Changes In Agricultural Landscapes Research Articles

Stakeholder Perceptions of the Impact of Cannabis Production on the Southern Oregon Food System

The passage of Measure 91 (Oregon Legalized Marijuana Initiative, 2014) in Oregon legalized the production of cannabis for recreational sale. Since legalization, there has been a significant increase in cannabis production across the agricultural land­scape of southern Oregon. Southern Oregon’s Rogue Valley now hosts 314 licensed recreational cannabis growers who share a changing agricultural landscape with orchards, vineyards, vegetable farms, seed industries, and ranches. The Rogue Valley Food System Network (RVFSN) convened focus groups across the region to explore the per­ceived impacts of the cannabis industry on the food system. These impacts were coded and cate­gorized for use in the development of future research questions. Stakeholders identified environ­mental impacts, land use policy, agricultural best practices, water resources, financial opportunities, resource competition, and a changing cultural landscape as areas in need of further research. This research brief informs work by lawmakers, land use planners, researchers, managers, and farmers in developing research, policies, and projects to address challenges and realize opportunities associated with the changing agricultural landscape in states where cannabis production is expanding. See the press release for this article.

Dynamics of Utah's agricultural landscapes in response to urbanization: A comparison between irrigated and non-irrigated agricultural lands

In the literature on how urbanization affects agricultural landscapes, little attention has been focused on differentiating and comparing the changes in irrigated agricultural landscapes to non-irrigated agricultural landscapes. Additionally, there have been few applications of landscape metrics for understanding agricultural landscape changes. The objectives of this study were to: (1) analyze and compare the changes of both irrigated and non-irrigated agricultural lands in a rapidly growing region; (2) identify the spatial patterns and hotspots of these changes; and, (3) examine the spatial relationships between changes in agricultural landscapes and urban development. We adopted landscape metrics and gradient analysis to assess where and how agricultural landscape changes occurred in northern Utah over the past 30 years. A revised urban gradient was also developed to detect the changes of agricultural landscapes in relation to new urban development. We found that irrigated agricultural lands were more affected by urban development than non-irrigated agricultural lands, with evidence of more patches, more irregular patch shapes, and less connectivity among patches. This study contributes not only to the existing literature on the dynamics of both irrigated and non-irrigated agricultural lands in relation to urban development, but also helps fill the gap of scant applications of landscape metrics and urban gradient analysis in agricultural areas. Most importantly, such a comprehensive examination of Utah's agricultural landscapes will serve as part of the scientific foundation for informing land use policy in the region, as well as provide lessons for other places that are facing similar agricultural land conversion challenges.

Patterns of genetic differentiation in Colorado potato beetle correlate with contemporary, not historic, potato land cover.

Changing landscape heterogeneity can influence connectivity and alter genetic variation in local populations, but there can be a lag between ecological change and evolutionary responses. Temporal lag effects might be acute in agroecosystems, where land cover has changed substantially in the last two centuries. Here, we evaluate how patterns of an insect pest’s genetic differentiation are related to past and present agricultural land cover change over a 150‐year period. We quantified change in the amount of potato, Solanum tuberosum L., land cover since 1850 using county‐level agricultural census reports, obtained allele frequency data from 7,408 single‐nucleotide polymorphism loci, and compared effects of historic and contemporary landscape connectivity on genetic differentiation of Colorado potato beetle, Leptinotarsa decemlineata Say, in two agricultural landscapes in the United States. We found that potato land cover peaked in Wisconsin in the early 1900s, followed by rapid decline and spatial concentration, whereas it increased in amount and extent in the Columbia Basin of Oregon and Washington beginning in the 1960s. In both landscapes, we found small effect sizes of landscape resistance on genetic differentiation, but a 20× to 1,000× larger effect of contemporary relative to historic landscape resistances. Demographic analyses suggest population size trajectories were largely consistent among regions and therefore are not likely to have differentially impacted the observed patterns of population structure in each region. Weak landscape genetic associations might instead be related to the coarse resolution of our historical land cover data. Despite rapid changes in agricultural landscapes over the last two centuries, genetic differentiation among L. decemlineata populations appears to reflect ongoing landscape change. The historical landscape genetic framework employed in this study is broadly applicable to other agricultural pests and might reveal general responses of pests to agricultural land‐use change.

