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Context: Intensive land use and exploitation of natural resources are the main direct drivers of biodiversity loss. Transformative changes in land management are called for as conservation and management actions have not been sufficient to support the viability of species populations. It has been proposed that to solve the sufficiency problem one could segregate the landscape into an intensively managed part, and into so-called multiuse-conservation landscapes that aggregate set asides with managed areas for multiple uses. Objectives: We describe a scenario analysis where we evaluate the effects and cost-efficiency of transforming the boreal forest from intensively managed production landscapes progressively towards multiuse-conservation landscapes. Methods: We simulated Finnish boreal forests under various managements and optimized management to produce six scenarios to reveal the ecological, economic, climate and management regime implications of multiuse-conservation landscapes. Ecological effects explored included habitat availability and metacommunity capacity of dead wood dependent species. Results: Increasing the area of set aside and multiuse management increased the habitat availability and metacommunity capacity as well as climate benefits but caused economic losses in terms of timber revenues. Pooling the set asides and multiuse management areas together into the same landscapes reduced the economic losses, had negligible added climate benefits and produced mixed biodiversity effects: pooling decreased habitat availability but increased metacommunity capacity across all landscapes. Conclusions: Changing land management and aggregating conservation efforts can be a cost-efficient way to protect biodiversity. Our results suggest biodiversity benefits in landscapes where the set aside and multiuse is aggregated. Careful spatial planning can also alleviate the conflicts between ecological and economic values of land. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vertical farming is a rapidly expanding type of indoor controlled environment agriculture whose promises have attracted widespread praise and considerable early-stage capital in recent years. Among vertical farming's many claimed benefits, per-area productivity is frequently mentioned, proposing crop yields at least two orders of magnitude higher than outdoor field agriculture. These extremely high yields form the basis for a theory of land use change whereby yield-increasing technologies reduce or reverse the expansionary demands of lower-yielding farms, retaining or returning those areas to "wild nature". In a sensational articulation of this kind of intensification, from 2007 to 2017 many vivid proposals portrayed centrally located skyscraper farms as a key strategy for building self-sufficient cities. This skyscraper articulation of vertical farming captured the public imagination and led to substantial investment into contemporary vertical farming facilities, the majority of which are in large suburban high-ceiling single-story warehouses. This paper traces the politics of vertical farming's land-sparing narratives beginning early in the twentieth century, with a closer analysis of two contrasting historical examples: Othmar Ruthner's 1960s tower greenhouses, which closely resemble the imaginary skyscraper farms of the 2010s; and Noel Davis' 1980s PhytoFarms, which more closely resembles the well-funded warehouse vertical farms of the 2020s. This analysis suggests that, despite their high yields, the extremely high capital investments needed to build the precise controlled environments of today's vertical farms preclude the profitable production of staple crops, rendering them unlikely to fulfil their land-sparing promises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land Sparing predicts that agricultural intensification is the best way to meet productive, humanitarian and conservation goals, and the recent prominence of this strategy on conservation and agricultural agendas is notable. The basic idea is that, by producing more, agriculture intensification can spare natural habitats from further agriculture expansion. Nevertheless, some authors have suggested that intensifying and increasing productivity may actually lead to increasing expansion of agricultural lands (Jevons Paradox). We test the association between agricultural yield on farmland expansion and on deforestation between 2000 and 2015 in 122 nations along the tropics, and in the main tropical regions. To this end we used Generalized Linear Models, as well as Panel Data to verify the effects of agricultural yield and socioeconomic variables on farmland expansion and deforestation. Greater yield increases lead to higher deforestation rates in Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America and Caribbean and increasing yield average induces agriculture expansion in East Asia and Pacific, giving support to the Jevons Paradox hypothesis. On the other hand, we found a positive association between yield average and forest area change in the tropics, nevertheless, regression coefficients were very small, compared to other significant models. Therefore, Jevons Paradox seems to be more common than Land Sparing and increasing yields inducing deforestation rather than curbing it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Edges between adjacent biotopes may hinder or promote spillover of arthropods, influencing their distribution across landscapes. An understanding of spillover between natural and production areas enables management of edge effects for optimal biodiversity conservation. We assessed arthropod assemblages across vineyard-fynbos edges in the Cape Floristic Region of South Africa, where biodiversity-rich fynbos often borders vineyards. Species richness, assemblage composition, and compartmentalised beta-diversity (species turnover and nestedness) were assessed for three vegetation layers (ground level, lower vegetation, and upper vegetation) to determine bidirectional spillover. Species were also categorised according to biotope affiliation (crop-associated, fynbos-associated, or