Quantitative assessment of agricultural landscape heterogeneity

Abstract

Abstract The biodiversity of agricultural landscapes is strongly dependent on extensive traditional management practices and the proportion of natural and semi-natural habitats within the landscape. Within Europe, contemporary agricultural management practices, as well as nature conservation regimes are often oriented toward establishing suitable preconditions for maintaining biodiversity; this requires operational methods to assess and monitor the effects of policy measures on landscape heterogeneity. In this article a method for evaluating landscape heterogeneity of agricultural landscapes is proposed, which measures two main components: (1) land cover heterogeneity and (2) landscape features’ heterogeneity. The first can be defined as a function of compositional (number of land cover categories) and configurational (distribution of land cover categories) heterogeneity, whereas the latter is the result of landscape features diversity (the number of different types of landscape features) and landscape features count (the overall number of landscape features). Considering the proposed index, the heterogeneity of agricultural landscapes is ranked into three classes. The proposed land use and landscape features inventory, combined with the landscape heterogeneity evaluation index, could serve as a basis for the development of landscape management practices, which aim to fulfill objectives of several EU policies (e.g. Common Agricultural Policy, Natura 2000). Nevertheless, spatial context, as well as nature protection and agricultural objectives need to be considered when applying the proposed index in management practice.