SALBES - Scenarios for Agricultural Landscapes

European agricultural landscapes are undergoing profound changes, often at great environmental costs such as loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Scientific methodologies to identify and model drivers and impacts of location specific ecological infrastructures at landscape level are insufficient so far. However, they are needed to safeguard biodiversity and ecosystem services, and to conserve the resilience of ecosystems under a changing climate and land use. The main aims of SALBES are to i) identify land use drivers, ii) model land use decisions under a set of stakeholder- driven scenarios, and iii) analyse the resulting land use impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services. Long term assessments of complex systems require input of appropriate models of various disciplines. In the case of agricultural landscapes, we utilize and adapt existing generic bio-economic farm models capturing the impact of changing conditions for agriculture and delivering input to models assessing the impact of land use options directly and through interdependencies between land use and landscape structures on biodiversity and ecosystem services. Building upon the expertise and available modelling approaches within the consortium, SALBES will develop integrated assessment models adapted to the respective regional peculiarities. Case study areas in four European countries will represent various settings. The primary focus will be on stakeholder initiatives, especially from agriculture, which have already begun implementing biodiversity and ecosystem services conservation schemes into the agricultural production processes. Crucial research activities, including stakeholder input, will analyse the current agricultural production and future options, including adaptation to climatic change and agro-technological progress. The results will reveal potentials and limitations on what agriculture can do to maintain the ecological infrastructure within a landscape. This includes various levels, from farms to policies, offering paths to the most cost efficient implementation of resilient ecological infrastructures. These model combinations, co-designed by stakeholders, constitute scientific advancements and will cover a variety of biodiversity and ecosystem services of landscape specific importance. Most importantly, the agricultural production systems will be adequately integrated. This approach will be of political interest by identifying goals and actions on the scale of various fields of action to safeguard sustainable development of agricultural landscapes. The team at BOKU University contributes with its expertise on integrated bio-economic farm modelling. It will lead WP4 on Impacts of drivers on farmers economic decision making and resulting land use. Modelled land use outputs are input to models on biodiversity and ecosystem services. BOKU will support the set-up of farm models in the case study regions and will run the FAMOS[space] model in the Austrian case study Wienerwald Biosphere Reserve. Furthermore, BOKU will contribute to WP2 on Multi-actor/stakeholder approach and scenario development due to its expertise on the management of stakeholder processes and scenario building process gained from national and international research projects.