The ecosystem services and natural capital of soils are often not recognised and generally not well understood. This paper addresses this issue by drawing on scientific understanding of soil ...formation, functioning and classification systems and building on current thinking on ecosystem services to develop a framework to classify and quantify soil natural capital and ecosystem services. The framework consists of five main interconnected components: (1) soil natural capital, characterised by standard soil properties well known to soil scientists; (2) the processes behind soil natural capital formation, maintenance and degradation; (3) drivers (anthropogenic and natural) of soil processes; (4) provisioning, regulating and cultural ecosystem services; and (5) human needs fulfilled by soil ecosystem services.
Knowing how landscape structure affects the provision of ecosystem services (ES) is an important first step toward better landscape planning. Because landscape structure is often heterogenous across ...space, modelling the relationship between landscape structure and the provision of ES must account for spatial non-stationarity. This paper examines the relationship between landscape structure and the provision of ES using a hill country and steep-land case farm in New Zealand. Indicators derived from land cover and topographical data such as Largest Patch Index (LPI), Contrast Class Edge (CCE), Edge Density (ED), and Terrain slope (SLOPE) were used to examine the landscape's structure and pattern. Measures of pasture productivity, soil erosion control, and water supply were derived with InVEST tools and spatial analysis in a GIS. Multiscale Geographically Weighted Regression (MGWR) was used to evaluate the relationship between indicators of landscape structure and the provisioning of ES. Other regression models, including Ordinary Least Square (OLS) and Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR), were carried out to evaluate the performance of MGWR. Results showed that landscape patterns significantly affect the supply of all mapped ES, and this varies across the landscape, dependent on the pattern of topographical features and land cover pattern and structure. MWGR outperformed other OLS and GWR in terms of explanatory power of the ES determinants and had a better ability to deal with the presence of spatial autocorrelation. Spatially and quantitatively detailed variations of the relationship between landscape structure and the provision of ES provide a scientific basis to inform the design of sustainable multifunctional landscapes. Information derived from this analysis can be used for spatial planning of farmed landscapes to promote multiple ES which meet multiple sustainable development objectives.
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•Farm-scale analysis of spatial relationship between landscape pattern and ecosystem services•Six landscape structure indicators and three ecosystem services were used.•The relationship is heterogenous across space, from pixels to paddocks level.•MWGR outperforms OLS and GWR in explaining the ecosystem services determinants.•Results provide a scientific basis for designing sustainable agricultural landscape.
•Increasing land degradation from management is costly and needs to be valued.•All necessary data is available but scattered and needs consolidation.•Measure of human well-being requires measure of ...all the capitals.•Models that include all capitals as well as the human factor should be prioritized.
This review assesses existing data, models, and other knowledge-based methods for valuing the effects of sustainable land management including the cost of land degradation on a global scale. The overall development goal of sustainable human well-being should be to obtain social, ecologic, and economic viability, not merely growth of the market economy. Therefore new and more integrated methods to value sustainable development are needed. There is a huge amount of data and methods currently available to model and analyze land management practices. However, it is scattered and requires consolidation and reformatting to be useful. In this review we collected and evaluated databases and computer models that could be useful for analyzing and valuing land management options for sustaining natural capital and maximizing ecosystem services. The current methods and models are not well equipped to handle large scale transdisciplinary analyses and a major conclusion of this synthesis paper is that there is a need for further development of the integrated approaches, which considers all four types of capital (human, built, natural, and social), and their interaction at spatially explicit, multiple scales. This should be facilitated by adapting existing models and make them and their outcomes more accessible to stakeholders. Other shortcomings and caveats of models should be addressed by adding the ‘human factor’, for instance, in participatory decision-making and scenario testing. For integration of the models themselves, a more participatory approach to model development is also recommended, along with the possibility of adding advanced gaming interfaces to the models to allow them to be “played” by a large number of interested parties and their trade-off decisions to be accumulated and compared.
Among natural resources, soils continue to be poorly represented in ecosystem services frameworks and decision-making processes. Similarly, the supply of multiple ecosystem services from ...agro-ecosystems and trade-offs between services remains under-researched. As a consequence, it is unclear how and to what extent agriculture can deliver on environmental sustainability, whilst maintaining current levels of profitability. One of the main barriers to implementation of environmental management practices is the perception by the farming industry that environmental gains come at a cost and impact negatively on profitability. Therefore, we need to demonstrate that inclusion of all the natural resources on farm in farm system design and management offers flexibility for the farm system and insures improved sustainability and greater resilience.
