Brady, Mark
- Department of Economics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Research article2016Peer reviewedOpen access
Cong, Rong-Gang; Ekroos, Johan; Smith, Henrik G.; Brady, Mark
Important intermediate ecosystem services (ES) such as crop pollination and biological control of pests, which underpin the final ES agricultural yields, are mediated by mobile organisms that depend on availability of habitat and its arrangement in the landscape. It has been suggested that landscape-scale management (LSM) of habitat in a multi-farm setting results in higher provisioning of such ES compared to farm-scale management (FSM). However, to achieve the LSM solution, farmers' land-use decisions need to be coordinated. To this end, we develop rules based on novel landscape composition and configuration indices. We model farmers' interdependencies through ES in an agent-based model (ABM) and optimize land use at both the farm and landscape scales for comparison. Our analysis is based on a simple artificial landscape with homogeneous soil quality and uses crop pollination as an illustrative ecosystem service. We consider habitat configuration at the field scale. Our rules demonstrate that the coordinated solution is characterized by a higher degree of habitat availability and a configuration of habitat that is dispersed rather than agglomerated. We tested these rules over a range of assumptions about ecological parameter values and suggest that such rules could be used to improve governance of ES in agricultural landscapes.
Agent-based model; Agglomeration; Dispersion; Governance; Pollination; Agri-environmental policy
Ecological Economics
2016, Volume: 128, pages: 214-223
SLU Plant Protection Network
SDG15 Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss
SDG2 End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture
Ecology
Economics
Environmental Sciences related to Agriculture and Land-use
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2016.05.006
https://res.slu.se/id/publ/76248