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

实施新颖的、环境友好的农业方法可以帮助确保农业能够为不断增长的人口提供足够的食物，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价。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。本提案旨在通过评估生态农业方法在区域尺度上的可持续性来解决这些问题，这两个不同的农业景观位于英国的低地——高Weald AONB和Berkshire Downs。问卷调查和定性访谈相结合，将获得深入了解影响采用生态耕作方法的驱动因素。这些见解将用于为不同生态农业扩展方案的发展提供信息，空间分析技术将用于为每个方案生成假设的景观地图。通过对生态耕作方式对环境、社会和经济影响的现有文献的分析，将了解每种情景下不同的耕作方式空间格局如何影响公共产品和生态系统服务的提供。然后，这些发现将被结合到一个综合的可持续性评估中，其中生态农业方法将根据区域可持续性目标进行评估。该评估将以网络分析为基础，以调查每种方法的驱动因素与影响之间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.