ubiquitous), based on habitat fidelity. We assessed how species richness of each biotope affiliation was influenced by environmental and management variables. Our main interest was biotope-specific variables which may enhance or impede spillover by influencing arthropods affiliated with the opposite biotope. Arthropod species richness did not differ along vineyard-fynbos transects for ground and lower vegetation layers but was lower in the upper vineyard vegetation compared to fynbos. Arthropod assemblages were distinct between biotopes for upper and lower vegetation but were similar on the soil surface and showed lower nestedness differences, indicating greater spillover by ground-level arthropods. In vineyards, no variables influenced fynbos-associated species, although herbaceous vegetation cover promoted ubiquitous arthropod species richness. Spillover between the biotopes was limited, and no drivers could be identified that promote spillover into vineyards, yet both biotopes supported diverse and distinct arthropod assemblages. Therefore, conservation of natural fynbos patches alongside sensitively managed vineyards is feasible for harmonising biodiversity conservation and viticulture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context: Grassland corridors are set aside for biodiversity conservation within the commercial timber plantation landscape of South Africa, potentially connecting high value conservation areas together. However, the impact of the production landscape on functional connectivity within these corridors has not been investigated. Objectives: We combine stacked species distribution modelling, functional connectivity analysis, species turnover calculations, and community analysis, to improve our understanding of how grassland corridors contribute to functional connectivity and biodiversity conservation within plantation landscapes. Methods: Grasshoppers, which are reliable indicators of grassland quality, were used as model organisms and sampled within grassland corridors. Remote sensing and machine learning was used to predict functional connectivity and its influence on grasshoppers. Results: Wide corridors along an elevation gradient with different aspects support different grasshopper assemblages and promote species turnover. Sensitive species occur at high elevations with a north-west facing slope in wide corridors that are functionally connected to large high-quality remnant patches. Maintenance of functional connectivity is dependent on the availability of high-quality habitat, which is shaped by prescribed burning, and has a significant effect on range restricted species. Not all high-quality habitat is functionally connected, attributed to exclusion of fire and/or invasive plants, requiring conservation intervention. Conclusions: Prescribed burning should be used to maintain functional connectivity. We recommend less frequent fires, burning every 2–3 years, guided by NDVI. Large corridors at high elevation are priority. In estates with narrow corridors and low functional connectivity, stepping-stone habitats and grassland buffers next to roads should be considered for improved functional connectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land-use intensification in agroecosystems has led to population declines in many taxonomic groups, especially farmland birds. Two contrasting conservation strategies have therefore been proposed: land sharing (the integration of biodiversity conservation in low-intensity agriculture) and land sparing (the spatial separation of high-yielding agriculture and areas for conservation). Despite the large academic interest in this field, only few studies have taken into account stakeholders’ perspectives of these strategies when assessing conservation implications. We modeled the effects of three land-use scenarios (a business-as-usual, a land-sharing, and a land-sparing scenario), developed together with regional stakeholders, on the habitat area of 13 regionally endangered bird species in the Middle Mulde River Basin (Saxony, Germany). We used random forest models based on environmental variables relating to land-use/cover, climate and soil characteristics, occurrence of linear landscape elements (hedges and tree rows), and distance to water and major roads. Responses to the three land-use scenarios were species-specific, but extensively managed permanent grassland and the density of forest edges were positively associated with the occurrence of most bird species. Overall, the land-sharing scenario provided the largest breeding habitat area: 76% of the species had a significant (p < 0.05) increase in breeding habitat, and none showed a significant decrease. Our findings confirm that balancing the different, often contrasting habitat requirements of multiple species is a key challenge in conservation and landscape management. Land sharing, which local stakeholders identified as the most desirable scenario, is a promising strategy for the conservation of endangered birds in agricultural landscapes like our study region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across the European Union, the receipt of agricultural subsidisation is increasingly being predicated on the delivery of public goods. In the English context, in particular, these changes can be seen in the redirection of money to the new Environmental Land Management scheme. Such shifts reflect the changed expectations that society is placing on agriculture—from something that provides one good (food) to something that supplies many (food, access to green spaces, healthy rural environment, flood resilience, reduced greenhouse gas emissions). Whilst the reasons behind the changes are well documented, understanding how these shifts are being experienced by the managers expected to deliver on these new expectations is less well understood. Bourdieu's social theory and the good farmer concept are used to attend to this blind spot, and to provide timely insight as the country progresses along its public goods subsidy transition. Evidence from 65 interviews with 40 different interviewees (25 of whom gave a repeat interview) show a general willingness