Reliable, scalable monitoring of declining bird communities is essential for evaluating conservation management. In this study, we compared point counts with passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) across 11 winter wheat fields in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Fields were managed either under pesticide-free agri-environment schemes (AES) or conventional management, and analyses additionally considered Shannon habitat diversity (SHDI) and field size. PAM was validated against a blind-listening reference. We evaluated species richness, point-count relative abundance, PAM detection-days, and community composition derived from both methods. We classified species according to functional traits, including habitat preference, trophic niche, body mass, and hand-wing index. A validation index combining the top-5% mean confidence and temporal coverage achieved an expert confirmation rate of approximately 84%. Compared with point counts, PAM detected more species, averaging 74% higher richness, while between-method overlap remained substantial. Nonmetric multidimensional scaling indicated partial separation of bird communties by survey method and lower dispersion for PAM, consistent with more uniform communities under standardized sampling. Environmental vector fitting identified management regime as the strongest correlate of community composition, whereas SHDI and field size showed no significant effects. Method-specific responses to environmental gradients were broadly similar: field-level richness patterns were largely comparable, and community-weighted traits differed little, aside from a modest shift toward open-habitat species in point counts. Overall, point counts retained abundance information, whereas PAM increased detection breadth while preserving ecological patterns also captured by point counts. We recommend a hybrid workflow combining targeted point counts with broad PAM networks to deliver scalable AES monitoring and robust indicators for biodiversity assessments.

Participatory approaches have gained recognition in scientific research, particularly in modeling human-environmental interactions and social-ecological systems (SES). Despite this achievement, a lack of in-depth understanding prevails to which degree, and at which scales and levels, participation takes place during the modeling cycle. Furthermore, information on the linkages between the level of the participating stakeholders and the modeling level of agents and environmental processes remains scarce. To shed light on this research gap, we conducted a systematic review including 79 relevant studies focusing on social-ecological systems within agricultural or forestry domains. Results reveal that participation was mostly carried out at lower spatial levels (local and regional) while stakeholders commonly originated from one spatial level, mainly the study area. Agent behavior was mainly simulated at a single spatial level. The number of studies modeling multi- and cross-scale levels or integrating participation was small. In rare cross-level modeling cases, local-level agents were predominately simulated as an aggregate at higher levels. We found that stakeholders most commonly participated in model parameterization and calibration, but rarely in model results communication. Participation was also relatively strong in model design, development and validation. This can be explained by the need of scientists for model input or to improve the transparency of the modeling process. To address these gaps in future studies, we recommend to model agents operating at their “real-world” level, while capturing interactions between agents across different scales, rather than (dis)aggregate agent behaviors to a single level. Furthermore, participation should go beyond fulfilling the mere scientific requirement of model development, and should be used to enhance the applicability and relevance of SES models.

To design more efficient and equitable agricultural technologies and policies, we need to understand why individuals do not act in line with the expectations of researchers and policy makers, and we need to understand how and why interventions exacerbate existing inequalities. Both can be understood by exploring how aspirations influence households’ future-oriented behaviour. This paper does so by introducing the 3spire model, which integrates three aspirational dimensions: income, food self-sufficiency, and leisure, and by examining how aspirations adapt, shift and influence households’ behaviour over time. The 3spire model incorporates aspiration adaptation theory to simulate agents’ farm management decisions and performance over time. Agents, representing farming households, interact within a social network and consider alternative plans iteratively, choosing the first satisficing plan. Preliminary findings indicated that initial wealth influenced aspiration dynamics. There was, however, great heterogeneity in these aspiration dynamics, also among households with similar levels of initial wealth, suggesting additional factors at play. Further research should investigate other types of non-monetary wealth and incorporate context-specific data to inform targeted policies and interventions, fostering equitable rural development, and reducing poverty and inequality.

