Changes In Agricultural Landscapes Research Articles

Agricultural production systems modelling and software: Current status and future prospects

During the past decade, the application of agricultural production systems modelling has rapidly expanded while there has been less emphasis on model improvement. Cropping systems modelling has become agricultural modelling, incorporating new capabilities enabling analyses in the domains of greenhouse gas emissions, soil carbon changes, ecosystem services, environmental performance, food security, pests and disease losses, livestock and pasture production, and climate change mitigation and adaptation. New science has been added to the models to support this broadening application domain, and new consortia of modellers have been formed that span the multiple disciplines.There has not, however, been a significant and sustained focus on software platforms to increase efficiency in agricultural production systems research in the interaction between the software industry and the agricultural modelling community. This paper describes the changing agricultural modelling landscape since 2002, largely from a software perspective, and makes a case for a focussed effort on the software implementations of the major models.

Plant diversity in a changing agricultural landscape mosaic in Southern Transylvania (Romania)

Traditional agricultural landscapes represent mosaics of land use covers that often support high species diversity. Many Eastern European countries contain large areas of High Nature Value (HNV) farmland. However, these landscapes are likely to change under current EU regulations and global market pressure, with potentially negative consequences for biodiversity. The conservation value of Romania’s grasslands is widely recognized, but the potential conservation value of other parts of the landscape mosaic has not been assessed to date. For this reason, we sought to assess patterns of plant diversity across the entire landscape mosaic. We sampled vascular plants at 139 sites (comprising 8 plots of 1m2/ha) in forest (n=23), grassland (n=57) and within the arable mosaic (n=59). To examine potential differences in species richness and composition between these land cover types, we used analysis of variance and detrended correspondence analysis. We also modeled total species richness, richness of HNV indicator plants and richness of arable weeds in response to variables representing topography as well as structural and configurational heterogeneity. Species composition differed strongly between grassland, the arable mosaic and forests. Richness was highest in grasslands, but surprisingly, the arable mosaic and grassland contributed similarly to the cumulative number of recorded species. Models of species richness revealed a wide range of responses of plant groups to topographical conditions and to structural and configurational heterogeneity, which often differed between land use types. Plants were affected by conditions measured at both local (1ha) and landscape (50ha) scales. Noting the substantial, and hitherto under-recognised, contribution of the agricultural mosaic to regional-scale plant diversity, we recommend consideration of the entire landscape mosaic in future conservation schemes.

Western Faculty Profile: Dr. Gabor Sass

Dr. Gabor Sass is a part-time Assistant Professor in the Departments of Geography and Biology, and the Centre for Environment and Sustainability. He is also the founder of Sassafras Consulting, an organization that works to characterize and analyze environmental change in both the spatial and temporal dimensions by using a combination of ground, satellite, and airborne based monitoring techniques and hydrological and biogeochemical principles to infer the dominant controls behind environmental change. He has been involved in multiple projects investigating hydrological, ecological and biogeochemical change in boreal, agricultural, and urban landscapes during a 15-year career.

Community sustainability and agricultural landscape change: insights into the durability and vulnerability of the productivist regime

Food is produced in material places: distinct combinations of landform, soil, climate, hydrology and biota. However, agricultural landscapes are more than material, they are also social. Biophysical materials interact with phenomena including communities of place, and the wider economic, political and social context, to produce particular practices and arrangements of food production. The sociologically informed concept of place-making has recently been introduced to sustainability science, with the suggestion that it can assist in identifying practical pathways towards more sustainable landscapes, through offering insight into this variety of relations between the physical and the social. Here, we apply this perspective to a case study of an Australian rural community of place that is grappling with questions surrounding the future of its farm land. We have used “community sustainability” as a conceptual entry point for exploring how landscape development trajectories result from discursive place-frames that draw on different sets of place-making relations. In this case, the relations that reproduce a broadly “productivist” trajectory in landscape change are strong, but under some pressure, most evident in community perceptions of the relative unattractiveness of traditional farming livelihoods to a younger generation. However, place-making relations that might lead in alternative directions are weak. Incremental change towards a more diverse agricultural landscape appears possible if different economic and discursive relations can be drawn on to create a different place-frame that offers an equivalent promise for maintaining community in place.

