New Science to Enable the Design of Agricultural Landscapes that Deliver Multiple Functions - AgLand

英国的土地资产及其提供的商品和服务是一种有限而宝贵的资源，对我们的繁荣至关重要，与我们的文化遗产和福祉有着内在的联系。在接下来的50年里，我们预计将看到由许多因素推动的前所未有的土地使用竞争，包括人口和收入的持续增长、气候变化和环境退化的影响、新技术(例如转基因技术)以及公众态度和价值观的变化。英国约70%(1720万公顷)的土地被耕种，1170万公顷的高产耕地和改良草地。英国农业高度机械化和高效，每年为英国经济贡献约85亿GB(0.6%)的总产值，雇用约47.5万人。因此，可以肯定的是，未来的许多土地使用冲突将围绕粮食和生物质生产以及社会所需的其他生态系统商品和服务之间的竞争和取舍。最近公布的25年环境计划(25YEP)概述了英国政府对保护和管理我们的环境资产的承诺，以为社会带来多重好处。具体地说，它指出，未来的政策将支持农民“带来利益……并在景观和集水区层面取得成果”。这将包括景观规模的栖息地管理和创造，以创建有弹性的生态网络，正如约翰·劳顿爵士在2010年的审查中所建议的那样。同样，BEIS产业战略也试图“让英国站在全球农业革命的前沿，为农民、环境和消费者带来好处，同时推动增长、就业和出口”。这将需要可持续的耕作系统，并支持其他生态系统效益的交付。要将这些新的、跨部门的政策付诸实践，将需要一个比目前更全面的横向决策框架，并以高质量的跨学科研究基地的证据为基础。能够提供多种功能的农业景观设计的新科学(Agland)将满足这一需求，并提供新的知识、数据和指标，以及研究景观的研究基础设施，以实现基于证据的景观规划。它还将致力于建立跨部门共识和确定知识差距，以便为未来景观决策SPF倡议的设计提供信息。Agland将以研究基础设施为基础，包括使用现有NERC和BBSRC战略投资(即ASSISE、S2N和Wessex Bess)验证的新指标和模型，并将通过以下目标实现这一目标：1)利用地球观测技术和现有国家数据集开发和验证新的指标，以描述农业景观的组成、结构和功能；2)构建模型，描述这些景观措施与关键的非生物和生物过程之间的关系，并量化它们在空间尺度上的变化；3)使用以前UKRI和Defra投资(“研究景观”)的数据验证这些模型；4)在考虑到土地利用变化的替代轨迹的情况下，量化集约化耕作景观内自然资本和生态系统服务，包括粮食生产的可能变化；5)利用这些知识，创建工具，支持跨部门决策者设计未来的“多功能景观”，以在多个尺度上优化粮食生产以及与生计和福祉有关的其他关键生态系统功能的交付。

The UK's land assets, and the goods and services they provide, are a finite and precious resource that is fundamental to our prosperity, and are intrinsically linked to our cultural heritage, and well-being. Over the next 50 years we expect to see unprecedented competition for land-use driven by a number of factors, including continuing growth in population and incomes, the impact of climate change and environmental degradation, new technologies (e.g. GM), and changing public attitudes and values. Around 70% (17.2 million hectares) of the UK land area is farmed, with 11.7 million ha of highly productive arable and improved grassland. UK agriculture is highly mechanised and efficient, contributing around £8.5 billion (0.6%) Gross Value Added to the UK economy annually and employing around 475,000 people. It is therefore certain that many future land-use conflicts will revolve around competition and trade-offs between food and biomass production, and other ecosystem goods and services required by society. The recently announced 25 Year Environment Plan (25YEP) outlines the UK Government's commitment to the protection and management of our environmental assets to deliver multiple benefits for society. Specifically, it states that future policy will support farmers to 'deliver benefits ....and achieve outcomes at the landscape and catchment level'. This will include habitat management and creation at the landscape scale to create resilient ecological networks, as recommended by Sir John Lawton in his 2010 review. Similarly, the BEIS Industrial Strategy seeks to 'put the UK at the forefront of the global revolution in farming to deliver benefits to farmers, the environment and consumers whilst driving growth, jobs and exports'. This will require farming systems that are sustainable and support the delivery of other ecosystem benefits. To put these new, cross-departmental policies into practice will require a more holistic landscape-scale decision-making framework than is currently available, underpinned by evidence from a high quality, cross-disciplinary research base. New Science to Enable the Design of Agricultural Landscapes that Deliver Multiple Functions (AgLand) will address this need and provide new knowledge, data and metrics, and a research infrastructure of study landscapes to enable evidence-based landscape planning. It will also aim to build cross-sectoral consensus and identify knowledge gaps to inform the design of future Landscape Decisions SPF initiatives. AgLand will build upon the research infrastructure, including new metrics and models, validated using existing NERC and BBSRC strategic investments (i.e. ASSIST, S2N and Wessex BESS), and will deliver this aim through the following objectives:1) Develop and validate new metrics to describe the composition, structure and function of agricultural landscapes using earth observation techniques and existing national datasets;2) Construct models describing the relationship between these landscape measures and key abiotic and biotic processes, and quantify how they vary across spatial scales;3) Validate these models using data from previous UKRI and Defra investments ('study landscapes');4) Quantify likely change in demand for and supply of natural capital and ecosystem services, including food production, within intensively farmed landscapes taking account of alternative trajectories of land-use change;5) Using this knowledge, create tools to support cross-departmental policy makers in the design of future 'multi-functional landscapes' to optimise, at multiple scales, the delivery of food production together with other key ecosystem functions linked to livelihoods and well-being.