Biodiversity at the farm scale: A novel credit point system

Evaluating On-Farm Biodiversity: A Comparison of Assessment Methods

“…To assess farmland biodiversity at farm level, four different methods were compared: (1) the credit point system (CPS) [31], which is a scoring system integrating various measures to promote biodiversity; (2) The Sustainability Monitoring and Assessment Routine (SMART), which is a comprehensive sustainability assessment tool that covers biodiversity as one thematic area [34];…”

“…(3) the Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) method for farmland biodiversity [32], in which species diversity on landscape scale is assessed as a potential loss due to land use intensity and deficiency of landscape structural elements; and (4) a traditional method of species monitoring in which numbers of individuals are determined and classified [31]. These four methods can be readily applied in Switzerland because data is either available or readily collectable.…”

“…(1) Credit Points System [31] Within the project "Scoring with biodiversity-farmers enrich nature", the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL) in Switzerland and the Swiss Ornithological Institute developed a scoring system to assess species diversity of agricultural farms. Relevant measures, from a list with 32 different options, most of which derive from the Swiss agri-environment scheme, for improving biodiversity at the farm level, are evaluated and recorded, which results in an overall score per farm.…”

“…(4) Monitoring plant and species diversity [31] Biodiversity data were collected during several visits on the five farms throughout the years 2009 and 2015. On each farm, transects with a total length of 2500 m were laid, in which the diversity (among other things, species number and density) of plants, grasshoppers, butterflies and birds were recorded.…”

“…A possibility to help farmers recognize biodiversity changes could be provided by biodiversity assessment methods that can be applied on farms and thereby demonstrate the biodiversity impact of the farm or different production methods. Several methods have been developed to evaluate and monitor biodiversity [31][32][33][34][35][36], but there are fewer methods that can assess farmland biodiversity at a farm level [37]. Of those that can, there has been little comparative study into their usability, comparability, or accuracy, and the usefulness of these methods for individual farmers to gain a picture of their biodiversity conservation performance has not been extensively tested in real-world situations.…”