Abstract
It is increasingly recognized in science and policy that landscapes need to be managed for multifunctionality. Multi-objective land-use allocation and agent-based modelling are two potent tools to explore the potential of landscapes to provide multiple ecosystem services. However, in the case of the former, the real-world feasibility of the biophysically optimal land-use configurations remains unclear. Meanwhile, agent-based models are not well-suited to recognize the biophysical potential of landscapes to provide multiple ecosystem services. In this paper, we propose an approach to align multi-objective optimization with agent-based modelling in order to investigate the economic, institutional and social feasibility of biophysically optimal landscapes. It especially allows to contrast biophysically optimized land-use patterns with the option space circumscribed by relevant policy frameworks. We argue that a structured comparison of biophysical optimization with an exploration of the parameter space of an agent-based model can be used to identify the real-world feasibility and the barriers to reaching multifunctional landscapes. We demonstrate the applicability of our approach by using it on a virtual landscape, which allows us to detect the importance of various economic, institutional and behavioural factors that facilitate or hamper moving the social–ecological system towards its biophysical potential. Particularly, we demonstrate the essential role of tailored policy instruments. Our approach can be useful in informing land-use policy with respect to its effectiveness and efficiency in achieving multifunctional landscapes.
Highlights
Land-use policies put strong emphasis on biomass production
In contrast to other studies, which focus on selected issues related to the challenge at hand, we demonstrate the usefulness and policy relevance of combining biophysical optimization, agent-based modeling and an explicit consideration of governance arrangements
Lower HV were achieved by the two Agent-based models (ABM) variants in which only one (ABM_sat_het_base) or two (ABM_sat_het_agg) payment instruments were included
Summary
Land-use policies put strong emphasis on biomass production (food, feed, fiber). Given increasing landscape degradation in Europe and elsewhere (IPBES, 2018a,b), the concept of multifunctional landscapes has recently gained popularity (O’Farrell and Anderson, 2010), stressing that a landscape can be managed to provide multiple ecosystem services. Any landscape’s capacity to provide ecosystem services is limited by its biophysical, geomorphological and climatic characteristics. Different ecosystem services “compete” for scarce underlying resources such as water, space or nutrients. Management of multifunctional landscapes involves trade-offs between multiple ecosystem services (Cord et al, 2017). An important question is : how much can a landscape provide in terms of different ecosystem services?
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