Agricultural Landscapes in Brandenburg, Germany: An Analysis of Characteristics and Spatial Patterns

Saskia Wolff,Silke Hüttel,Claas Nendel,Tobia Lakes

doi:10.1007/s41742-021-00328-y

Abstract

The increasing demand for agricultural commodities for food and energy purposes has led to intensified agricultural land management, along with the homogenization of landscapes, adverse biodiversity effects and robustness of landscapes regarding the provision of ecosystem services. At the same time, subsidized organic agriculture and extensive grassland use supports the provision of ecosystem services. Yet little is understood about how to evaluate a landscape’s potential to contribute to protecting and enhancing biodiversity and ecosystem services. To address this gap, we use plot-level data from the Integrated Administration and Control System (IACS) for Germany’s federal state of Brandenburg, and based on a two-step cluster analysis, we identify six types of agricultural landscapes. These clusters differ in landscape structure, diversity and measures for agricultural land management intensity. Agricultural land in Brandenburg is dominated by high shares of cropland but fragmented differently. Lands under organic management and those with a high share of maize show strong spatial autocorrelation, pointing to local clusters. Identification of different types of landscapes permits locally- and region-adapted designs of environmental and agricultural policy measures improves outcome-oriented environmental policy impact evaluation and landscape planning. Our approach allows transferability to other EU regions.

Highlights

A sustainable pathway is needed to increase agricultural production and achieve food security in the future, while simultaneously reducing the adverse environmental effects of agricultural production
This paper focuses on the methodological suitability of standard and landscape metrics as an input for cluster analysis within a hexagonal grid
Our findings reveal six different types of agricultural landscapes and their respective spatial patterns

Summary

Introduction

A sustainable pathway is needed to increase agricultural production and achieve food security in the future, while simultaneously reducing the adverse environmental effects of agricultural production. The provision of ecosystem services from agricultural land, in particular, needs to be improved, and this has been increasingly highlighted by science and enacted in policy changes (Schaller et al 2018). Marginal agricultural landscapes, characterised by unfavourable biophysical conditions such as steep slopes, shallow and/or poor soils and inferior accessibility (Harvolk et al 2014; Lüker-Jans et al 2016), can increase biodiversity and habitat richness. High Nature Value (HNV) farming systems, typical for such landscapes, are essential to biodiversity conservation and the provision of ecosystem services (Lomba et al 2020; Strohbach et al 2015). Intensive and traditional agricultural production, rests on homogenous landscapes, i.e. larger plots without landscape elements that could provide sufficient habitat structure or prevent soil erosion (Tscharntke et al 2005)

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