Collaboratrici e collaboratori

Multifunctional landscapes are assumed to not only provide benefits for farmers (economic) and society (cultural), but also safeguard biodiversity and natural resources in order to secure long term ecosystem service provision. Current research emphasised that biodiversity-rich landscapes have a positive effect on agricultural yields, while monocultures and landscape homogenisation reduce long-term benefits. Yet, biodiversity losses are omnipresent. Monitoring data showed e.g. a decline of bird populations in European farmland; corn bunting, lapwing, and skylark birds declined by 50% over the last 30 years. Landscape composition was mentioned as one key factor. Although managing landscapes to satisfy these mentioned demands requires an understanding of landscapes and their processes under specific agricultural managements, current research approaches are focusing either on agricultural production at the field level or on biodiversity assessment at the landscape level. Exploring the linkage is even more important considering potential changes due to long term climate change and short term socio-economic changes. Thus, our aim was to integrate available biodiversity and bio-economic farm models, apply these at the landscape level and study the interaction between farming practices and green infrastructure with regard to biodiversity to safeguard essential landscape elements and facilitate future decision-making. The inputs from local stakeholders played an important role in the modelling process to validate our approach. Our research took place in Schwarzbubenland, in north-western Switzerland. The region is known for traditional fruit orchards in addition to a mosaic of grasslands and arable land. Within the 50 km2 case study, we gathered individual farm and agriculture management information, documented biophysical data (soil, climate, etc.), mapped habitats and landscapes structures, and collected bird and butterfly data on transect walks. For economic analysis, the MODAM model, a multi-objective decision support tool for agroecosystem management, was used to simulate land-use changes under farmers´ rational behaviour considering a set of management options as well as biophysical conditions. We clustered the 78 existing farms into five types using the K-means method according to farm size and production type. For an analysis of species diversity, the SALCA-Biodiversity model, which was developed on life-cycle methodologies, was applied to evaluate different farming practices and spatially simulated land-use changes. We then integrated both models and built an innovative land use change model. This model enabled us to assess the effect of land use changes under farm management options and policies, taking both ecological and economic performances into account. The study revealed biodiversity values and the reaction of essential habitats to biodiversity measures, providing information on how farms cost-effectively perform under different management settings. We concluded that the integration of ecological-economic models is a useful approach to account for the process of land use changes and resulting effects on agricultural biodiversity.