Time-lagged responses of indicator taxa to temporal landscape changes in agricultural landscapes

Biological indicator methods represent one of the most effective and widely used strategies for understanding the influences of environmental degradation on biodiversity in various landscapes. Researchers and land managers generally assume that the present distributions of biological indicator species are influenced by the current environment. However, recent studies have suggested the importance of past environments to species distributions (i.e., a time lag between changes in species distribution and habitat alterations). Therefore, it is necessary to understand the effects of past environments on the distributions of indicator species.We conducted a survey on the Tokachi Plain in Hokkaido, Japan. We targeted two taxa that have been widely used as indicator species (carabid beetles and bats) and investigated whether past landscape environments influenced their present distributions. We showed that past landscape environments (5 decades prior to the present) influenced the distributions of some ecological trait groups in each taxon (large body size for carabid beetles and a 25kHz peak echolocation frequency for bats) and that these effects varied among groups. Our results suggest the need to consider the dynamics of land-use changes and the effects of past environments on the distributions of indicator taxa, otherwise we may misunderstand the effects of environmental degradation on biodiversity.

A new method to assess farming system evolution at the landscape scale

Agriculture provides many ecosystem services such as food, fiber, clean water, and sequestration of carbon. The efficiency of such ecosystem services depends on crop composition and farmer decisions. Current knowledge on landscape changes is focused on crop allocation process at farm scale and rotations at field scale, whereas the impact of farmer decisions on the choice of crop acreages is poorly known. Therefore, we have built a method to assess the evolution of farm crop acreages in time and space and to identify factors ruling agricultural landscape changes. We use a dynamic typology, which is a multi-year classification of farmers. The seven steps of the method include three steps on farm typology, three steps on landscape changes, and then one step on change factors. We applied the method on 3,591 farms in Guadeloupe. Eight farm types were distinguished according to crop acreages. Our results show evidence of a diversification of 111 sugarcane growers toward production of vegetables and fruits. Spatial analysis revealed a relationship between diversification and water availability. Our method could be used to measure ecosystem services or disservices associated with changes in agricultural landscapes.

APSIM – Evolution towards a new generation of agricultural systems simulation

Agricultural systems models worldwide are increasingly being used to explore options and solutions for the food security, climate change adaptation and mitigation and carbon trading problem domains. APSIM (Agricultural Production Systems sIMulator) is one such model that continues to be applied and adapted to this challenging research agenda. From its inception twenty years ago, APSIM has evolved into a framework containing many of the key models required to explore changes in agricultural landscapes with capability ranging from simulation of gene expression through to multi-field farms and beyond.Keating et al. (2003) described many of the fundamental attributes of APSIM in detail. Much has changed in the last decade, and the APSIM community has been exploring novel scientific domains and utilising software developments in social media, web and mobile applications to provide simulation tools adapted to new demands.This paper updates the earlier work by Keating et al. (2003) and chronicles the changing external challenges and opportunities being placed on APSIM during the last decade. It also explores and discusses how APSIM has been evolving to a “next generation” framework with improved features and capabilities that allow its use in many diverse topics.

Hydropatriarchies and landesque capital: a local gender contract analysis of two smallholder irrigation systems inEastAfrica