In this study, an ecosystem approach was paired with a new generation farm system optimisation model and the inclusion of natural resources beyond land, especially biodiversity, to explore farm system design, and report on ecosystem services beyond food and fibre from different parts of the farm. The approach was tested on a sheep and beef farm in Waikato, New Zealand to explore the added benefits of replanting fragile parts of the farm landscape for soil and biodiversity enhancement on reduced emissions to air and water, and trade-offs between different services and farm profitability. The approach showed that it is possible to define and include ecological boundaries within which resources can be managed to deliver multiple benefits ranging from increased per hectare profitability to decreased environmental footprints. This is a feature analytical farm system frameworks will require in the future. The research also highlighted the importance of developing our understanding of the relationship between the condition and function of indigenous biodiversity fragments and adjacent pastoral ecosystems and their contribution to economic, environmental, cultural and social outcomes on and beyond the farm.
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•Use of an ecosystem approach to extend land evaluation to include biodiversity•Ecosystem services supply from all parts of the farm•Farm system optimisation within ecological boundaries•Co-benefits of increased profit as well as decreased environmental impacts•Discussion of strategy to incorporate biodiversity enhancement into farm management
Decision makers and land managers are increasingly required to manage landscapes for multiple purposes and benefits. However, despite progress in the development of frameworks linking natural capital ...to the provision of ecosystem services and human benefits there remains little guidance for how management interventions can improve ecosystem service provision. As ecosystem services cannot be directly influenced, interventions need to be directed toward natural capital stocks. We provide a framework that explicitly links natural capital stocks to ecosystem service provision and identify manageable attributes of natural capital stocks as the critical intervention point. A structured decision making process based on our framing of the ecosystem services concept can facilitate its application on the ground.
Farm planning processes have long been based on land evaluation, and although this analysis conceptually includes other biotic and abiotic factors beyond just land, they have typically focused on ...soils and land-use capability. The need to broaden this scope to more explicitly include biodiversity, ecosystem service provision, and sustainability considerations has been internationally recognised. Indigenous terrestrial and aquatic features represent a considerable asset to the farm system yet, to date, farm planning processes in New Zealand have largely failed to account for this natural capital stock and its contribution to the current or future business. Substantial knowledge gaps and lack of empirical data across many biodiversity metrics, limited institutional capacity, and lack of investment and on-going costs, are all factors contributing to the lack of integration of biodiversity considerations in farm planning processes. The net effect is the on-going depletion and degradation of indigenous biodiversity on-farm. We do, however, have an existing mechanism, in the form of 'whole farm plans', that could be utilised to integrate biodiversity natural capital and its management into farm planning and we illustrate the feasibility of this approach using a case study from the Waikato Region.
Soil organic carbon (SOC) is an important and manageable property of soils that impacts on multiple ecosystem services through its effect on soil processes such as nitrogen (N) cycling and soil ...physical properties. There is considerable interest in increasing SOC concentration in agro-ecosystems worldwide. In some agro-ecosystems, increased SOC has been found to enhance the provision of ecosystem services such as the provision of food. However, increased SOC may increase the environmental footprint of some agro-ecosystems, for example by increasing nitrous oxide emissions. Given this uncertainty, progress is needed in quantifying the impact of increased SOC concentration on agro-ecosystems. Increased SOC concentration affects both N cycling and soil physical properties (i.e., water holding capacity). Thus, the aim of this study was to quantify the contribution, both positive and negative, of increased SOC concentration on ecosystem services provided by wheat agro-ecosystems. We used the Agricultural Production Systems sIMulator (APSIM) to represent the effect of increased SOC concentration on N cycling and soil physical properties, and used model outputs as proxies for multiple ecosystem services from wheat production agro-ecosystems at seven locations around the world. Under increased SOC, we found that N cycling had a larger effect on a range of ecosystem services (food provision, filtering of N, and nitrous oxide regulation) than soil physical properties. We predicted that food provision in these agro-ecosystems could be significantly increased by increased SOC concentration when N supply is limiting. Conversely, we predicted no significant benefit to food production from increasing SOC when soil N supply (from fertiliser and soil N stocks) is not limiting. The effect of increasing SOC on N cycling also led to significantly higher nitrous oxide emissions, although the relative increase was small. We also found that N losses via deep drainage were minimally affected by increased SOC in the dryland agro-ecosystems studied, but increased in the irrigated agro-ecosystem. Therefore, we show that under increased SOC concentration, N cycling contributes both positively and negatively to ecosystem services depending on supply, while the effects on soil physical properties are negligible.
