Trends in High Nature Value farmland studies: A systematic review

Background. Since the High Nature Value (HNV) concept was defined in the early 1990s, several studies on HNV farmland has been increasing over the past 30 years in Europe, highlighting the interest by scientific community of HNV farming systems supporting biodiversity conservation. The aim of this study was to evaluate the trends and main gaps on HNV farmland peer-reviewed publications in order to contribute to the effectiveness of future research in this field. Methods. Searches were conducted using the databases Web of SciencesTM and Scopus in order to identify only peer-reviewed articles on HNV farmland, published prior to July 2017. The inclusion and exclusion criteria were developed a priori. Data as year, country, type of document, subject area, taxa studied and biodiversity metrics assessed were extracted and explored in order to analyse the spatial and temporal distribution of the concept, including the main topics addressed in HNV farmland literature. Results. After screening 308 original articles, 90 were selected for this review. HNV farmland studies involved several disciplines, mainly biodiversity and conservation and environmental sciences and ecology. Most peer-reviewed articles focused on HNV farming were conducted in Spain, Italy, Ireland and Portugal. The main studied taxa were plants and birds. Taxonomic diversity was the biodiversity metric more often used to assess the biodiversity status on HNV farmland areas. A positive correlation was found between HNV farmland area and HNV farmland studies conducted in respective countries. Discussion. The HNV farmland research subject is a relative novel approach, and this systematic review provides a comprehensive overview about the main topics in the HNV farmland peer-reviewed literature contributing to highlight the main gaps and provide some considerations in order to assist the performance of HNV farming systems and conservation policies, addressed to sustain high levels of biodiversity

Spatial Economic Analysis in Data-Rich Environments

Controlling for spatial effects in micro-economic studies of consumer and producer behavior necessitates a range of analytical modifications ranging from modest changes in data collection and the definition of variables to dramatic changes in the modeling of consumer and producer decision-making. This paper discusses conceptual, empirical, and data issues involved in modeling the spatial aspects of economic behavior in data rich environments. Attention is given to established and emerging agricultural economic applications of spatial data and spatial econometric methods at the micro-scale. Recent applications of individual and household data are featured, including models of land-use change at the urban-rural interface, agricultural land values, and technological change and technology adoption.Research Methods/ Statistical Methods, C21, Q10, Q12, Q15, Q56,

Spiders in the agricultural landscape

Spiders in agroecosystems play a role in natural pest suppression and contribute to biodiversity. In this thesis I have investigated if and when spiders recolonise cereal fields in spring when they have the potential to suppress establishing pest aphid populations. Furthermore, the influence of different environmental factors on spiders has been investigated to understand how it might be possible to provide suitable conditions for enhancement of their populations. Linyphiid spiders recolonised fields after being negatively affected by sowing in spring, while lycosid spiders were unaffected. Conversely, lycosids showed a recolonisation in winter cereals after overwintering, but not linyphiids. But linyphiid migratory patterns also differed over time, because they were positively influenced by landscape heterogeneity in the beginning of spring but not at the end. Diversity of lycosid and linyphiid spiders was positively influenced by perennial crops and forest in the surrounding landscape. Field margins were found to be a key habitat for the diversity of both spider families. Lycosid abundance was affected on the habitat scale and linyphiid abundance on the larger landscape scale, which can be explained by the families' different modes of dispersal. Farming systems, conventional or organic, contained different compositions of lycosid and linyphiid species. The dominant lycosid and linyphiid species were more abundant at organic sites. Body condition of Pardosa (Lycosidae) turned out to be superior in landscapes dominated by large fields with annual crops, irrespective of farming system, perhaps because of less competition for available resources. This thesis provides evidence that spiders are present in crop fields early in spring when they have the opportunity to suppress establishing aphid pests. Different spider species were associated with different farming systems, but the abundances of the most common species were enhanced by organic management. A diverse landscape with easy access to perennial crops and field margins will augment both number of species and individuals of spiders

DEVELOPMENT AT THE URBAN FRINGE AND BEYOND: IMPACTS ON AGRICULTURE AND RURAL LAND

Land development in the United States is following two routes: expansion of urban areas and large-lot development (greater than 1 acre per house) in rural areas. Urban expansion claimed more than 1 million acres per year between 1960 and 1990, yet is not seen as a threat to most farming, although it may reduce production of some high-value or specialty crops. The consequences of continued largelot development may be less sanguine, since it consumes much more land per unit of housing than the typical suburb. Controlling growth and planning for it are the domains of State and local governments. The Federal Government may be able to help them in such areas as building capacity to plan and control growth, providing financial incentives for channeling growth in desirable directions, or coordinating local, regional, and State efforts.land development, sprawl, large-lot housing, land zoning, population growth, housing, specialty agriculture, high-value agriculture, rural amenities, smart growth, Land Economics/Use,

