FarmLand

European network on farmland heterogeneity, biodiversity and ecosystem services

About the project FarmLand

Agricultural landscapes occupy 40% of the available land area in Europe. They play an important role in providing habitat for wild plants and animals that contribute significantly to agricultural production through services such as crop pollination and control of crop pests. In many regions farm fields are becoming ever larger, and many agricultural regions are now dedicated to a small number of crop types. How did these changes in farmland pattern affect farmland wildlife and the services they provide for agriculture? FarmLand addresses this question by bringing together teams from France, Germany, Great Britain, Spain and Canada.

Agricultural landscapes which contain significant areas of semi-natural lands have higher wildlife diversity and better ecosystem services. However, policies encouraging seminatural field margins or semi-natural strips within crop fields require taking crop area out of production, which is often not feasible. It has been suggested that, in addition to the area of seminatural habitats, the spatial heterogeneity of the cropped lands may be positively related to wild plant and animal diversity and to their provision of ecosystem services.

The aim of FarmLand is to test the role of both compositional and configurational heterogeneity for biodiversity and ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes. This has not been attempted so far at such a scale and through such an integrated approach.

For more information, visit the FarmLand website.

Schéma conceptuel du rôle respectif de la composition et de la configuration
dans la mise en place de l'hétérogénéité d'un paysage agricole d'après:
Fahrig L. , Baudry J., Brotons, L., Burel F. G., Crist T. O., Fuller R. J.,
Sirami C., Siriwardena G. M., Martin J.L. 2011. Functional landscape
heterogeneity and animal biodiversity in agricultural landscapes.
Ecology Letters, 14:101-112.

Objectives

• Disentangle the relationships between landscape heterogeneity and plant or animal diversity;
• Assess the links between landscape heterogeneity and ecosystem services and
• Study the diversity of farming systems, and the farmers’ mental models of the ecological functioning of their farms.

To meet these objectives, FarmLand is asking the following questions in seven European agricultural regions (one in Germany, four in France, one in the United Kingdom and one in Spain) plus one Canadian region:

1. Does biodiversity change with increasing compositional heterogeneity of crop types in the landscape?
2. Does biodiversity change with increasing configurational heterogeneity of crop types in the landscape?
3. What measures of farmland biodiversity are most strongly related to provision of regulating (pollination, biological control), supporting and cultural ecosystem services?
4. How can we build collectively acceptable guidelines that will create spatial patterns of farmland that promote biodiversity-based ecosystem services?

Funding

This is a three-year project funded by the ERA-Net BiodivERsA, with several national funders, part of the BiodivERsA 2011 call for research proposal. The project runs from April 2012 to September 2015.

The French teams are funded by the French National Research Agency.

The German team is funded by the German Ministry of Research and Education (BMBF) and the German Research Foundation (DFG).

The Spanish team is funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. Complementary funding comes from Generalitat de Catalunya and Banco Santander as well as FGCSIC via the Steppe ahead project.

The U.K. and Canadian teams are self-funded partners.

Farmland Website: http://www.farmland-biodiversity.org/index.php/fr/

FarmLand

European network on farmland heterogeneity, biodiversity and ecosystem services