Photovoltaics is one of the key technologies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and achieving climate neutrality for Europe by 2050, which has led to the promotion of solar parks. These parks can span up to several hundred hectares, and grassland vegetation is usually created between and under the panels. Establishing species-rich grasslands using native seed mixtures can enhance a variety of ecosystem services, including pollination. We present an overall concept for designing native seed mixtures to promote pollinators, especially wild bees, in solar parks. It takes into account the specific site conditions, the small-scale modified conditions caused by the solar panels, and the requirement to avoid panel shading. We highlight the challenges and constraints resulting from the availability of species on the seed market. Furthermore, we provide an easy-to-use index for determining the value of native seed mixtures for wild bee enhancement and apply it as an example to several mixtures specifically designed for solar parks. The increased availability of regional seed would allow a more thorough consideration of pollinator-relevant traits when composing native seed mixtures, thereby enhancing ecosystem services associated with pollinators such as wild bees.

Food-system studies often assess dynamics in production, consumption or processing and logistics in a spatially abstract manner. Land-system studies traditionally analyze land-use/land cover change with its environmental and societal drivers as well as impacts and are typically spatially explicit. Primary production is a main node where food and land systems overlap. We used a systematic literature review to determine how existing studies in Europe address the interface of food and land systems. We identified three pathways of studies: economic, footprint and crop modeling studies (pathway 1), and scenario-based land-use/land-cover change and remote sensing studies (pathway 2), and (qualitative) policy studies (pathway 3). The reviewed studies only partially integrate land- and food-system research. Most of these studies are stronger on the land- than on the food-system side and miss processing as well as distribution and sales. In addition, major linkages between land and food systems are implemented deterministically in the reviewed studies (e.g., through static land requirements for diets). Here, the role of actors and dynamic models considering systemic feedbacks could improve the realisms of studies. Therefore, this study develops a framework to reveal the interplay between food- and land-system research. It focusses on urban-rural linkages as both research strands analyze major processes at this interface: the rural-urban exchange of food and urban sprawl. Future research should especially address and quantify governance, which is hardly quantified to date. Urban-rural linkages are weakly considered in the reviewed literature and if considered only from an urban perspective. Thereby, it would be interesting to study to which extent rural population and governance shape urban-rural-linkages, and how a change of focus from rural to urban areas could provide additional insights.

To effectively address food security, we need tools that assess governance measures (for example, strategic storage reserves, cash transfers or trade regulations) ex ante. Simulation models can estimate the impact of such measures via scenarios with differently governed food systems. On the basis of a systematic review of 110 simulation studies published over 2000-2021, we examined how food security governance has been represented, and identified needs for future simulation model development. We found that studies commonly used agent-based, system dynamics, and computable general equilibrium models; tended to be production, trade or consumption centric; assessed the impact of a wide variety of mostly treasure- or authority-based measures; and applied diverse food security indicators, mostly of access or availability. We also identified blind spots (for example, simulation of nodal measures) and proposed how to address these blind spots (for example, telecoupling) and to make food security governance simulation studies fit for meta-analyses (for example, harmonizing food security indicators for comparison).

Resilience thinking is increasingly promoted to address some of the grand challenges of the 21st century: providing water, energy, and food to all, while staying within the limits of the Earth system that is undergoing (climate) change. Concurrently, a partially overlapping body of literature on the water–energy–food (WEF) nexus has emerged through the realization that water, energy, and food systems are intricately linked—and should therefore be understood and managed in conjunction. This paper reviews recent scientific publications at the intersection of both concepts in order to i) examine the status quo on resilience thinking as it is applied in WEF nexus studies; ii) map the research landscape along major research foci and conceptualizations; iii) and propose a research agenda of topics distilled from gaps in the current research landscape. We identify key conceptualizations of both resilience and nexus framings that are used across studies, as we observe pronounced differences regarding the nexus’ nature, scope, emphasis and level of integration, and resilience’s scope, type, methodological and thematic foci. Promising research avenues include i) improving the understanding of resilience in the WEF nexus across scales, sectors, domains, and disciplines; ii) developing tools and indicators to measure and assess resilience of WEF systems; iii) bridging the implementation gap brought about by (governing) complexity; iv) integrating or reconciling resilience and nexus thinking; v) and considering other development principles and frameworks toward solving WEF challenges beside and beyond resilience, including control, efficiency, sustainability, and equity.

Traditionally, agricultural land-use change (LUC) analyses focus on the conversion of natural land to agriculture especially in developing countries. Studies considering recent agricultural LUC (e.g., to built-up land) for the last two decades in more stable agricultural systems in Western Europe are mostly missing for the regional scale. Major LUC pathways, their drivers and potential counteracting factors such as subsidies or an increasing demand for regional agricultural products should be analyzed. Using the Metropolitan Region of Nuremberg in Germany, we quantified (i) major pathways of agricultural LUC with a transition matrix, and (ii) spatial patterns of agricultural LUC with optimized hot-spot analyses. (iii) We used boosted regression trees (BRT) to identify factors which foster agricultural LUC towards settlement and forest as well as semi-natural open land. Results for the last 15 years showed a considerable decline of agricultural land due to afforestation (3.1%) and due to settlement and infrastructure development (2.7%), which were the main LUC pathways. Both settlement development and afforestation concentrated at existing hotspots of urban development and in forest-dominated areas. Settlement-driven agricultural LUC was largely dependent on population density and development and independent from agricultural or biophysical parameters. Forest-driven LUC was mostly explained by agricultural parameters (i.e., low land rents and biophysical factors such as high slopes). Governance instruments such as regional planning and payments for maintaining agriculture on marginal land did not seem to maintain a balanced spatial distribution of agricultural land. If not improved, settlement development will considerably outcompete agriculture in prosperous sub-regions. Economic constraints will force farmers to abandon agriculture for forest on marginal locations at the cost of an intact cultural landscape.

Current changes in food systems in low- and middle-income countries are not only associated with increasing demand for food driven by population growth. Shifts in diets with different production and processing structures likely have a more considerable impact in future: higher land requirements (e.g., more animal-based proteins) or changing production regions and structures (e.g., higher share of (imported) processed food). Whether the expected transition in low- and middle-income countries that is considerably larger than in high income countries is resilient, is questionable. Beyond, the resilience of food systems is not consistently assessed and hardly synthesized for low- and middle-income countries. A systematic review based on a keyword search was therefore conducted to identify research gaps on food system resilience for low- and middle-income countries. This review identified three clusters of studies: studies in cluster 1 (global models and primary production) mainly model global (change) impacts on crop production, mostly disregard the downstream of the value chain and use globally accessible crop data (e.g., for cereals). Studies in cluster 2 (farmers' behavior under global change) mainly analyze with surveys and workshop formats the resilience of farmers and farming households under global change phenomena such as climate change and equally explore especially farmers' adaptative capacity. Studies in cluster 3 (food systems and value chains) take a more holistic perspective and mostly qualitatively analyze the resilience of food systems based on existing studies. Quantitatively, most studies model the robustness of food systems and not their transformability. Future research should quantitatively assess the adaptiveness and transformability of food systems and study the resilience of food systems beyond primary production. Studies should quantitatively model the impact between the food system and associated environmental and social systems and along the food value chain to generate relevant insights for food system governance.

Research on recreation in forests often aims at quantifying the recreational area, counting the numbers of visitors, or assessing the attractiveness of forest characteristics. The nature and spatial patterns of local recreation within a forest area are far harder to detect. Recreational behavior and perceived forest benefits (FB) such as fresh air or tranquility are weakly studied. We investigated local recreation in an urban and a rural forest in southern Germany during a summer and a winter survey. We mapped the visitors' paths and asked them to rate FB and to name reasons for pathway choice. We analyzed visitors' patterns of perceived FB and spatial behavior. Forest visitors concentrated their use along existing paths in limited parts of both forests. Most parts of the forest were used by multiple recreation groups, while specific groups (e.g., cyclists) dominated only small parts. Forest visitors gave high ratings to FB such as fresh air, experiencing nature, escaping everyday life, or health. Spatial clusters of similarly perceived FB were detectable but not fundamental in both forests. A regression analysis showed that FB ratings were significantly affected by visitor groups and insignificantly affected by forest characteristics or demographic factors. Pathway choice was dominantly driven by habit, spontaneity, or vicinity to the visitors' homes and not attributable to specific forest characteristics. In sum, we found a weak connection between recreational behavior and demand for specific forest characteristics. For local recreation, we recommend to provide a basic level of highly rated FB and to avoid nuisances rather than designing forests for a desired appearance.

