710 Städtebau, Raumplanung, Landschaftsgestaltung
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Agroecosystems are vital for supplying ecosystem services to human society, but most modern farming practices impact detrimentally on the environment. Public agricultural support policies have been critically important in influencing the transformation of the farm sectors; however, few of them have been dedicated to enhancing ecosystem services beyond agricultural commodities. The largest agricultural support system worldwide, the European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), has now come to a critical point, as major decisions concerning its design and implementation after 2013 are about to be taken. The debate on this reform process presents a unique opportunity to trigger a transition from commodity-based subsidy policies to policies centered on efficient provision of ecosystem services from agricultural land. To prompt such discussion, we formulate key recommendations informed by a review of ecosystem services literature and address verifiable links to human well-being, non-market valuation for balanced services provision, treatment of ecosystem services bundles, site-specific and regionalized approaches, matching spatial scales for different ecosystem services, funding permanence for payment schemes, strong monitoring and adaptive approaches to tackling uncertainties, and coherent cross-sectoral policy design. If these issues were to be considered in formulating and implementing future CAP, it might become an exemplar for redirecting agricultural policies elsewhere in the world towards sustainability.
This study explores the potential of historical maps to detect, measure and monitor changes of trees outside forests. The main goal is to assess local-level changes of scattered trees and orchards and their land-use determinants in two areas in Southern Germany between 1901/1905 and 2009. Firstly, overall landscape changes are recorded. Secondly, the spatial-temporal trajectories of scattered trees and their land-use determinants are identified. Thirdly, changes in quantity and fragmentation patterns of traditional orchards are analyzed in their relationship to overall land-cover change. The results confirm major losses in scattered trees, mainly due to urbanization, agricultural intensification, and land abandonment. They further reveal that, while orchards have persisted in total area, they have undergone critical changes towards a simplified landscape structure and loss of the traditional land-use mosaic, which is a characterizing feature of high nature value landscapes. Multi-temporal assessment showed that most trends have been continuous and did not change directions over time, but rather accelerated during periods of rapid change (most dramatically in the 1950-1990 period). The case of orchards and scattered trees illustrates a major problem of cultural landscapes in Europe: Semi-natural landscape features of high nature value are threatened by both intensification and abandonment of land uses. This makes their conservation a potentially costly enterprise, as both opportunity costs for lost alternative land uses and for conservation management costs arise.
The potential of agriculture, forestry, and other land uses to sequester carbon offers a powerful tool for controlling the global climate regime, but practices capable of creating “collateral” benefits for landscape conservation have thus far been disregarded. This paper calls for greater integration of scattered trees into agricultural landscapes, hypothesizing that agroforestry practices effectively store carbon and deliver other important ecosystem services as well. Several agroforests from the Upper Lusatia area in Eastern Germany have been selected for analysis. They cover relatively large areas of land (8.2%), even within this intensively used agricultural landscape, and their extent increased from 1964-2008 by 19.4%. Practices of conserving or promoting the six agroforest classes are compared with a catalogue of essential properties for becoming effective “carbon offset projects”. Criteria from mandatory and voluntary carbon markets for carbon sequestration are then applied (additionality, baselines, permanence, and carbon leakage). The study concludes that steps towards realization of “carbon sequestration projects” should include collecting empirical evidence regarding the carbon sequestration potential of temperate agroforestry systems, developing localised demonstration projects, and upscaling these projects to participate in established carbon markets.
Eastern Mediterranean silvopastoral oak woodlands have been greatly damaged through forest conversion, illegal lumbering, overgrazing, and forest fires. The aim of this study was to assess land-use changes and the legacies that they have imprinted on the forest structure of Quercus macrolepis and accompanying Quercus pubescens and Quercus cerris woodlands on Lesvos Island, Greece. The size-structures of adult oak populations were analyzed as indicators of long-term oak regeneration, while short-term recruitment was determined by counting oak seedlings and saplings. The size-structure of the adult Q. macrolepis population was similar to the inverse J-shaped distribution typical for natural Mediterranean oak forests, indicating continuous recruitment with a constant mortality rate of mature individuals. Seedling and sapling densities were highly variable, but generally low in relation to adult oak densities. Recruitment of oak seedlings and saplings was positively related to determinants such as forest cover, adult oak density and basal area, woody plant richness, and litter cover. Both seedling and sapling occurrence was negatively associated with dung frequency, which suggests that sheep grazing imposes a barrier to oak recruitment. The study outlines a comprehensive land-use transition from the 1950s to the 1970s, during which a complex and multifunctional agrosilvopastoral land-use system was simplified to an intensive grazing system. The discrepancy between the successful long-term regeneration and the less successful short-term recruitment of oaks illustrates that intensified livestock grazing has been a major driver of vegetation change. Grazing impact is likely to interact with increasing drought conditions, which may trigger a negative feedback cycle that undermines the capacity of woodlands to sustain ecosystem services.
The concept of ecosystem services was developed capitalizing on ecological knowledge that ecosystems perform various functions like increasing or retarding water fluxes, cleansing or polluting water, modifying microclimatic conditions, sustaining or impoverishing biological diversity and so on. There is growing body of ecological knowledge that management of agricultural landscape for its structural diversity is becoming the important pillar of the sustainability of rural areas. Programmes of environmental protection in rural areas should aim not only at introduction environmental friendly technologies of cultivation within farm. They should also be concerned with challenge of how to increase the resistance or resilience of the whole landscape against threats. Recognition of non -commodity effects of diversified agricultural landscape formed by introduction into cultivated fields shelterbelts, stretches of meadows, small mid -field water reservoirs and other biogeochemical barriers provide new options to combine societal demands with environment production. Co -adaptation of human activities with landscape services relies on policy that economic processes should be conformed with ecological processes operating in the region which are enhancing landscape capacities for naturalization of pollution, regeneration of wastes, recycling of water recourses as well as increasing resistance or resilience of the whole system to stresses caused by production of goals required by society. Recognition of system multifunctionality helps to achieve that goal. The knowledge on processes underpinning ecosystem services opened new frontiers for management of landscapes' structures towards enhancing their capacities to deliver requested services. Forests and shelterbelts show similar functions in the landscape but network of shelterbelts perform many similar services like forests growing on smaller part of landscape area. According to studies carried out by Research Centre for Agricultural and Forest Environment in Poland the following functions of shelterbelts are similar to those shown by forests when 4 -5% of the landscape area is under the network of shelterbelts: - modify the microclimatic conditions and heat and water balances; - control the water chemistry composition (control of diffuse pollution); - limit water and wind erosion; - protect the biodiversity; - increase the survival of the game animals; - enhance recreational value of the region; - provide wood and other products; - promote aesthetic values of the countryside. In this review the first four functions of agricultural landscape within Turew neighborhood will be presented.