Coupled land use and ecological models reveal emergence and feedbacks in socio‐ecological systems

Understanding the dynamics of socio‐ecological systems is crucial to the development of environmentally sustainable practices. Models of social or ecological sub‐systems have greatly enhanced such understanding, but at the risk of obscuring important feedbacks and emergent effects. Integrated modelling approaches have the potential to address this shortcoming by explicitly representing linked socio‐ecological dynamics. We developed a socio‐ecological system model by coupling an existing agent‐based model of land‐use dynamics and an individual‐based model of demography and dispersal. A hypothetical case‐study was established to simulate the interaction of crops and their pollinators in a changing agricultural landscape, initialised from a spatially random distribution of natural assets. The bi‐directional coupled model predicted larger changes in crop yield and pollinator populations than a unidirectional uncoupled version. The spatial properties of the system also differed, the coupled version revealing the emergence of spatial land‐use clusters that neither supported nor required pollinators. These findings suggest that important dynamics may be missed by uncoupled modelling approaches, but that these can be captured through the combination of currently‐available, compatible model frameworks. Such model integrations are required to further fundamental understanding of socio‐ecological dynamics and thus improve management of socio‐ecological systems.

Agricultural intensification, ownership, and landscape change in the Mackenzie Basin

This article investigates the role of shifting land ownership in landscape change in New Zealand’s Mackenzie Basin. It was hypothesised that ownership patterns influence landscape transformation; and changes in ownership lead to landscape changes. Satellite imagery was used to trace recent landscape changes quantifying a change from brown extensive pastoralism to green irrigated pasture. It was concluded that the change in land ownership following land reform allowed for about half of this agricultural intensification since 2003. Aggregating intensification on new freehold land with that on current pastoral lease changes the story; Crown decisions about disposition or intensification of Crown land account for two-thirds of intensification since 2003. Hence, if current trends in the Mackenzie are to change, the Crown must examine its decision patterns. Change in some form seems likely. The results presented speak to who has the power to make change. The choice and the power reside somewhere in the space between the Commissioner of Crown Lands and the Minister of Land Information.

Assessment of the European Common Agricultural Policy and landscape changes: an example from Slovenia

The objective of this study was to determine whether and to what extent Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) measures actually succeed in preserving the diversity of agricultural landscapes. This paper assesses the effects of agricultural policy on changes in the diversity of agricultural landscapes in Slovenia. Diversity is measured by the Shannon index and the Simpson index, while the impacts were estimated using a spatial lag model. The results show that direct payments decrease landscape diversity by 2 index points per 1 000 EUR/ha, but agri-environmental payments for reducing negative impacts on the environment and those for nature conservation increase agricultural landscape diversity by 2.8 index points and 12.30 index points per 1 000 EUR/ha, respectively. Furthermore, we did not find any statistically significant effects of habitat protection payments on landscape diversity. Since direct payments are almost four times larger on average as agri-environmental payments, they preserve landscape diversity only to a limited extent.

Spatial emergy analysis of agricultural landscape change: Does fragmentation matter?

Approximately 17% of agricultural lands in the western plain of Taiwan were converted to other uses during 1971–2006 due to rapidly industrial and urban development and high population density. Previous studies on the loss of farmland due to urbanization have focused on changes in the agricultural landscape such as fragmentation and irregular shape of farmlands. The shrinkage and fragmentation of agricultural land due to urbanization not only reduces food production but also results in the decrease and degradation of other agro-ecosystem services. Emergy synthesis has been used to assess land use changes in agricultural lands. However, the relationship between farmland fragmentation and the energy flows in agricultural systems has not been studied. This paper investigates empirically how ecological energetic flows of agricultural land were affected by landscape change in the western coastal plain of Taiwan by using emergy synthesis to assess the changes in ecological energetic flows of agricultural systems in each township from 1971 to 2006. Landscape metrics were also chosen to analyze the agricultural landscape change in each township. These metrics were then correlated with the results of emergy synthesis to study the relationship between farmland fragmentation and energy flows in the agricultural system. The results show that the fragmentation of farmlands tends to intensify the inflows of goods and services from the human economic system for farmland operations. For the counties closer to metropolitan areas, maintaining larger farm sizes and preventing farmland fragmentation decreases the proportion of resource inflows from the economic system and mitigates environmental loading in agricultural systems.

Rural Districts between Urbanization and Land Abandonment: Undermining Long-Term Changes in Mediterranean Landscapes

The present study investigates changes in the rural landscapes of a Mediterranean country (Greece) over a long time period (1970–2015) encompassing economic expansions and recessions. Using a spatial distribution of 5 basic agricultural land-use classes (arable land, garden crop, vineyards, tree crop and fallow land) derived from official statistics at 6 years (1970, 1979, 1988, 1997, 2006, 2015), a quantitative analysis based on correlation and multivariate techniques was carried out to identify recent changes in the Greek agricultural landscape at prefectural level during different economic waves. Empirical results evidenced both intuitive and counter-intuitive landscape transformations, including: (i) a progressive, spatially-homogeneous reduction of cropland; (ii) a (more or less) rapid decrease in the surface of high-input crops, including arable land, horticulture and vineyards; (iii) a parallel increase in the surface of tree crops, especially olive; (iv) a spatially-heterogeneous decrease of fallow land concentrated in metropolitan and tourism districts, especially in the last decade; and, finally, (v) increasingly diversified landscapes in rural, accessible areas close to the sea coast. Based on a correlation analysis with background socioeconomic indicators, our findings reflect the multiple impacts of urbanization and land abandonment on the composition and diversity of rural landscapes. Changes in agricultural land-use were moulded by multiple drivers depending on latent transformations in rural systems and inherent conflicts with expanding urban regions. Together with market conditions and the Common Agricultural Policy subsidy regime, social contexts and the economic cycle are important when identifying long-term changes in agricultural landscapes, especially in transitional socio-ecological systems.

Urban Land Systems: An Ecosystems Perspective

We live in an urbanizing world. Since 2008, more than half of humanity lives in cities, both large and small, and old and new.[...]

Precision farming and archaeology

With a significant growth in the agricultural technology industry, a vast amount of agricultural data is now being collected on farms throughout the world. Farmers aim to utilise these technologies to regularly record and manage the variation of crops and soils within their fields, to reduce inputs, increase yields and enhance environmental sustainability. In this paper, we aim to highlight the variety of different data types and methodological processes involved in modern precision farming systems and explore how potentially interconnected these systems are with the archaeological community. At present, no research has studied the effects of archaeological sites on soils in the context of precision farming practices. Yet from modern geophysical, geochemical and remote sensing techniques, a much greater volume of soil- and crop-related mapping is being undertaken, with huge potential for all kinds of archaeological study. From heritage management to archaeological prospection, how will the future of archaeological studies fit into this changing agricultural landscape?

Paddy management for potential conservation of endangered Itasenpara bitterling via zooplankton abundance

Abstract In recent decades, the decline of biodiversity due to land-use changes in agricultural landscapes has become a central issue in ecology. Paddy management practices support animal diversity in agricultural landscapes. Using an endangered fish (the Itasenpara bitterling) inhabiting rivers connected to paddy fields as its subject, this study investigated two hypotheses: first, paddy field management affects the spatial distribution of Itasenpara bitterling in the adjacent river, and second, zooplankton and warm water supplied by paddy fields to the adjacent river are the primary factors influencing bitterling abundance. To model habitat suitability for the juvenile Itasenpara bitterling, rivers around paddy fields were examined using geographical information system tools and field survey methods in conjunction with a generalized linear model. The supply of zooplankton from paddy fields to the adjoining river positively contributed to juvenile Itasenpara bitterling abundance. This finding suggests that paddy management practices contribute to zooplankton abundance, and thus increase habitat suitability for juvenile Itasenpara bitterling.