National or supranational policies such as the EU Renewable Energy Directive (EU RED) prescribe both the assessment of the environmental impacts of biofuel and bioenergy production, as well as their impact on ecosystem services (ESS). However, it is not clear what differentiates environmental assessment (EA) and ESS studies. Therefore, we conducted a systematic review and compared ESS and EA studies of biofuel and bioenergy production. We focused on topics such as whether both approaches allow for a holistic sustainability assessment of biofuel/bioenergy production, are suitable for practitioners, and which gaps for policymaking they can bridge. The results of the systematic review suggest that ESS studies tend to assess economic and social sustainability more prominently when compared to EA studies. Furthermore, ESS studies often assess ESS bundles and thereby cover multiple environmental impact categories, while EA studies focus more on selected environmental impacts (e.g., GHG emissions, air pollution, water quality and availability), targeting fewer environmental impacts to achieve slightly more feasible and reliable impact assessments (lower uncertainty). EA studies are dominated by life-cycle assessments. Contrastingly, ESS studies rather cover the entire social-ecological dimensions of biofuel and bioenergy production. Due to their systematic approach, they act as an envelope for multiple methodologies that can quantify the sustainability impacts of biofuel and bioenergy production. In this respect, it can be argued that ESS studies could support policymaking bridging some existing gaps such as the underrepresentation of social assessments in the EU RED.

Small-scale farmers are highly threatened by climate change. Experts often base their interventions to support farmers to adapt to climate change on their own perception of farmers’ livelihood risks. However, if differences in risk perception between farmers and experts exist, these interventions might fail. Thus, for effective design and implementation of adaptation strategies for farmers, it is necessary to understand farmers’ perception and how it influences their decision-making. We analyze farmers’ and experts’ systemic view on climate change threats in relation to other agricultural livelihood risks and assess the differences between their perceptions. For Cauca, Colombia, we found that experts and farmers perceived climate-related and other livelihood risks differently. While farmers’ perceived risks were a failure in crop production and lack of access to health and educational services, experts, in contrast, perceived insecurity and the unreliable weather to be the highest risks for farmers. On barriers that prevent farmers from taking action against risks, experts perceived both external factors such as the national policy and internal factors such as the adaptive capacity of farmers to be the main barriers. Farmers ranked the lack of information, especially about weather and climate, as their main barrier to adapt. Effective policies aiming at climate change adaptation need to relate climate change risks to other production risks as farmers often perceive climate change in the context of other risks. Policymakers in climate change need to consider differences in risk perception.

In forestry research, the concept of ecosystem services (ESS) is less prominent than in agricultural studies. One reason might be that multifunctional forestry and the concept of forest functions, i.e., societal demand from forest, are established and legally required planning approaches in Central Europe, e.g., in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. To explore differences in concept and perspective, we conducted a participatory stakeholder workshop to identify, score, and map ESS in an urban forest in Germany. For comparison, we used existing forest function maps. Forest function mapping as planning approach is based on a regional-scale expert assessment of forest agencies. The local ESS scoring showed a clear preference for recreation, drinking water, biodiversity, mediation of climate and water, and wood provision in decreasing order. Most stakeholder groups scored recreation highest. Drinking water was also important for most stakeholders. Recreation stakeholders scored unbalanced with an apparent focus on their own demand (Gini coefficient: 0.83). Contrastingly, forestry stakeholders scored the ESS in a balanced manner (Gini coefficient: 0.47). ESS and forest function maps highly overlapped. The stakeholders identified both synergies and trade-offs between timber and biodiversity and between drinking water and biodiversity depending on the management. Recreation has mostly trade-offs, with timber, hunting, and drinking water. The stakeholders mapped only few ESS in addition to forest functions, e.g., feed production, beekeeping, and biodiversity hotspots. Although forest functions consider most forest benefits despite weak stakeholder consultation, the opportunity to prioritize forest benefits and to analyze interactions is a clear added value of the ESS approach. The paradigm of simultaneous provision of all forest functions does not reflect heterogeneous societal preferences. The stakeholders showed a rather low level of conflict and a high level of understanding for differences in their prioritization. The reason might be the long local tradition of multiple-use forestry beginning in the late 1800s. The study area is an example for an urban forest of a larger city in Europe with high pressure from local recreation. It would be interesting to test the approach for other environmental conditions and locations of an urban forest. In general, the developed approach could be used to evaluate the quality of other planning instruments for multiple-use forestry worldwide regarding their consideration of stakeholder requirements and the potential added value of the ESS approach.