Water is a natural resource whose control for productive purposes is often in the hands of men. Societies grounded on such unequal gender relations have been defined ‘hydropatriarchies’. Against this background, this paper presents a gender analysis of landscape investments, conceptualised as landesque capital in smallholder irrigation farming inEastAfrica. Based on the analysis of how local gender contracts are negotiated,Iargue that as processes of landesque capital formation are often explicitly gendered, attentiveness to gender dynamics is required to fully understand such practices. Moreover, as investments in landesque capital, for example, irrigation, terracing and drainage systems, have primarily been conceptualised as the result of men's systematic work, this study highlights women's contributions to the creation of landesque capital, taking smallholder irrigation as an example. Findings show that a distinction between ‘incremental’ and ‘systematic’ change (Doolittle 1984;Annals of theAssociation ofAmericanGeographers74 124–37) is central to understanding the gender dynamics of landesque capital investment, but it is not sufficient. As women's work processes are typically not systematic, possibly promoting incremental change, they contribute to the production of landesque capital by supporting and facilitating men's work. However, the work of women is, as a rule, homogenised and stereotypically rendered as reproductive and secondary, due to the underlying cultural norms that limit, control or exploit women. This conceptualisation, or rather lack of,Iargue, risks leading to a gender‐blind analysis of land use intensification processes. Building on the gendered and symbolic nature of landesque capital,Ipropose a local gender contract analysis that integrates the cultural, symbolic and physical dimensions of the local gender division of labour into agricultural work and landscape change processes.

Assessing the Quality of Agricultural Landscape Change with Multiple Dimensions

Better recognition of public perceptions is called for in developing policies that affect landscape qualities, such as agri-environmental policies. The present study focused on the evaluation of typical agricultural landscapes in Finland. We utilized and operationalized the visual landscape quality scales introduced by Tveit et al. (2006) and further explored how these scales can be applied in citizen evaluation of agricultural landscapes. From landscape data collected via an Internet survey, we analysed whether and how the attributes of agricultural landscapes were linked to their evaluation. The results demonstrated that visual concepts such as openness, naturalness, species richness and the impression of being taken care of were significantly associated with six landscape attributes, i.e., grain, cattle, bales, farmhouses, buses and disturbances. A relationship between key landscape concepts and normative evaluation was found. The normative pleasantness of the landscape also significantly associated with individual landscape attributes and the socio-demographic characteristics of the perceivers.

Detecting land use and land cover changes in Northern German agricultural landscapes to assess ecosystem service dynamics

Land use and land cover (LULC) and their changes in share and number of classes can be documented by remote sensing techniques. Information on LULC is needed for the assessment of ecosystem services and is used as input data for mapping and modelling. This information is important for decision-making and management of ecosystems and landscapes. In this study, LULC were analysed in two agricultural areas in Northern Germany by means of a pixel-based maximum likelihood classification approach of 11 Landsat TM 5 scenes between 1987 and 2011 followed by a post-classification refinement using the tool IRSeL. In this time period, grassland declined by about 50 % in both case study areas. This loss in grassland area can be associated with changes in provisioning ecosystem services as the supply of fodder and crops and the number of livestock declined from 1987 to 2007. Furthermore, an on-going increase in maize cultivation area, which is nowadays more and more used as biomass for biogas production, documents the addition of another provisioning service, i.e., biomass for energy. Combining remote sensing and research on ecosystem services supports the assessment and monitoring of ecosystem services on different temporal, spatial, and semantic scales.

Protecting bee health through integrated pest, crop, and landscape management

The unprecedented rate of annual bee die‐offs in recent years has made worldwide news. While the exact cause of these losses remains elusive, research suggests that modern agricultural production practices play an outsized role as a changing agricultural landscape puts pressure on both wild and domesticated bee species. What are some of the ways that farmers and CCAs can promote bee health?

Agricultural Landscape Sustainability under Pressure: Policy Developments and Landscape Change

Agricultural landscape sustainability is affected by combinations of agricultural developments and various forms of urbanisation. This paper analyses how public policy, including spatial planning, has responded over time and affected these two drivers which intersect in various ways depending on the regional context and local conditions. Using data from recent Danish studies, the paper shows how a large proportion of farmers perceive their farm more as a living place than as a production place. Most of these farmers are hobby farmers with an urban income who have moved from an urban setting to the rural landscape. As such, these hobby farmers represent a form of urbanisation, usually termed ‘counter-urbanisation’, and they manage the landscape differently to full-time farmers, while they also affect demand for land and thus price levels. Furthermore, long-term and recent developments in public policy as responses to changing agricultural landscapes are analysed and discussed. With a focus on counter-urbanisation, the paper discusses how agricultural policies, environmental policies and spatial planning policies are poorly integrated and—when viewed together—fail to respond to the intersecting dynamics of agricultural developments and urbanisation. The paper proposes a collaborative landscape planning approach to ensure policy integration and to promote agricultural landscape sustainability.