Land use as a driver of soil fertility and biodiversity across anagricultural landscape in the Central Peruvian Andes.

Land use change and intensification in agricultural landscapes of the Andean highlands have resulted in widespread soil degradation and a loss in soil-based ecosystem services and biodiversity. This trend threatens the sustainability of farming communities in the Andes, with important implications for food security and biodiversity conservation throughout the region. Based on these challenges, we sought to understand the impact of current and future land use practices on soil fertility and biodiversity, so as to inform landscape planning and management decisions for sustainable agroecosystem management. We worked with local communities to identify and map dominant land uses in an agricultural landscape surrounding Quilcas, Peru. These land uses existed within two elevations zones (low-medium, 3200-3800m, and high elevation, 3800-4300m). They included three types of low-medium elevation forests (eucalyptus, alder, and mixed/native species), five pasture management types (permanent pasture, temporal pasture [in fallow stage], degraded pasture, high-altitude permanent pasture, and high-altitude temporal pasture [in fallow stage]) and six cropping systems (forage crops, maize/beans, and potato under four types of management). Soil fertility was evaluated in surface soils (0-20cm) with soil physicochemical parameters (e.g., pH, soil organic matter, available nutrients, texture), while soil biological properties were assessed using the abundance and diversity of soil macrofauna and ground cover vegetation. Our results indicated clear impacts of land use on soil fertility and biological communities. Altitude demonstrated thestrongest effect on soil physicochemical properties, but management systems within the low-mid elevation zone also showed important differences in soil biological communities. In general, the less-disturbed forest and pasture systems supported more diverse soil communities than the more intensively managed croplands. Degraded soils demonstrated the lowest overall soil fertility and abundance of soil macrofauna, but this may be reversible via the planting of alder forests. Our findings also indicated significant covariation between soil physicochemical parameters, soil macrofauna, and ground vegetation. This suggests that management for any one of these soil properties may yield unintended cascading effects throughout the soil subsystem. In summary, our findings suggest that shifts in land use across the landscape are likely to have important impacts on soil functioning and biodiversity.

Continuity in farming - Not just family business

Currently, many European family farms are closing down, being rented out or sold outside the family (here termed non-family farm transfer). The discontinuity of family farms is expected to lead to changes in the organisation of farm production, and consequently to changes in agricultural landscapes and agrarian development. This expectation logically follows from the assumption that family farm transfer contributes to continuity in agriculture while non-family farm transfer leads to innovation and discontinuity. Our paper challenges these assumptions. Based on interviews with young and prospective farmers in Sweden, we compare family and non-family transfer in terms of the process of transfer, the relationship between former and new farmer, and farming practices. We identify respect, support and farm legacies as critical elements in farm continuity and argue that family farm transfer and non-family farm transfer can have more in common than conventionally assumed. Indeed, both family and non-family farm transfer entail relationships and practices that lead to continuity and change in farming practices.

Evaluation of land cover changes and Black locust occurrence in agricultural landscape. Case study: Podolie and Častkovce cadastral areas, Slovakia