towards the transition to a public goods model of subsidisation. The optimisation and efficiency that has historically characterised the productivist identity is colouring the way managers are approaching the delivery of public goods. Ideas of land sparing and land sharing (and the farming preference for the former over the latter) are used to help understand these new social and attitudinal realities. The policy implications of these findings are discussed, with reference to the new scheme's 'priority themes'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land-use change has led to substantial range contractions for many species. Such contractions are particularly acute for wide-ranging large carnivores in Asia's high altitude areas, which are marked by high spatiotemporal variability in resources. Current conservation planning for human-dominated landscapes often takes one of two main approaches: a "coexistence" (land sharing) approach or a "separation" (land sparing) approach. In this study, we evaluated the effects of land-use management on a guild of large carnivores in a montane ecosystem located in northeastern Iran. We used interview surveys to collect data on Persian leopard Panthera pardus saxicolor and grey wolf Canis lupus and modeled the areas occupied by these species in a Bayesian framework. After accounting for imperfect detection, we found that wolves had a higher probability of occupying the study area than leopards (82%; 95% CI 73–90% vs. 63%; 95% CI 53–73%). Importantly, each predator showed contrasting response to land-use management. National Parks (i.e. human-free areas) had a positive association with leopard occupancy (αNational Park = 2.56, 95% CI 0.22–5.77), in contrast to wolves, which displayed a negative association with National Parks (αNational Park = − 1.62, 95% CI − 2.29 to 0.31). An opposite pattern was observed for human-dominated areas (i.e. Protected Areas and Communal Lands), where occupancy was higher for wolves but lower for leopards. Our study suggests that to protect these large carnivores, a combination of land sharing and land sparing approaches is desirable within Iran montane landscapes. Any recovery program for big cats in Iranian mountains, and likely similar mountainous landscapes in west Asia, should take into account other sympatric carnivores and how they can affect adjacent human communities. For example, conflict mitigation and compensation efforts are required to include the guild of large carnivores, instead of solely targeting the charismatic big cats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policies aiming at improving biodiversity often consist of costly agri-environmental schemes, i.e. subsidized grazing or mowing of semi-natural areas. However, these practices have widely been found to be insufficient to mitigate biodiversity loss. Rewilding, i.e. restoring natural processes in self-sustaining biodiverse ecosystems, has been proposed as an alternative and is hypothesized to be a more cost-efficient approach to promote biodiversity conservation. Rewilding requires the availability of large natural areas which are not allocated for farming, forestry, and infrastructure to avoid potential conflicts over the use of the area. We perform an ex-ante private cost–benefit analysis of the establishment of four large nature reserves for rewilding in Denmark. We analyse the economic effects of changing from summer grazing in nature areas in combination with cultivated fields and forestry to the establishment of nature reserves in four case areas. We consider two scenarios involving conversion of agriculture and forestry areas into natural areas in combination with either extensive year-round cattle grazing or rewilding with wild large herbivores. In two case areas, it appears possible to establish large nature areas without incurring extra costs. Additionally, rewilding further reduces costs compared to year-round cattle grazing. Two opposing effects were dominant: increased economic rent occurred from the shift from summer grazing to year-round grazing or rewilding, while cessation of agriculture and forestry caused opportunity costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global trend toward increased agricultural production puts pressure on undeveloped areas, raising the question of how to optimally allocate land. Land-use change has recently been linked to a number of human health outcomes, but these are not routinely considered in land-use decision making. We review examples of planners' currently used strategies to evaluate land use and present a conceptual model of optimal land use that incorporates health outcomes. We then present a framework for evaluating the health outcomes of land-use scenarios that can be used by decision makers in an integrated approach to land-use planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context: It remains unclear how agricultural landscapes can best serve multiple purposes such as simultaneously maintaining agricultural productivity and conserving biodiversity.Objectives: Our objective was to assess how important components of biodiversity changed with different land covers, and to uncover whether particular landscapes could simultaneously deliver high agricultural productivity and biodiversity conservation.Methods: In agriculture-forest mosaics of Southern Ethiopia, we assessed tree and bird biodiversity using detrended correspondence analyses and binomial generalized linear mixed effects models in four zones differing in cropland, grassland, and tree cover as well as agricultural production (crop, livestock feed and fuel).Results: Tree and bird communities differed along gradients of cropland, grassland, and tree cover, implying that different species benefit from different types of land management. Bird species with smaller ranges were most abundant in the agricultural zone with highest tree cover, exceeding that of even the forest zone, and demonstrating the value of complex mosaics for conservation. The agricultural zone with the highest tree cover also had the highest total productivity in terms of crop, feed, and fuel, perhaps supported in part by ecosystem