Analyzing the Changing Agricultural Landscape of Northern Louisiana

Analyzing the Changing Agricultural Landscape of Northern Louisiana

バンコク首都圏郊外における2011年洪水時以降の農地利用の変容

バンコク首都圏郊外における2011年洪水時以降の農地利用の変容

Ecosystem Services in Agricultural Landscapes: A Spatially Explicit Approach to Support Sustainable Soil Management

Soil degradation has been associated with a lack of adequate consideration of soil ecosystem services. We demonstrate a broadly applicable method for mapping changes in the supply of two priority soil ecosystem services to support decisions about sustainable land-use configurations. We used a landscape-scale study area of 302 km2 in northern Victoria, south-eastern Australia, which has been cleared for intensive agriculture. Indicators representing priority soil services (soil carbon sequestration and soil water storage) were quantified and mapped under both a current and a future 25-year land-use scenario (the latter including a greater diversity of land uses and increased perennial crops and irrigation). We combined diverse methods, including soil analysis using mid-infrared spectroscopy, soil biophysical modelling, and geostatistical interpolation. Our analysis suggests that the future land-use scenario would increase the landscape-level supply of both services over 25 years. Soil organic carbon content and water storage to 30 cm depth were predicted to increase by about 11% and 22%, respectively. Our service maps revealed the locations of hotspots, as well as potential trade-offs in service supply under new land-use configurations. The study highlights the need to consider diverse land uses in sustainable management of soil services in changing agricultural landscapes.

An Agent-Based Assessment of Land Use and Ecosystem Changes in Traditional Agricultural Landscape of Portugal

This paper presents an assessment of land use changes andtheir impacts on the ecosystem in the Montado, atraditional agricultural landscape of Portugal in response to globalenvironmental change. The assessment uses an agent-based model (ABM) of the adaptive decisions of farmers to simulate theinfluence on future land use patterns of socio-economic attributes such associal relationships and farmer reliance on subsidies and biophysicalconstraints. The application and development of the ABM are supported empiricallyusing three categories of input data: 1) farmer types based on a clusteranalysis of socio-economic attributes; 2) agricultural suitability based onregression analysis of historical land use maps and biophysical attributes; and3) future trends in the economic and climatic environments based on the A1fiscenario of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Model sensitivityand uncertainty analyses are carried out prior to the scenario analysis inorder to verify the absence of systematic errors in the model structure. Theresults of the scenario analysis show that the area of Montado declinessignificantly by 2050, but it remains the dominant land use in the case studyarea, indicating some resilience to change. An important policy challengearising from this assessment is how to encourage next generation of innovativefarmers to conserve this traditional landscape for social and ecologicalvalues.

Increased energy maize production reduces farmland bird diversity

AbstractProducing energy crops as an alternative to fossil fuels in order to reduce CO2 emissions will lead to large‐scale changes in agricultural landscapes. Here, we quantify the potential impact of an increase in maize fields on the diversity of farmland birds by means of high resolution (25 × 25 m) land‐use scenarios. We generated scenarios in which the area of maize production in Germany increases from presently 2.6 to 2.9, 3.6 and 4.3 million ha, corresponding to the energy crop production targets of the German Renewable Energy Act for the years 2020, 2035 and 2050. To test the mitigating potential of conservation measures, each scenario was generated in a standard version and a landscape protection version, with the latter excluding valuable farmland areas from being converted into maize fields. Nine species of farmland birds belonging to the governmental indicator scheme for sustainable land‐use in Germany were modelled for the six nation‐wide scenarios. The models predicted that only the Northern Lapwing and the Little Owl might profit from extended maize production. Despite this, the total number of breeding pairs of the indicator species was predicted to decline by about 0.4 million breeding pairs in the most intensive scenario. Protection of valuable farmland did not mitigate these negative effects in the models. Our findings suggest that increased production of energy crops conflicts with conservation of biological diversity.

