An improved indicator framework to assess and optimise ecosystem services provided by permanent grasslands

Livestock farming systems are criticised for their environmental impacts, but they can also provide various ecosystem services to society, especially permanent grasslands. This study aimed to develop a method to assess impacts of permanent grasslands and their management on the supply of regulation and maintenance ecosystem services applicable at the field and/or farm level. To this end, an existing framework, the Ecological Focus Areas Calculator, was adapted to (i) consider attributes and location parameters of permanent grasslands and (ii) integrate impacts of permanent grassland management on the provision of ecosystem services, which yielded a score for each ecosystem service. The method developed was tested with two farms. Analysis of mapping results, which calculated a score for each ecosystem service for each permanent grassland field on each farm, highlighted the direct relation between the novel approach and the underlying ecological theory of impacts on ecosystem services. On each farm, management practices influenced ecological processes differently, which led to different changes in ecosystem service scores. Applying this novel approach directly with farmers can help them identify win–win situations and trade-offs and target their management, by identifying the fields where it may be more optimal to focus certain management practices to decrease the farm’s overall impacts based on trade-offs at the individual-field scale. The novel approach combined representation of the complexity of interactions between management practices and ecological processes with the ability to provide results that are easy to use and interpret. Future development could help increase the accuracy of estimated impacts of management practices on ecosystem services, such as by adding additional practices or considering their long-term effects on ecological processes. The novel approach could also be updated to assess impacts of other types of land use, such as arable land, or management practices. The final goal of such a tool is to support decision-making to optimise the ecosystem services supplied by farming systems, which has advantages for society and for farmers

Developing practical techniques for quantitative assessment of ecosystem services on farmland

The application of the concept of ecosystem services in the context of environmental management of agricultural landscapes is a relatively new and developing topic. There is increasing demand for the delivery of ecosystem services, especially with respect to ensuring that outcomes from policy interventions are realised. Consequently, there is a need for knowledge, tools and techniques to aid the identification of appropriate options for the given circumstances. This paper presents the outputs from a study that aimed to derive practical approaches that could be used to quantify ecosystem services from features on farmland in Europe. More specifically it aimed to integrate the outputs from the Quantification of Ecological Services for Sustainable Agriculture project into an existing prototype software package (the Ecological Focus Areas Calculator). The ecosystem services explored are soil erosion; pollination; pest control; aesthetics; and carbon sequestration. Following an explanation of the methodology, case study landscape features are used to illustrate the outputs generated. The quantitative outputs are also compared to the outputs from the existing qualitative techniques in the Ecological Focus Areas Calculator to highlight the advantages and disadvantages of the two approaches. The study concludes that the development of more quantitative approaches is an improvement over more qualitative techniques. However, quantitative techniques are not available for all ecosystem services, whereas the qualitative approach covers more ecosystem services and thus provides a more holistic perspective. It will be important to further develop the techniques as new science emerges; to ground truth the techniques to confirm and improve their reliability; and to improve delivery tools to meet the requirements of different end users which may evolve in the future. As the intellectual, economic and technical capacity of the land management sector increases, the level of sophistication that is be deemed to be practical will also evolve, thus the tools and techniques available need to keep pace with this.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

An indicator framework to help maximise potential benefits for ecosystem services and biodiversity from ecological focus areas

© 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an Open Access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).Ecological focus areas are one of three greening measures that were introduced into the European Common Agricultural Policy by the reform in 2014, with the aim of enhancing the ecological function of agricultural landscapes. However, there are concerns that they will provide little or no additional ecological benefit (enhanced biodiversity and ecosystem services) as those that are declared may already exist and/or any new areas will be implemented on the basis of farm management burdens rather than ecological criteria, such as those which are the easiest or least costly to implement. To implement ecological focus areas to achieve greater benefits requires taking account of numerous spatial and management parameters, scientific understanding of ecosystem services, and the needs and behaviour individual and communities of species. Such an approach is not readily practical or feasible for many farm and land managers. This paper describes the development of an indicator framework which aims to distil this complex scientific information to aid decision making with regard to the implementation of ecological focus areas to enhance and increase benefits for ecosystem services and biodiversity. It involved collating scientific evidence from over 350 papers, reports and guides and then structuring this evidence to form the indicator framework. 230 impacts were identified for 20 land uses and landscape features, and these are characterised using 138 parameters and attributes, containing 708 descriptive classes. The framework aims to help land managers identify the potential benefits and burdens of different options for the specific spatial and management context of their farm, and thus select those with greatest benefits and least burden for their circumstances. Ecological focus areas are part of the first evolution of greening measures, so there is scope to improve them to make their implementation more ecological and more focused. Tools, such as the indicator framework presented herein, have the potential to support this process by educating and raising awareness of potential impacts, facilitating the transfer of scientific knowledge, and resulting in a more ecological aware industry.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio