Identifying robust response options to manage environmental change using an ecosystem approach:a stress-testing case study for the UK

A diverse range of response options was evaluated in terms of their utility for sustaining ecosystem services in the UK. Robustness of response options was investigated by applying a ‘stress-testing’ method which evaluated expected performance against combined scenarios of socioeconomic and climate change. Based upon stakeholder feedback, a reference scenario representing current trends in climate and socioeconomic drivers (‘business-as-usual’) was used as a dynamic baseline against which to compare results of other scenarios. The robustness of response options was evaluated by their utility in different environmental and social contexts as represented by the scenarios, and linked to their adaptability to adjust to changing conditions. Key findings demonstrate that adaptability becomes increasingly valuable as the magnitude and rate of future change diverges from current trends. Stress-testing also revealed that individual responses in isolation are unlikely to be robust meaning there are advantages from integrating cohesive combinations (bundles) of response options to maximise their individual strengths and compensate for weaknesses. This identifies a role for both top-down and bottom-up responses, including regulation, spatial targeting, incentives and partnership initiatives, and their use in combination through integrated assessment and planning consistent with the adoption of an Ecosystem Approach. Stress-testing approaches can have an important role in future-proofing policy appraisals but important knowledge gaps remain, especially for cultural and supporting ecosystem services. Finally, barriers and enablers to the implementation of more integrated long-term adaptive responses were identified drawing on the ‘4 Is’ (Institutions, Information, Incentives, Identity) conceptual framework. This highlighted the crucial but usually understated role of identity in promoting ownership and uptake of responses

To what extent has Sustainable Intensification in England been achieved?

Agricultural intensification has significantly increased yields and fed growing populations across the planet, but has also led to considerable environmental degradation. In response an alternative process of ‘Sustainable Intensification’ (SI), whereby food production increases while environmental impacts are reduced, has been advocated as necessary, if not sufficient, for delivering food and environmental security. However, the extent to which SI has begun, the main drivers of SI, and the degree to which degradation is simply ‘offshored’ are uncertain. In this study we assess agroecosystem services in England and two contrasting sub-regions, majority-arable Eastern England and majority-pastoral South-Western England, since 1950 by analysing ecosystem service metrics and developing a simple system dynamics model. We find that rapid agricultural intensification drove significant environmental degradation in England in the early 1980s, but that most ecosystem services except farmland biodiversity began to recover after 2000, primarily due to reduced livestock and fertiliser usage decoupling from high yields. This partially follows the trajectory of an Environmental Kuznets Curve, with yields and GDP growth decoupling from environmental degradation above ~£17,000 per capita per annum. Together, these trends suggest that SI has begun in England. However, the lack of recovery in farmland biodiversity, and the reduction in UK food self-sufficiency resulting in some agricultural impacts being ‘offshored’, represent major negative trade-offs. Maintaining yields and restoring biodiversity while also addressing climate change, offshored degradation, and post-Brexit subsidy changes will require significant further SI in the future

Expansion of Agriculture in Northern Cold-Climate Regions: A Cross-Sectoral Perspective on Opportunities and Challenges

Agriculture in the boreal and Arctic regions is perceived as marginal, low intensity and inadequate to satisfy the needs of local communities, but another perspective is that northern agriculture has untapped potential to increase the local supply of food and even contribute to the global food system. Policies across northern jurisdictions target the expansion and intensification of agriculture, contextualized for the diverse social settings and market foci in the north. However, the rapid pace of climate change means that traditional methods of adapting cropping systems and developing infrastructure and regulations for this region cannot keep up with climate change impacts. Moreover, the anticipated conversion of northern cold-climate natural lands to agriculture risks a loss of up to 76% of the carbon stored in vegetation and soils, leading to further environmental impacts. The sustainable development of northern agriculture requires local solutions supported by locally relevant policies. There is an obvious need for the rapid development of a transdisciplinary, cross-jurisdictional, long-term knowledge development, and dissemination program to best serve food needs and an agricultural economy in the boreal and Arctic regions while minimizing the risks to global climate, northern ecosystems and communities

Do field boundaries act as refugia for grassland plant species diversity in intensively managed agricultural landscapes in Britain?

Initiatives to restore characteristic plant species diversity to degraded habitats require target plant species populations to be established and maintained. In landscapes managed intensively for agriculture, species that are foci for restoration efforts may be scarce, being confined to core reserves of less-modified habitat or persisting as fragmented populations on linear landscape features. Botanical data from small and large-scale surveys across Britain was used to investigate whether grassland plants favoured by less intensive management persisted on field boundaries despite increasing productivity in the adjacent field. At low field productivity, field species richness was, on average, higher than in field boundaries. As productivity increased, boundary plots reduced in richness at a slower rate than adjacent fields thus boundaries became relatively richer in grassland species than adjacent fields. Species compositional similarity between fields and their boundaries also declined with increasing field productivity. Grassland field boundaries can function as refugia. However, the lower relative species richness of boundaries next to the least productive fields indicated that some plant species will, on average, be increasingly uncommon or absent in boundaries as field productivity increases. High residual variation in these relationships was linked to local variation in conditions between fields and their boundaries. Field boundaries next to highly productive grasslands appear to function as partial refugia for grassland plants. While highly species rich boundaries can locally occur next to species poor fields, the species richness of most boundaries falls well short of values typical of the least productive fields

Characterising spatial and temporal variation in the finite rate of population increase across the northern range boundary of the annual grass Vulpia fasciculata

Understanding the factors that influence plant distributions is a considerable challenge for ecologists in the face of environmental change. Here, we quantify spatial and temporal variation in the finite rate of population increase of the annual grass Vulpia fasciculata. Specifically, we test the hypothesis that the northern range boundary is associated with finite rates of population increase of less than one. Seeds of three ecotypes of the annual grass V. fasciculata were introduced annually across a range of sites in Great Britain both within (11) and to the north (4) of its current range boundary in each of 4 years. Populations failed to establish at 17% of target sites due to disturbance. At the remaining target sites, the finite rate of population increase, λ, varied from 0.06 to 33.3 with a geometric mean of 1.88. Of the total variance in the rate of population growth, site and year effects accounted independently for 40% of the variation and in interaction for 50%; ecotype accounted for less than 5% of the variation. Variation in the weather between sites and years had little impact on plant performance, and there was no indication that the rate of population growth was lower to the north of the current range boundary. We conclude that current climatic conditions on the coast of Great Britain are not limiting the distribution of V. fasciculata and that seeds from across its current range have roughly equivalent colonising potential

Assessing the impacts of agricultural intensification on biodiversity:a British perspective

Agricultural intensification is best considered as the level of human appropriation of terrestrial net primary production. The global value is set to increase from 30%, increasing pressures on biodiversity. The pressures can be classified in terms of spatial scale, i.e. land cover, landscape management and crop management. Different lowland agricultural landscapes in Great Britain show differences among these pressures when habitat diversity and nutrient surplus are used as indicators. Eutrophication of plants was correlated to N surplus, and species richness of plants correlated with broad habitat diversity. Bird species diversity only correlated with habitat diversity when the diversity of different agricultural habitats was taken into account. The pressures of agricultural change may be reduced by minimizing loss of large habitats, minimizing permanent loss of agricultural land, maintaining habitat diversity in agricultural landscapes in order to provide ecosystem services, and minimizing pollution from nutrients and pesticides from the crops themselves. While these pressures could potentially be quantified using an internationally consistent set of indicators, their impacts would need to be assessed using a much larger number of locally applicable biodiversity indicators

Spatial relationships between intensive land cover and residual plant species diversity in temperate farmed landscapes

1. In temperate farmed landscapes conservation policies increasingly emphasize large-scale reductions in land-use intensity. Yet despite a managed reversion to more favourable abiotic conditions, depleted regional species pools may prevent the re-assembly of target communities. 2. Using national-scale survey data recorded across Great Britain in 1998, we investigated the extent to which grassland indicator plant species persisted on potential refuge habitats across a spatial gradient of intensive land cover in lowland 1-km squares. These habitats comprised road verges, field boundaries, watercourse banks and small biotope fragments. Intensive land cover comprised built land, arable and improved grassland. 3. The rate of reduction in indicator species richness across the intensive land cover gradient was significantly lower in all potential refuge features than in surrounding fields and larger areas of habitat. 4. The best refuge locations were watercourse banks and small biotopes. In both cases, indicator species richness was higher than adjacent fields at the lowest intensive land cover and stayed higher as intensive land cover increased. 5. However, as intensive land cover increased, plant traits associated with higher nutrient availability were more prominently represented among indicator species. 6. Although richer assemblages of indicator species persisted on refuge features, population sizes are likely to be small, because of species–area effects, and also vulnerable to nutrient surpluses and reduced or inappropriate disturbance. 7. Synthesis and applications. Across the British lowlands, linear landscape features and small habitat fragments can provide limited safe havens for unimproved grassland plant species. However, the identity of refuge features and their species richness and composition are likely to vary with local conditions. Three activities are therefore paramount in assessing their role in larger scale extensification schemes: (i) development of rapid ways of assessing the plant diversity and distribution of refuge features in local areas; (ii) quantification of the risks posed to the viability of residual source populations through implementation of different options for incorporating them into extensification schemes; (iii) maximization of scheme performance by targeting landscapes with sufficient residual diversity to enable increases in population size of the target species in the medium term

Indicators for assessing the environmental impacts of land use changes across Europe

International audienceMuch progress has been made in understanding future trend development over the last years. Governments and international bodies are increasingly attempting to assess ex-ante the impact of their policy proposals. In the SENSOR project, environmental sustainability is assessed by answering a set of policy relevant questions likely to affect goods and services provided by land. The answer is complex and the assessment of future options is very sensitive to scale, how far ahead in time is being considered, and whether the assessment addresses local, regional or global concerns. The relationships between components of land use and the response of environmental indicators are not necessarily linear and assessing impacts at a European scale implies to use multi-scale sources of data of uneven quality across countries, which in turn creates constraints when interpreting the results at different spatial levels. This chapter describes the methodology that was designed to undertake the environmental impact assessment in the SENSOR project. It presents the rationale behind the selection of indicators for environmental sustainability and addresses how environmental indicators can be derived from outputs of sectoral models, using two selected environmental indicators as an example. General issues connected to the modelling of environmental impact at pan-European level are discussed

Indicators for assessing the environmental impacts of land use changes across Europe

International audienceMuch progress has been made in understanding future trend development over the last years. Governments and international bodies are increasingly attempting to assess ex-ante the impact of their policy proposals. In the SENSOR project, environmental sustainability is assessed by answering a set of policy relevant questions likely to affect goods and services provided by land. The answer is complex and the assessment of future options is very sensitive to scale, how far ahead in time is being considered, and whether the assessment addresses local, regional or global concerns. The relationships between components of land use and the response of environmental indicators are not necessarily linear and assessing impacts at a European scale implies to use multi-scale sources of data of uneven quality across countries, which in turn creates constraints when interpreting the results at different spatial levels. This chapter describes the methodology that was designed to undertake the environmental impact assessment in the SENSOR project. It presents the rationale behind the selection of indicators for environmental sustainability and addresses how environmental indicators can be derived from outputs of sectoral models, using two selected environmental indicators as an example. General issues connected to the modelling of environmental impact at pan-European level are discussed