services provided by invertebrate-eating birds and trees.Conclusions: Our results challenge current paradigms of agricultural intensification and biodiversity conservation in human dominated landscapes and point to the possibility of achieving both in multifunctional landscapes. Our work also highlights the importance of considering measures of agricultural productivity beyond mere crop yields when assessing the performance of multifunctional landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the agroecological approach, energy analyses applied to agriculture should provide information about the structure and functions of the agroecosystem; in other words, about the maintenance of its fund elements, which sustain the flow of ecosystem services. To this end, we have employed a methodological proposal that adds agroecological EROIs to the existing economic EROIs. This methodology is applied here for the first time at the country level, and over a long-term historical period. The Spanish agroforestry sector, which is representative of Mediterranean agroclimatic conditions, has been studied on a decadal basis from 1900 to 2008, fully spanning its process of industrialization and modernization. The results show the loss of energy efficiency brought about by the industrialization of Spanish agriculture. The economic EROIs (FEROI, EFEROI and IFEROI) fell by 42, 93 and 12%, respectively. The shift towards livestock production and the dramatic increase in industrial inputs are the causes of this decline. With regard to agroecological EROIs, NPPact EROI and Biodiversity EROI fell by 6 and 15%, respectively. This suggests that the fund elements are being degraded and alerts us to low returns to nature in the form of un-harvested biomass available to aboveground and underground wildlife. Finally, Woodening EROI increased by 48%. Sixty percentage of this increment was due to the growth of woodland in areas freed from agricultural activities. However, this change in land use was partly due to feed imports from third countries where deforestation processes may well be taking place, an effect that has not been considered in the analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The major challenges of improving food security and biodiversity conservation are intricately linked. To date, the intersection of food security and biodiversity conservation has been viewed primarily through an agricultural 'production lens'-for example, via the land sparing/sharing framework, or the concept of sustainable intensification. However, a productionist perspective has been criticized for being too narrow, and failing to consider other relevant factors, including policy, equity, and diversity. We propose an approach that conceptualizes rural landscapes as social-ecological systems embedded within intersecting multi-scalar processes. Based on such a framing, empirical research can be more clearly set in the context of system properties that may influence food security, biodiversity conservation, or both. We illustrate our approach through a description of contrasting agricultural systems within Brazil's Cerrado region. We emphasize the need for new empirical research involving systematic comparisons of social-ecological system properties in landscapes threatened by food insecurity and ecosystem degradation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The land sparing versus land sharing debate has already had a significant history and was particularly active during the last decade. Studies carried out mostly by ecologists and agronomists have clarified a number of issues related to best land use strategies in different landscapes, establishing that the best strategy depends first on the response of biodiversity to anthropogenic pressures, and can vary with the spatial scale of the analysis. We argue that the first contribution of an economist's perspective is to place the idea of social efficiency, i.e., the improvement in human welfare from limited resources, at the heart of discussions and models concerning the food/biodiversity nexus. The purpose and meaning of economic approaches, whether incorporated into biophysical analyses or based on their results, is to identify and understand the logic and behaviour of agents and their impact on land use. We highlight some significant results derived from modelling work. In particular, it is shown that the assumption of fixed production target used in many works is unrealistic. We put into perspective recent work that analysed the effects of price changes and the impact of agricultural markets on land use. We conclude on the importance of integrating the economic mechanisms that guide individual and collective behaviours, in the design of local policy mix between land sparing and land sharing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biodiversity is severely declining in intensively managed agriculture worldwide. In response, land-management strategies for biodiversity conservation on farmland are in debate, namely ecological intensification and land sparing vs. land sharing. In parallel, there is a recent food vs. energy debate stimulated by an increasing competition for land resources. Despite clear overlaps between these two debates, they were rarely connected in previous research. This paper aims to stimulate a discussion by providing a contextual link between biodiversity conservation strategies and options for future energy crop deployment. Therefore, nine conceptual land-use scenarios are developed, and then, the potential biodiversity implications are discussed based on the findings from past and ongoing research. These scenarios include the integration and segregation of both food and energy crops on lands with a range of productivity and suitability for agricultural production. We assume that the clear segregation between food crops on productive land and energy crops on marginal land is less likely to be a solution of mitigating the problems related to the biodiversity decline, especially in the European agricultural landscape context. In contrast, the integration of food and energy crop production systems at the farm to landscape scale has