Testing the delivery of conservation schemes for farmland birds at the farm-scale during winter, in Southern lowland England

Many farmland bird species across Europe have continued to show population declines since the 1970s, as a result of agricultural intensification. A large number of conservation schemes and initiatives have emerged from Government and the food industry sector to address this problem. Some farmland bird populations are limited by overwintering survival. This paper compares winter farmland bird abundance and species richness from differing conservation schemes, including: Entry Level Stewardship (ELS), Conservation Grade (CG) and Organic farm management scenarios. Winter bird surveys were tailored to the farm-scale, reflecting the proportions of infield habitat arrangements of nine case study farms. Organic farms provided significantly less infield habitat types across all schemes and were dominated by grassland habitat. Entry Level Stewardship and CG schemes had larger proportions of winter bird food provisions and increased habitat heterogeneity. The results show granivorous passerines to be significantly more abundant on CG farms compared to Organic. Moreover, yellowhammers (Emberiza citronella L.) are specialist seed-eaters that were significantly less abundant on Organic farms, compared to ELS and CG. There were no significant differences for insectivorous passerines between schemes. A positive relationship between number of infield habitats and species richness on farms was found, with Organic farms scoring the lowest species richness. These results demonstrate a proof-of-concept that farm-scale management can have positive farm-scale effects for birds; with increasing habitat heterogeneity and the presence of winter bird food provisions. Interestingly, Organic farms are shown not to provide significant benefits to overwintering birds. This paper suggests that the CG scheme provides the best framework for farmers to achieve sufficient infield habitat arrangements to better overwintering farmland bird

Evapotranspiration estimation using Landsat-8 data with a two-layer framework

This work was partially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41401042), National Key Basic Research Program of China (973 Program) (Grant No. 2015CB452701) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 41571019 and 41371043).Peer reviewedproo

Feasibility Study on the Valuation of Public Goods and Externalities in EU Agriculture

The present report develops and test an up-scaled non-market valuation framework to value changes in the provision level of the Public Goods and Externalities (PGaE) of EU agriculture from the demand-side (i.e. using valuation surveys). The selected PGaE included in the study are the following: cultural landscape, farmland biodiversity, water quality and availability, air quality, soil quality, climate stability, resilience to fire and resilience to flooding. The following achievements have been accomplished along the project development: 1) comprehensive description of the study selected PGaE, 2) quantification of the selected agricultural PGaE using agri-environmental indicators, 3) standardised description of PGaE disentangling the macro-regional agro-ecological infra-structures from its ecological and cultural services, 4) delimitation of wide areas with homogeneous agro-ecological infra-structures across EU (macro-regions), 5) delimitation of the macro-regions, independently from their supply of PGaE, 6) definition of “Macro-Regional Agri-Environmental Problems” (MRAEP), through the association of the macro-regions with the core PGaE supplied by them, delivering non-market demand-side valuation problems relevant to the agricultural and agri-environmental policy decision-makers, 7) design of a Choice Modelling (CM) survey able to gather multi-country value estimates of changes in the provision level of different PGaE supplied by different macro-regions, 8) successful testing of the valuation framework through a pilot survey and 9) delivering of alternative sampling plans for the EU level large-scale survey allowing for different options regarding the number of surveyed countries, the size and composition of respective samples, and the survey administration-mode, balanced with estimates for the corresponding budgetary cost.JRC.J.4-Agriculture and Life Sciences in the Econom

Agricultural land values using Geographic Information Systems: design location model and tools for information available by geoportal. Application to a Spanish Agricultural Area

[EN] Quantifying the effect of location on land values can be done by designing a location factor which considers the most relevant aspects that may influence this value such as proximity to large cities, the population living around the parcel or land to be valued, the distance from it to markets or logistic centres, or the existence of places of environmental or landscape interest. Considering these variables can be complicated by having to process large amounts of distinct data (distances, no. of inhabitants or population size, protected areas, etc.), which have to be processed and interpreted to be able to define the factor that summarises them, and can affect the land value from income, such as productive assets, to correct its value. The main proposal put forward in this research is to study the various location aspects that affect land values, and the possibilities that Geographic Information Systems (GIS) offer to design with free software tools that allow simple calculations of a location correction factor and, consequently, land values. Calculations were made for all the rural cadastral parcels (2.3 million) in the Valencian Region. Results can be integrated into a new online GIS portal and make these available to users in soil valuation studies.Marqués Pérez, I.; Mora Navarro, JG.; Pérez-Salas Sagreras, JL.; Velilla-Torres, JM.; Femenia-Ribera, C. (2018). Agricultural land values using Geographic Information Systems: design location model and tools for information available by geoportal. Application to a Spanish Agricultural Area. Survey Review (Online). 50(363):545-554. doi:10.1080/00396265.2017.13503425455545036