A Scale-Explicit Framework for Conceptualizing the Environmental Impacts of Agricultural Land Use Changes
A Scale-Explicit Framework for Conceptualizing the Environmental Impacts of Agricultural Land Use Changes
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DOI：
10.3390/su6128432
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发表时间：
2014-12-01
期刊：
影响因子：
3.9
通讯作者：
Rowe, Rebecca
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Hale, Iago Lowe;Wollheim, Wilfred M.;Rowe, Rebecca
由于对食品安全、质量和主权、农村生计和环境完整性的担忧，传统上占主导地位的农业地区以外的地区对当地生产的食品的需求正在增长。满足这一需求的战略取决于农业土地使用的变化，其形式可以是集约化，也可以是扩展化（将非农业土地，包括原生地貌，转变为农业用地）。这些变化对非粮食供应生态系统服务的影响的性质和程度是由一套复杂的规模依赖的相互作用之间的耕作方式，特定地点的特点，和所考虑的生态系统服务。生态系统的建模策略，荣誉这种复杂性往往是无法理解的非专家，导致生态系统科学和可持续农业领域之间的普遍概念差距。以森林茂密的新英格兰为例，我们提出了一个概念框架，旨在综合和传达农业和各种生态系统服务之间的关系的规模和规模依赖性的理解。该框架通过考虑景观中多种干扰的总体影响，同时考虑规模效应，旨在激励和支持土地管理者、科学家、公民利益攸关方和政策制定者的协作努力，以应对扩大当地农业的挑战。
Demand for locally-produced food is growing in areas outside traditionally dominant agricultural regions due to concerns over food safety, quality, and sovereignty; rural livelihoods; and environmental integrity. Strategies for meeting this demand rely upon agricultural land use change, in various forms of either intensification or extensification (converting non-agricultural land, including native landforms, to agricultural use). The nature and extent of the impacts of these changes on non-food-provisioning ecosystem services are determined by a complex suite of scale-dependent interactions among farming practices, site-specific characteristics, and the ecosystem services under consideration. Ecosystem modeling strategies which honor such complexity are often impenetrable by non-experts, resulting in a prevalent conceptual gap between ecosystem sciences and the field of sustainable agriculture. Referencing heavily forested New England as an example, we present a conceptual framework designed to synthesize and convey understanding of the scale-and landscape-dependent nature of the relationship between agriculture and various ecosystem services. By accounting for the total impact of multiple disturbances across a landscape while considering the effects of scale, the framework is intended to stimulate and support the collaborative efforts of land managers, scientists, citizen stakeholders, and policy makers as they address the challenges of expanding local agriculture.