PhD in Biodiversity Management - Title of PhD project: Sustainability performance of ecological approaches to farming at regional scale

实施新型环保农业方法有助于确保农业能够为不断增长的人口提供充足的食物，同时最大限度地减少对环境、经济和社会的负面影响。评估这些方法的有效性取决于对其绩效和可持续性的全面评估。此外，鼓励生态农业实践传播的成功干预措施必须了解采用这些新方法的驱动因素。该提案旨在通过评估区域范围内生态农业方法的可持续性来解决这些问题英国低地两个截然不同的农业景观--高威尔德AONB和伯克希尔唐斯。将采用问卷调查和定性访谈相结合的方法，深入了解影响采用生态农业方法的驱动因素。这些见解将被用来通知不同的生态农业扩张方案的发展，空间分析技术将被用来生成每个场景的假设景观图。对生态耕作方法的环境、社会和经济影响的现有文献的分析将用于了解每种情景下耕作方法的不同空间模式如何影响公共产品和生态系统服务的提供。然后，这些调查结果将结合在一个综合的可持续性评估，其中生态耕作方法将根据区域可持续性目标进行评估。这一评估将以网络分析为基础，以调查将驱动因素与每种方法的影响联系起来的因果关系之间的相互作用。

Implementing novel, environmentally friendly farming approaches could help ensure agriculture can supply adequate food to a growing population while minimising negative environmental, economic and social impacts.Assessing the effectiveness of these approaches is dependent on a comprehensive evaluation of their performance and sustainability. Moreover, successful interventions to encourage the spread of ecological farming practices must be informed by an understanding of the drivers of adoption for these new approaches.This proposal aims to address these issues by assessing the sustainability of ecological farming approaches at a regional scale for two contrasting agricultural landscapes in lowland Britain - the High Weald AONB and the Berkshire Downs. A combination of questionnaire surveys and qualitative interviews will be used to gain in-depth insight into drivers influencing adoption of ecological farming approaches. These insights will be used to inform the development of different ecological farming expansion scenarios, and spatial analysis techniques will be used to generate hypothetical landscape maps for each scenario. Analysis of existing literature on environmental, social and economic impacts of ecological farming approaches will be used to understand how the different spatial patterns of farming practices under each scenario affect provision of public goods and ecosystem services. These findings will then be combined in an integrated sustainability assessment, where ecological farming approaches will be assessed against regional sustainability targets. This assessment will be underpinned by network analysis, to investigate the interactions among the cause-effect relationships linking drivers to impacts for each approach.