Aligning biodiversity conservation and agricultural production in heterogeneous landscapes

Abstract

Understanding the trade‐offs between biodiversity conservation and agricultural production has become a fundamental question in sustainability science. Substantial research has focused on how species’ populations respond to agricultural intensification, with the goal to understand whether conservation policies that spatially separate agriculture and conservation or, alternatively, integrate the two are more beneficial. Spatial heterogeneity in both species abundance and agricultural productivity have been largely left out of this discussion, although these patterns are ubiquitous from local to global scales due to varying land capacity. Here, we address the question of how to align agricultural production and biodiversity conservation in heterogeneous landscapes. Using model simulations of species abundance and agricultural yields, we show that trade‐offs between agricultural production and species’ abundance can be reduced by minimizing the cost (in terms of species abundance) of agricultural production. We find that when species’ abundance and agricultural yields vary across landscapes, the optimal strategy to minimize trade‐offs is rarely pure land sparing or land sharing. Instead, landscapes that combine elements of both strategies are optimal. Additionally, we show how the reference population of a species is defined has important influences on optimization results. Our findings suggest that in the real world, understanding the impact of heterogeneous land capacity on biodiversity and agricultural production is crucial to designing multi‐use landscapes that jointly maximize conservation and agricultural benefits.

Trade‐offs between biodiversity and agriculture are moving targets in dynamic landscapes

“…Overall, these findings suggest that pure land sharing or sparing strategies might not be truly optimal. Instead, mixes of land systems of varying intensities could strike a better balance between agriculture and biodiversity (Butsic et al., 2019). As new tools for identifying such optimal landscapes emerge (Law et al., 2017; Moilanen, Leathwick, & Quinn, 2011), assessing which combinations and configurations of land systems can simultaneously produce and maintain biodiversity and multiple ecosystems services would result in an interesting line of research (Triviño et al., 2017).…”

“…Past assessments of trade‐offs have typically adopted a bivariate approach, most often by assessing how the abundance of certain taxa varies across yield gradients. While such bivariate approaches can be helpful for environmental homogenous regions, it may ignore other factors known to influence biodiversity (Butsic et al., 2019; Grau et al., 2013). For instance, the extent of remaining natural habitat in the landscape is a key determinant of biodiversity (Fahrig, 2013; Fischer et al., 2014), as well as of species' ability to cope with agriculture (Mendenhall, Shields‐Estrada, Krishnaswami, & Daily, 2016).…”

“…For instance, the extent of remaining natural habitat in the landscape is a key determinant of biodiversity (Fahrig, 2013; Fischer et al., 2014), as well as of species' ability to cope with agriculture (Mendenhall, Shields‐Estrada, Krishnaswami, & Daily, 2016). Likewise, both agriculture and biodiversity may vary across environmental gradients, such as temperature, aridity, soil quality (Houspanossian, Giménez, Baldi, & Nosetto, 2016; Watson, 2011) or landscape heterogeneity (Macchi et al., 2019), and this can impact the relationship between biodiversity and agriculture (Butsic et al., 2019).…”

Fading opportunities for mitigating agriculture-environment trade-offs in a South American deforestation hotspot

“…Accepting strong local trade-offs (e.g. from intensified agriculture) in some locations might lessen overall pressure on land at broader scales (Macchi et al, 2013, Butsic et al, 2020, and understanding the environmental impacts of specific systems (e.g. intensified agriculture, agroforestry) does not elucidate on which combination of land uses are best to minimize agriculture-environment tradeoffs (Butsic & Kuemmerle, 2015).…”

“…intensified agriculture, agroforestry) does not elucidate on which combination of land uses are best to minimize agriculture-environment tradeoffs (Butsic & Kuemmerle, 2015). This is highly relevant because there is increasing evidence that landscapes that harbor a mix of land uses might mitigate trade-offs more than homogeneous landscapes (Law et al, 2015, Butsic et al, 2020. As most production landscapes fall somewhere on a multidimensional gradient between wild areas and fully intensified agriculture (Kremen & Merenlender, 2018, Kennedy et al, 2019, understanding the trade-offs between land-use outcomes in regions where a diversity of land uses co-occur is important.…”