Provides a brief history of farm planning in New Zealand and assesses the degree to which biodiversity and ecosystem service provision could be advanced within current farm plan approaches. ...Highlights the case for shifting the way indigenous biodiversity is considered and managed in agroecosystems in NZ by placing current approaches in the context of New Zealand's biodiversity conservation challenges. Illustrates how farm planning, embedded within an ecosystem approach can integrate biodiversity assets into on-farm decision-making, and quantify the wider benefits of increasing indigenous biodiversity on-farm. Looks at the important next steps needed to operationalise this approach to provide greater potential to achieve real gains for both the management of biodiversity and the farm business. Source: National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, licensed by the Department of Internal Affairs for re-use under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 New Zealand Licence.
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•Ecosystem-based management (EBM) was integrated with geodesign framework.•Collaboration with the farmers was carried out to obtain farm information and co-design the ...landscapes.•Multifunctional farmed landscapes (MFC) can provide a wide range of ES and meet multiple demands.•Increasing landscape diversity and complexity is a key to achieving more sustainable MFC.•The integration of EBM and geodesign is an effective approach for sustainable MFC planning.
An ecosystem-based management approach (EBM) is suggested as one solution to help to tackle environmental challenges facing worldwide farming systems whilst ensuring socio-economic demands are met. Despite its usefulness, the application of this approach at the farm-scale presents several implementation problems, including the difficulty of (a) incorporating the concept of ecosystem services (ES) into agricultural land use decision-making and (b) involving the farmer in the planning process. This study aims to propose a solution to overcome these challenges by utilising a geodesign framework and EBM approach to plan and design a sustainable multifunctional agricultural landscape at the farm scale. We demonstrate how the proposed approach can be applied to plan and design multifunctional agricultural landscapes that offer improved sustainability, using a New Zealand hill country farm as a case study. A geodesign framework is employed to generate future land use and management scenarios for the study area, visualize changes, and assess the impacts of future land use on landscape multifunctionality and the provision of associated ES and economic outcomes. In this framework, collaboration with the farmer was carried out to obtain farm information and co-design the farmed landscapes. The results from our study demonstrate that farmed landscapes where multiple land use/ land cover types co-exist can provide a wide range of ES and therefore, meet both economic and environmental demands. The assessment of impacts for different land use change scenarios demonstrates that land use change towards increasing landscape diversity and complexity is a key to achieving more sustainable multifunctional farmed landscapes. The integration of EBM and geodesign, is a transdisciplinary approach that can help farmers target land use and management decisions by considering the major ES that are, and could be, provided by the landscapes in which these farm systems are situated, therefore maximising the potential for beneficial outcomes.
•Multi-tier riparian margin plantings provide many benefits on and off-farm.•Fenced only riparian margins also deliver benefits, but less than planted margins.•Riparian margins are not a panacea but ...do contribute to multifunctional landscapes.•Riparian margin plantings are an important ecological infrastructure investment.•The costs associated with margin plantings should be considered in this context.
The planting of riparian margins is a policy option for pastoral farmers in response to land use induced environmental issues such as declining water quality, stream bank erosion, and loss of aquatic and terrestrial habitat. We elicited the views and experiences as to pros and cons of planting riparian margins from two sets of dairy farmers from Taranaki, New Zealand: those who are or have planted riparian margins, and those who have not yet done so. Those farmers who have planted riparian margins identified 21 positive aspects of riparian margin plantings and 11 negative aspects of riparian margin plantings. Perceived benefits identified by this group include water quality, increased biodiversity, the provision of cultural ecosystem services, immediate direct benefits to farm management and the farm system, and in some instances increased productivity on-farm. In contrast, those farmers that had fenced but not planted their riparian margins did not consider that riparian margin plantings could add further benefits to that which could be achieved by excluding stock from waterways, and associated only negative perceptions with riparian margin plantings. Planting riparian margins is not cost neutral and will not deliver anticipated environmental benefits in every situation. However, we argue that riparian margin plantings are an important ecological infrastructure investment that needs to be captured within a wider policy framework, the benefits of which extend beyond the mitigation of a single negative externality generated by land use practices, such as nutrient loss, and contribute to a multifunctional landscape.
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