Dataset Information

Field sizes and the future of farmland biodiversity in European landscapes.

ABSTRACT: Lower diversity of plant and animal farmland species are usually reported where cropland has been aggregated into larger fields, which raises prospects of curbing declines in European farmland biodiversity and associated ecosystem services by halting trends to field size increases associated to agricultural intensification, without having to set aside arable land for conservation. Here, we consider the factors underlying trade-offs between farmer income and biodiversity as mediated by field size at local and landscape scales, and how these trade-offs may be overcome. Field sizes are still increasing, facilitated by increasing farm sizes and land consolidation. Decreases in working time and fuel expenses when fields are larger, uptake of larger machinery and subsidies favoring larger farms provide incentives to manage land in larger units, putting farmland biodiversity further at risk. Yet, field size-mediated ecological-economic trade-offs are largely ignored in policy and research. We recommend internalizing the ecological effects of changes in landscape-scale field size into land consolidation scheme design, ensuring that EU Common Agricultural Policy post-2020 rewards farmers that maintain and recreate fine-grained landscapes where these are essential for farmland biodiversity targets, and reducing economic-ecological trade-offs by stimulating agricultural research and innovation for economically efficient yet biodiversity-friendly farming in fine-grained landscapes.

SUBMITTER: Clough Y

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7816254 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Nov-Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Field sizes and the future of farmland biodiversity in European landscapes.

Clough Yann Y Kirchweger Stefan S Kantelhardt Jochen J

Conservation letters 20201005 6

Lower diversity of plant and animal farmland species are usually reported where cropland has been aggregated into larger fields, which raises prospects of curbing declines in European farmland biodiversity and associated ecosystem services by halting trends to field size increases associated to agricultural intensification, without having to set aside arable land for conservation. Here, we consider the factors underlying trade-offs between farmer income and biodiversity as mediated by field size ...[more]

PMID: 33519969

Similar Datasets

Project description:Drainage ditches, either seasonally flooded or permanent, are commonly found on intensively managed lowland farmland in the UK. They are potentially important for wetland biodiversity but, despite their ubiquity, information on their biodiversity and management in the wider countryside is scarce. We surveyed 175 ditches for their physical and chemical characteristics, spatial connectivity, plant communities and aquatic invertebrates in an area of intensively managed farmland in Oxfordshire, UK and collected information on ditch management from farmer interviews. Water depth and shade had a small impact on the diversity of plant and invertebrate communities in ditches. Increased shade over the ditch channel resulted in reduced taxonomic richness of both channel vegetation and aquatic invertebrates and channel vegetation cover was lower at shaded sites. Invertebrate taxonomic richness was higher when water was deeper. Spatial connectivity had no detectable impact on the aquatic invertebrate or plant communities found in ditches. The number of families within the orders Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera and Trichoptera (EPT), which contain many pollution-sensitive species, declined with decreasing pH of ditch water. As time since dredging increased, the number of EPT families increased in permanent ditches but decreased in temporary ditches. Whether or not a ditch was in an agri-environment scheme had little impact on the reported management regime or biodiversity value of the ditch. Measures for increasing the amount of water in ditches, by increasing the water depth or promoting retention of water in ditches, could increase the biodiversity value of ditches in agricultural land. Some temporary ditches for specialised species should be retained. Reducing the amount of shade over narrow ditches by managing adjacent hedgerows is also likely to increase the species diversity of plant and invertebrate communities within the ditch. We recommend that to preserve or enhance the biodiversity value of ditches, and improve their ecosystem service delivery, management prescriptions for hedgerows adjacent to ditches should differ from those aimed at hedgerows only.

Project description:Ecological systems are vulnerable to irreversible change when key system properties are pushed over thresholds, resulting in the loss of resilience and the precipitation of a regime shift. Perhaps the most important of such properties in human-modified landscapes is the total amount of remnant native vegetation. In a seminal study Andrén proposed the existence of a fragmentation threshold in the total amount of remnant vegetation, below which landscape-scale connectivity is eroded and local species richness and abundance become dependent on patch size. Despite the fact that species patch-area effects have been a mainstay of conservation science there has yet to be a robust empirical evaluation of this hypothesis. Here we present and test a new conceptual model describing the mechanisms and consequences of biodiversity change in fragmented landscapes, identifying the fragmentation threshold as a first step in a positive feedback mechanism that has the capacity to impair ecological resilience, and drive a regime shift in biodiversity. The model considers that local extinction risk is defined by patch size, and immigration rates by landscape vegetation cover, and that the recovery from local species losses depends upon the landscape species pool. Using a unique dataset on the distribution of non-volant small mammals across replicate landscapes in the Atlantic forest of Brazil, we found strong evidence for our model predictions--that patch-area effects are evident only at intermediate levels of total forest cover, where landscape diversity is still high and opportunities for enhancing biodiversity through local management are greatest. Furthermore, high levels of forest loss can push native biota through an extinction filter, and result in the abrupt, landscape-wide loss of forest-specialist taxa, ecological resilience and management effectiveness. The proposed model links hitherto distinct theoretical approaches within a single framework, providing a powerful tool for analysing the potential effectiveness of management interventions.

Dataset Information

Field sizes and the future of farmland biodiversity in European landscapes.

Publications

Field sizes and the future of farmland biodiversity in European landscapes.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets