Abstract
Mountain agroecosystems deliver essential ecosystem services to society but are prone to climate change as well as socio-economic pressures, making multi-functional land systems increasingly central to sustainable mountain land use policy. Agroforestry, the combination of woody vegetation with crops and/or livestock, is expected to simultaneously increase provisioning and regulating ecosystem services, but knowledge gaps concerning trade-offs exist especially in temperate industrialized and alpine regions. Here, we quantify the aboveground carbon (C) dynamics of a hypothetical agroforestry implementation in the Austrian long-term socio-ecological research region Eisenwurzen from 2020 to 2050. We develop three land use scenarios to differentiate conventional agriculture from an immediate and a gradual agroforestry implementation, integrate data from three distinct models (Yield-SAFE, SECLAND, MIAMI), and advance the socio-ecological indicator framework Human Appropriation of Net Primary Production (HANPP) to assess trade-offs between biomass provision and carbon sequestration. Results indicate that agroforestry strongly decreases HANPP because of a reduction in biomass harvest by up to − 47% and a simultaneous increase in actual net primary production by up to 31%, with a large amount of carbon sequestered in perennial biomass by up to 3.4 t C ha-1 yr-1. This shows that a hypothetical transition to agroforestry in the Eisenwurzen relieves the agroecosystem from human-induced pressure but results in significant trade-offs between biomass provision and carbon sequestration. We thus conclude that while harvest losses inhibit large-scale implementation in intensively used agricultural regions, agroforestry constitutes a valuable addition to sustainable land use policy, in particular when affecting extensive pastures and meadows in alpine landscapes.
Highlights
Land use change is a major driver of global environmental change, degrading ecosystems and contributing to climate change (IPCC 2019; Ellis et al 2013; Turner et al 2007; Foley 2005)
To assess the effects of agroforestry on biomass harvest and carbon sequestration, we develop three distinct land use scenarios based on land use change simulated by SECLAND from 2020 to 2050
To explicitly account for carbon sequestration, we extend the framework so that aNPPeco is further decomposed into remaining annual biomass (RAB) and remaining perennial biomass (RPB), building on methodology applied in Niedertscheider et al (2017) and Guzmán et al (2018)
Summary
Land use change is a major driver of global environmental change, degrading ecosystems and contributing to climate change (IPCC 2019; Ellis et al 2013; Turner et al 2007; Foley 2005). ES trade-offs arise when the increased use of one ES, e.g., food production, results in the decreased provision of another ES, e.g., carbon sequestration (Rodríguez et al 2006). ES trade-offs, in particular in mountain ecosystems, are subject to complex interrelationships between environmental, biological, technological, and socio-economic conditions (Briner et al 2013b). 2017; Grêt-Regamey et al 2012) and present important case studies to investigate trade-offs between biomass provision and carbon sequestration involved with different agricultural practices. Land use change is thereby being the most important driver for biodiversity loss (Zimmermann 2010; Tasser and Tappeiner 2002). The concept of multi-functionality (Manning et al 2018) is becoming increasingly central in response to the urgent question how to adapt agriculture in the Alps towards climate neutrality and resilience (Lavorel et al 2017; Flury et al 2013; Huber et al 2012), taking into account the cultural and natural heritage as well as the complexity of socio-ecological interactions (Huber 2020; Alpine Convention 2019; Fleury et al 2008)
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