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Abstract
Traditional agricultural systems and their spatial context constitute socio-ecological landscapes for their long co-evolutionary history. However, these systems not only generate positive but also negative agri-environmental externalities, such as soil erosion, diffuse pollution and potential wild biodiversity degradation. In this paper, we present a methodological approach for developing and testing indicators to estimate the effects of these externalities, especially designed to be used to help guide land-use policy changes. Our results show that the indicators proposed can recognize the different environmental situations posed by the three selected study areas, in terms of potential erosion and diffuse pollution, as well as in the actual agri-environmental externalities assessment. As expected, they also respond to the changes in land use and management introduced by two scenarios, ecological and productive. Although the erosion and diffuse pollution indicators showed a linear response, the diversity indicator showed a non-linear response, which highlights the importance of the spatial structure of landscape in agri-environmental assessment. In fact, several ecological processes can be affected by landscape spatial structure, potentially giving unexpected results both in terms of indicators and of real impact of agri-environmental externalities. Therefore, some landscape structure assessment should accompany that of externalities when considering land-use policy objectives.
Highlights
The essential role of agriculture has been the provision of food
We propose the following indicators, which according to the details stated in each section below must be considered proxy indicators [24]: Soil erosion: In accordance with the Environment Agency (EEA), we propose for our framework the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) [27] as the soil erosion indicator
Potential diffuse pollution showed a different trend, with higher values for rain-fed olive groves (0.42–0.688) and lower for those irrigated (0.097–0.149). This trend was still retained when the number of agro-chemical treatments was taken into account (Figure 2d), as the dominant parameter for DPoI is downslope area potentially affected by runoff pollution, and that was always higher for rain-fed olive groves (105.03–189.06 ha) than for irrigated (21.28–36.53 ha)
Summary
In recent years, its multifunctional value to society has been assumed [1] This means that in addition to producing food, it must contribute to economic and social development. The early stages of CAP implementation in the 1960s were especially focused on two aspects: farm income through a system of fixed common price, and agricultural production efficiency through structural changes in traditional farms [4]. This productivist and economic-oriented agricultural approach had a direct impact on agriculture management. The changes could be described as a sequential evolution from a productivity phase between the 1960s to the 1980s; a competitiveness phase from the 1980s to the 1990s; and a sustainability phase from the 1990s to the present [5]
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