Influence of Interspecific Competition and Landscape Structure on Spatial Homogenization of Avian Assemblages

Human-induced biotic homogenization resulting from landscape change and increased competition from widespread generalists or ‘winners’, is widely recognized as a global threat to biodiversity. However, it remains unclear what aspects of landscape structure influence homogenization. This paper tests the importance of interspecific competition and landscape structure, for the spatial homogeneity of avian assemblages within a fragmented agricultural landscape of eastern Australia. We used field observations of the density of 128 diurnal bird species to calculate taxonomic and functional similarity among assemblages. We then examined whether taxonomic and functional similarity varied with patch type, the extent of woodland habitat, land-use intensity, habitat subdivision, and the presence of Manorina colonies (a competitive genus of honeyeaters). We found the presence of a Manorina colony was the most significant factor positively influencing both taxonomic and functional similarity of bird assemblages. Competition from members of this widespread genus of native honeyeater, rather than landscape structure, was the main cause of both taxonomic and functional homogenization. These species have not recently expanded their range, but rather have increased in density in response to agricultural landscape change. The negative impacts of Manorina honeyeaters on assemblage similarity were most pronounced in landscapes of moderate land-use intensity. We conclude that in these human-modified landscapes, increased competition from dominant native species, or ‘winners’, can result in homogeneous avian assemblages and the loss of specialist species. These interacting processes make biotic homogenization resulting from land-use change a global threat to biodiversity in modified agro-ecosystems.

Sowing change: the making of Havana's urban agriculture

Following the dissolution of the Soviet bloc, Cuba found itself struggling to find its place in a new geopolitical context, while dealing with an unprecedented agricultural and food crisis that experts feel foreshadows the future of many countries across the globe. Sowing Change traces the evolution of the officially endorsed urban agriculture movement in the capital city of Havana, considering its political significance for the Cuban government and its import for transnational actors in the field of sustainable development. But the analysis does not stop at official understandings and representations of this movement. Rather, it brings into focus the perspectives of small-scale urban farmers--real men and women who live at the conceptual margins of the Cuban economy and struggle to balance personal needs and dreams with political ideals and government expectations, in a context where those very ideals and expectations continually shift. Sowing Change is a timely reflection on the changing agricultural, urban, and power landscapes of post-Soviet Cuba that, finally, queries common presumptions about this socialist nation and its now famous urban agriculture experience.

Adult activity and oviposition of corn rootworms, Diabrotica spp. (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae), in Miscanthus, corn and switchgrass

The ability of the biomass crop Miscanthus (Miscanthus × giganteus Greef and Deuter ex Hodkinson and Renvoize) to support larval development for both United States and European populations of the western corn rootworm, Diabrotica virgifera virgifera LeConte, suggests an avenue for interactions with corn (Zea mays L.). To provide context to survival of D. v. virgifera on Miscanthus, adult activity and oviposition of Diabrotica spp. were monitored in central Illinois in 2010–2011 in Miscanthus, corn and switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.). For D. v. virgifera, vial traps within corn plots captured 3–10 times as many adults as in Miscanthus or switchgrass, while soil samples showed females laid approximately 10 times as many eggs in corn as in the perennial grasses. Adult southern corn rootworms, Diabrotica undecimpunctata howardi Barber, were the most abundant species in 2010 and clearly preferred switchgrass as an adult habitat, with vial traps in switchgrass capturing 5–10 times as many D. u. howardi as those in corn or Miscanthus. Based on the small production areas for Miscanthus and switchgrass (and low use of both by D. v. virgifera), it seems likely that there are no current impacts of these perennial grasses on pest status of Diabrotica spp. in corn or other crops. However, adaptations by Diabrotica spp. to pest management practices suggest they could be a source for interactions between biomass and food or feed crops. Early-season soil samples did not recover eggs of D. u. howardi, but their use of switchgrass as an adult habitat suggests additional research in areas where switchgrass may be grown near peanuts, alfalfa or other hosts may be needed. Also, investigation of other candidate bioenergy crops known to support Diabrotica spp. larval development is needed to better understand the possible effects of a changing agricultural landscape on corn rootworms.