Abstract
It is essential for the sustainable development of farmland landscapes to balance ecosystem service trade-offs and improve resource use efficiency during crop production. Thus, an integrative and concept-centric qualitative approach was applied by combining the patch–corridor–matrix model of landscape ecology and the crop layout theory of farming systems into a theoretical framework. The thesis concludes that a farmland landscape comprises three compositions: the crop (the main crop and the service crop), the non-crop, and the non-vegetation, leading to heterogeneous composition and configuration. The main crop, typically displayed as large patches with a high distribution ratio, provides most of the provisioning services, while the service crop performs many regulation services. The non-crop and non-vegetation compositions often appear as strips that can connect different patches as corridors and support the provisioning services of crops. Non-crop compositions mainly focus on support and regulation services, while non-vegetation compositions support farming operations. Further research is needed in several respects, including the ecological impact and ecosystem service trade-offs of the composition and configuration heterogeneity, and strategies for the adoption of cropping systems and agronomic measures at the landscape scale, which are essential to the evaluation, improvement, and redesign of farmland landscapes.
Highlights
The first ‘Green Revolution’ of the mid-20th century met the food demands of millions of people worldwide while concomitantly decreasing the sustainability of farmland production due to the overuse of natural resources, the pollution of water, air, and land, the loss of biodiversity, and habitat fragmentation [1,2]
The framework itself, as well as tables and diagrams, were refined under a combination of narrative and visualization techniques in order to analyze and synthesize the existing knowledge based on the patch–corridor–matrix model and the crop layout theory by listing it in a concept matrix containing a categorization of different themes
This review proposed a comprehensive research framework for farmland landscape heterogeneity and ecosystem services
Summary
The first ‘Green Revolution’ of the mid-20th century met the food demands of millions of people worldwide while concomitantly decreasing the sustainability of farmland production due to the overuse of natural resources, the pollution of water, air, and land, the loss of biodiversity, and habitat fragmentation [1,2]. It became evident over the decades that crop production and environmental outcomes depend on the crop genetic performance and on how cropping systems are managed at the field scale, as well as interactions among ecosystems across the landscape. Food production and dietary composition can be tailored by agricultural systems with different intensification levels, which influence the agro-economic performance (in terms of yield and protein content) and the environment, in particular biodiversity [3]. A landscape is defined as a geographic entity of tens to hundreds of square kilometers with a high degree of spatial heterogeneity in an ecological context, i.e., containing mosaics of interactive ecosystems that (re)appear in a similar form [5], which emphasizes space and heterogeneity as a concept from field to region [6].
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