Abstract
Strategies to stop the loss of biodiversity in agriculture areas will be more successful if farmers have the means to understand changes in biodiversity on their farms and to assess the effectiveness of biodiversity promoting measures. There are several methods to assess on-farm biodiversity but it may be difficult to select the most appropriate method for a farmer’s individual circumstances. This study aims to evaluate the usability and usefulness of four biodiversity assessment methods that are available to farmers in Switzerland. All four methods were applied to five case study farms, which were ranked according to the results. None of the methods were able to provide an exact statement on the current biodiversity status of the farms, but each method could provide an indication, or approximation, of one or more aspects of biodiversity. However, the results also showed that it is possible to generate different statements on the state of biodiversity on the same farms by using different biodiversity assessment methods. All methods showed strengths and weaknesses so, when choosing a method, the purpose of the biodiversity assessment should be kept in the foreground and the limitations of the chosen methods should be considered when interpreting the outcomes.
Highlights
There is little dispute that agriculture is one of the main causes of global biodiversity loss [1] and that agricultural induced biodiversity decline is accelerated by intensification and expansion of agricultural land use [2,3]
To assess farmland biodiversity at farm level, four different methods were compared: (1) the credit point system (CPS) [31], which is a scoring system integrating various measures to promote biodiversity; (2) The Sustainability Monitoring and Assessment Routine (SMART), which is a comprehensive sustainability assessment tool that covers biodiversity as one thematic area [34]; (3) the Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) method for farmland biodiversity [32], in which species diversity on landscape scale is assessed as a potential loss due to land use intensity and deficiency of landscape structural elements; and (4) a traditional method of species monitoring in which numbers of individuals are determined and classified [31]
The SMART method provides an overall score for the thematic area of biodiversity, which is expressed as a percentage of the goal achievement
Summary
There is little dispute that agriculture is one of the main causes of global biodiversity loss [1] and that agricultural induced biodiversity decline is accelerated by intensification and expansion of agricultural land use [2,3]. Several of the factors that can be considered as intensification, such as increased drainage, irrigation, grazing intensity [4], and the homogenization of landscapes, lead to the loss of habitat elements. Other intensification factors, such as the increased use of fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides, lead directly or indirectly to the death of organisms and their subsequent disappearance from the landscape [5]. Gallai et al [9] estimated the economic value of the ecosystem service: “pollination” alone at around 153 billion euros, which corresponds to almost 10% of global agricultural production
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