This study presents spatial analysis of agricultural landscape changes in the Podolie and Castkovce cadastral areas since 1949. Data for analysis was obtained from historical aerial photographs (from 1949, 1986 and 2006), detailed field mapping and Black locust ( Robinia pseudoacacia L.) monitoring. Land cover changes were assessed from the aerial photographs based on the CORINE land cover legend, environmental variables were derived from digital elevation model (DEM) and detailed geological and soil maps. Data was spatially compared and assessed by regression analysis for interpretation of Black locust occurrence. The most significant land cover changes occurred between 1949 and 1986 when agricultural areas were replaced by forest and semi-natural areas. One of the aspects of landscape changes is abandonment of agricultural landscape and occupancy this new transformed surfaces by invasive plant taxons (e. i. Robinia pseudoacacia L.). Black locust occurrence was mainly influenced by landscape management changes and subsequent land cover changes (afforestation from 1949 to 1986), especially in regions of dispersed settlements (Podolske and Korytnianske kopanice) after agricultural collectivisation. Environmental variables had little effect on Black locust expansion in these areas.

Land Tenure as a Factor Underlying Agricultural Landscape Changes in Europe: A Review

Abstract Land tenure is generally considered to be an important factor affecting farming, landscape, and rural development. This paper reviews selected case studies to identify how land tenure influences agricultural landscape changes in Europe. We identified how land tenure information was transformed into variables, grouping these variables into general thematic categories: (1) land rights variables based on references to the type of stakeholders and duration of land occupancy, (2) land structure variables describing general land structure, and (3) behavioural variables dependent on stakeholders’ attitudes, perceptions, and personal values. Each thematic category can be defined on three spatial levels: parcel or production block, stakeholder, and landscape. The results show that the tenure factor is not frequently included into landscape-change studies. When a land tenure factor was part of a given study, it either played a minor role among other drivers of landscape change or, if it influenced significant landscape changes, it had only locally specific effects. Moreover, there were studies with contradictory results and so it is difficult to generalize specific findings. Nevertheless, land tenure is frequently discussed within landscape-change research in relation to land abandonment as well as green services and their connection with the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy.

GENETIC DIVERSITY AND POPULATION STRUCTURE OF MANDAR BESAR (Porphyrio porphyrio) iNHABITING JAVA WETLANDS

<p>Despite the occurrence of a massive agricultural landscape change in Java, very few reliable studies evaluate its genetic consequence for impacted wildlife species. This study reported the genetic diversity of the Mandar besar (Porphyrio porphyrio) in the modified landscape of Java as a backdrop for such an evaluation. Aim of this study was to estimate genetic diversity and genetic structure of the species. I collected eighty-eight blood samples from five a-priory populations (Demak, Jombor, Kendal, Pagak, and Nawan) and genotyped them at ten selected microsatellite loci to estimate allelic richness (R) and expected heterozygosity (He), fixation index (FST) and genetic clusters (K). DNA was isolated using a commercial kit (Invitrogen) and amplified using touch-down polymerase-chain-reaction technique. Allele length was estimated using an automatic sequencer. Pre-analysis showed that all selected loci have null alleles frequency less than 0.2, successful amplification rate more than 80%, no significant linkage between loci and no deviation from HWE. Further analysis employing GDA and FSTAT showed that Demak population has richest genetic diversity in term of R, meanwhile Jombor was the poorest population. Analysis of population structure employing FSTAT and STRUCTURE showed that the population was likely structured into four subpopulations, as showed by FST (0.085; P<0.05) and K=4 (ln probability -1725.2+3.92). This study might reveal that genetic diversity and population structure of Mandar besar in Java were still in common level as compared to other aquatic bird species.</p><p><br /><strong>Keywords </strong>:Swamphen, bird, richness, genetic, wetlands</p>

The diet of Danish red foxes (Vulpes vulpes) in relation to a changing agricultural ecosystem. A historical perspective

