strengthen ties between IPBES and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scenarios and modeling processes, advise the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) on its development of a post-2020 strategic plans and conservation goals, and inform the development of a new generation of nature-centred scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To support the assessments of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the IPBES Expert Group on Scenarios and Models is carrying out an intercomparison of biodiversity and ecosystem services models using harmonized scenarios (BES-SIM). The goals of BES-SIM are (1) to project the global impacts of land use and climate change on biodiversity and ecosystem services (i.e. nature's contributions to people) over the coming decades, compared to the 20th century, using a set of common metrics at multiple scales, and (2) to identify model uncertainties and research gaps through the comparisons of projected biodiversity and ecosystem services across models. BES-SIM uses three scenarios combining specific Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs) and Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) to explore a wide range of land-use change and climate change futures. This paper describes the rationale for scenarios selection, the process of harmonizing input data for land use, based on the second phase of the Land Use Harmonization Project (LUH2), and climate, the biodiversity and ecosystem service models used, the core simulations carried out, the harmonization of the model output metrics, and the treatment of uncertainty. The results of this collaborative modelling project will support the ongoing global assessment of IPBES, strengthen ties between IPBES and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scenarios and modelling processes, advise the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) on its development of a post-2020 strategic plans and conservation goals, and inform the development of a new generation of nature-centred scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agricultural intensification is a leading cause of global biodiversity loss, which can reduce the provisioning of ecosystem services in managed ecosystems. Organic farming and plant diversification are farm management schemes that may mitigate potential ecological harm by increasing species richness and boosting related ecosystem services to agroecosystems. What remains unclear is the extent to which farm management schemes affect biodiversity components other than species richness, and whether impacts differ across spatial scales and landscape contexts. Using a global metadataset, we quantified the effects of organic farming and plant diversification on abundance, local diversity (communities within fields), and regional diversity (communities across fields) of arthropod pollinators, predators, herbivores, and detritivores. Both organic farming and higher in-field plant diversity enhanced arthropod abundance, particularly for rare taxa. This resulted in increased richness but decreased evenness. While these responses were stronger at local relative to regional scales, richness and abundance increased at both scales, and richness on farms embedded in complex relative to simple landscapes. Overall, both organic farming and in-field plant diversification exerted the strongest effects on pollinators and predators, suggesting these management schemes can facilitate ecosystem service providers without augmenting herbivore (pest) populations. Our results suggest that organic farming and plant diversification promote diverse arthropod metacommunities that may provide temporal and spatial stability of ecosystem service provisioning. Conserving diverse plant and arthropod communities in farming systems therefore requires sustainable practices that operate both within fields and across landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The central challenge of the 21st century is to develop economic, social, and governance systems capable of ending poverty and achieving sustainable levels of population and consumption while securing the life-support systems underpinning current and future human well-being. Essential to meeting this challenge is the incorporation of natural capital and the ecosystem services it provides into decision-making. We explore progress and crucial gaps at this frontier, reflecting upon the 10 y since the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. We focus on three key dimensions of progress and ongoing challenges: raising awareness of the interdependence of ecosystems and human well-being, advancing the fundamental interdisciplinary science of ecosystem services, and implementing this science in decisions to restore natural capital and use it sustainably. Awareness of human dependence on nature is at an all-time high, the science of ecosystem services is rapidly advancing, and talk of natural capital is now common from governments to corporate boardrooms. However, successful implementation is still in early stages. We explore why ecosystem service information has yet to fundamentally change decision-making and suggest a path forward that emphasizes: (i) developing solid evidence linking decisions to impacts on natural capital and ecosystem services, and then to human well-being; (ii) working closely with leaders in government, business, and civil society to develop the knowledge, tools, and practices necessary to integrate natural capital and ecosystem services into everyday decision-making; and (iii) reforming institutions to change policy and practices to better align private short-term goals with societal long-term goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]