greater potential for ecological intensification, although conflicts with traditional nature conservation targets may arise. We conclude that broadening the perspectives of biodiversity conservation in agriculture is crucial, and the inclusion of energy crop production into the recent debates on biodiversity conservation strategies is helpful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intensive agriculture is often bad for wildlife. Does this imply that a goal to boost wildlife on agricultural land is best met through a general reduction in intensity? We argue that such an approach may not be optimal, since cost functions for provision of wildlife on agricultural land may be non-convex, due to fixed costs associated with such provision. This implies that, even when farms are identical, it may be preferable to split them into groups of high providers and low providers. We test our hypothesis in a study of the optimal management of mown grasslands in southern Sweden, where the two products are silage and successful reproduction of ground-nesting birds, and the variable controlled by the farmer is the date of the first mowing. We show that the optimal solution is likely to involve some farmers maintaining profit-maximizing practices while other-identical-farmers delay their first mowing significantly. The superiority of such split solutions may have major implications for agricultural policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Managing a landscape for its natural resources while attempting to ensure an ecologically sustainable future is a truly complex and challenging task. We present six general principles for sustainable forest landscape management derived from insights in an array of natural and commodity production ecosystems in south-eastern Australia but which are likely to have broad applicability to many forested ecosystems worldwide. These principles are: (1) Landscape management problems are typically underpinned by human-use drivers that over-commit natural resources and undermine the ecosystem services which support the replenishment of those resources. (2) Not all parts of a landscape are equal in their contribution to species persistence and ecological processes. Special steps are needed to secure the ecological integrity of these disproportionately important areas. (3) Managing connectivity is critical, but it is essential to determine what kind of connectivity is desirable, and for what species and processes. (4) Land use practices can produce spatial and temporal cumulative effects with negative impacts on biodiversity and ecological processes. (5) Land use decisions on the land sparing-land sharing spectrum are highly scale and context dependent. (6) Our understanding of landscape-scale processes is shaped by our conceptual model of the landscape. It is therefore important to check if a given mental model is appropriate for a given landscape and the species or ecological processes of concern. These six principles should not be applied uncritically. Rather, it is best to treat them as a checklist of considerations that will help guide our thinking about landscape change, so that we can orient toward more ecologically sustainable landscape management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates four decades of socio-economic and environmental change in a shifting cultivation landscape in the northern uplands of Laos. Historical changes in land cover and land use were analyzed using a chronological series of remote sensing data. Impacts of landscape change on local livelihoods were investigated in seven villages through interviews with various stakeholders. The study reveals that the complex mosaics of agriculture and forest patches observed in the study area have long constituted key assets for the resilience of local livelihood systems in the face of environmental and socio-economic risks. However, over the past 20 years, a process of segregating agricultural and forest spaces has increased the vulnerability of local land users. This process is a direct outcome of policies aimed at increasing national forest cover, eradicating shifting cultivation and fostering the emergence of more intensive and commercial agricultural practices. We argue that agriculture-forest segregation should be buffered in such a way that a diversity of livelihood opportunities and economic development pathways can be maintained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For millennia, mankind has shaped landscapes, particularly through agriculture. In Europe, the age-old interaction between humans and ecosystems strongly influenced the cultural heritage. Yet European farmland is now being abandoned, especially in remote areas. The loss of the traditional agricultural landscapes and its consequences for biodiversity and ecosystem services is generating concerns in both the scientific community and the public. Here we ask to what extent farmland abandonment can be considered as an opportunity for rewilding ecosystems. We analyze the perceptions of traditional agriculture in Europe and their influence in land management policies. We argue that, contrary to the common perception, traditional agriculture practices were not environmentally friendly and that the standards of living of rural populations were low. We suggest that current policies to maintain extensive farming landscapes underestimate the human labor needed to sustain these landscapes and the recent and future dynamics of the socio-economic drivers behind abandonment. We examine the potential benefits for ecosystems and people from rewilding. We identify species that could benefit from land abandonment and forest regeneration and the ecosystem services that could be provided such as carbon sequestration and recreation. Finally, we discuss the challenges associated with rewilding, including the need to maintain open areas, the fire risks, and the conflicts between people and wildlife. Despite these challenges, we argue that rewilding should be recognized by policy-makers as one of the possible land management options in Europe, particularly on marginal areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]