Rodents and especially voles (Microtus agrestis or arvalis) make up the basic diet of foxes (Vulpes vulpes) in Denmark. As the abundance of voles and mice may have decreased as a result of modern agricultural procedures, this study investigates potential changes in the diet of Danish red foxes over the past 4 decades in relation to a changing agricultural landscape. Our study compares the stomach contents of foxes collected in Jutland during the years 2012–2014 with a similar study from 1965 to 1970. The results show that small rodents occur in the stomachs of foxes with the same frequencies today (73 %) as 40–50 years ago (67 %), while the frequency of European brown hare (Lepus europaeus) has decreased from 7 to 3 % and the frequency of roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) has increased from 3 to 18 %. The changes in the occurrence of brown hare and roe deer in the diet of foxes during the past 40 years most probably reflect changes in the populations of the two species. By comparing digitised orthophotos of six agricultural areas (3.5 × 3.5 km) of the past 1974/1975 and present landscapes, it was revealed that the total area of crop fields, small natural habitats, hedgerows and grasslands have remained almost unchanged. However, mean field size has increased by 48 %, and the mean size of small natural habitats has increased by 15 %; meaning that the length of field boundaries and the number of small natural habitats have decreased by 65 and 33 %, respectively. The distance between natural habitats in the cultivated areas has become larger during the past 40 years. Overall, the areas of natural biotopes have remained the same in Denmark during the past 40 years. Field boundaries on the other hand which are known to be important vole habitats have become fewer in the cultivated areas. Despite this, small rodents still occur in high frequencies in the diet of nowadays foxes. As voles are sensitive to fragmentation, narrow stipes of permanent grass should be maintained or even re-established in the cultivated areas to improve life conditions for small rodents and other wildlife.

The change of nature and the nature of change in agricultural landscapes: Hydrologic regime shifts modulate ecological transitions

AbstractHydrology in many agricultural landscapes around the world is changing in unprecedented ways due to the development of extensive surface and subsurface drainage systems that optimize productivity. This plumbing of the landscape alters water pathways, timings, and storage, creating new regimes of hydrologic response and driving a chain of environmental changes in sediment dynamics, nutrient cycling, and river ecology. In this work, we nonparametrically quantify the nature of hydrologic change in the Minnesota River Basin, an intensively managed agricultural landscape, and study how this change might modulate ecological transitions. During the growing season when climate effects are shown to be minimal, daily streamflow hydrographs exhibit sharper rising limbs and stronger dependence on the previous‐day precipitation. We also find a changed storage‐discharge relationship and show that the artificial landscape connectivity has most drastically affected the rainfall‐runoff relationship at intermediate quantiles. Considering the whole year, we show that the combined climate and land use change effects reduce the inherent nonlinearity in the dynamics of daily streamflow, perhaps reflecting a more linearized engineered hydrologic system. Using a simplified dynamic interaction model that couples hydrology to river ecology, we demonstrate how the observed hydrologic change and/or the discharge‐driven sediment generation dynamics may have modulated a regime shift in river ecology, namely extirpation of native mussel populations. We posit that such nonparametric analyses and reduced complexity modeling can provide more insight than highly parameterized models and can guide development of vulnerability assessments and integrated watershed management frameworks.

Ecosystem services in peri-urban landscapes: The effects of agricultural landscape change on ecosystem services in Taiwan's western coastal plain

Farmland within urban peri-urban areas can be understood as part of a green infrastructure that provides agro-ecosystem services to benefit the urban population. The growing influence of cities on peri-urban agricultural lands has had significant effects on agricultural land transformation with an associated loss in agro-ecosystem services. The loss of ecosystem services could result in an increase in a city's vulnerability to climate change. More than one sixth of the agricultural lands in Taiwan's western plain have been converted to other uses from 1970 to 2006. We hypothesize that planning guidelines based on landscape ecology could help to plan the optimal spatial configuration of paddy rice land uses in peri-urban areas. In order to study the effects of agricultural landscape changes on ecosystem services in peri-urban areas, this study selected appropriate landscape metrics to assess ecosystem services with landscape composition and configuration metrics for each of the research sites. This research has shown that because agro-ecosystem services are related with the spatial configuration of paddy rice fields, by planning agricultural land use change to optimize spatial configuration, agro-ecosystem services can be maintained. Guidelines are offered to manage agroecosystem services within a context of land use change.

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.