In recent ecosystem service studies, historical data have gained importance as basis for analysing temporal trends and for adapted land management strategies; however, the total number of such studies remains small. Contributing to recent efforts, the primary objective of this study was to assess local ecosystem service products historically used in Germany and to link their distribution patterns to environmental gradients and traditional land-use systems. From maps and detailed regional descriptions of regionally distinct historic farmsteads, building materials used and village types we extracted information on ecosystem service products appropriated in 1950 and before. A spatial model was used to test the derived ecosystem service diversity against topo-climatic conditions. Regional service richness was further compared to the type of traditional land-use system (i.e. focus on crops, focus on livestock or mixed systems). We were able to identify hot spots of historical ecosystem service provisioning in Northern and Southern Germany, whereas significantly lower service numbers were recorded in Eastern Germany. The strong spatial differences in the diversity of historical service products could be explained best by (high) precipitation during the vegetation period. Furthermore, traditional livestock keeping, which relied on various fodder sources and fertilisation techniques to improve poor soil quality, and mixed systems mostly co-occurred with higher regional ecosystem service richness. The baseline of historical ecosystem service provisioning analysed here aids our understanding of current land-use patterns in Germany. Furthermore, a change of perception for specific landscape elements became apparent from our analyses. For example, hedges planted to separate livestock and to provide fuel in the past are today appreciated as important elements for biodiversity conservation. Furthermore, our study helps to preserve knowledge "about locally sourced ecosystem services thereby increasing the understanding of cultural landscapes which may help to maintain their remnants. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Global demand for agricultural and forestry products fundamentally affects regional land-use change associated with environmental impacts (EIs) such as erosion. In contrast to aggregated global metrics such as greenhouse gas (GHG) balances, local/regional EIs of different agricultural and forestry production regions need methods which enable worldwide EI comparisons. The key aspect is to control environmental heterogeneity to reveal man-made differences of EIs between production regions. Environmental heterogeneity is the variation in biotic and abiotic environmental conditions. In the present study, we used three approaches to control environmental heterogeneity: (i) environmental stratification, (ii) potential natural vegetation (PNV), and (iii) regional environmental thresholds to compare EIs of solid biomass production. We compared production regions of managed forests and plantation forests in subtropical (Satilla watershed, Southeastern US), tropical (Rufiji basin, Tanzania), and temperate (Mulde watershed, Central Germany) climates. All approaches supported the comparison of the EIs of different land-use classes between and within production regions. They also standardized the different EIs for a comparison between the EI categories. The EIs for different land-use classes within a production region decreased with increasing degree of naturalness (forest, plantation forestry, and cropland). PNV was the most reliable approach, but lacked feasibility and relevance. The PNV approach explicitly included most of the factors that drive environmental heterogeneity in contrast to the stratification and threshold approaches. The stratification approach allows consistent global application due to available data. Regional environmental thresholds only included arbitrarily selected aspects of environmental heterogeneity; they are only available for few EIs. Especially, the PNV and stratification approaches are options to compare regional EIs of biomass or crop production such as erosion, biodiversity, or water quality impacts worldwide and thereby complement existing metrics assessing global EIs such as GHG emissions.

Meeting the world's growing energy demand through bioenergy production involves extensive land-use change which could have severe environmental and social impacts. Second generation bioenergy feedstocks offer a possible solution to this problem. They have the potential to reduce land-use conflicts between food and bioenergy production as they can be grown on low quality land not suitable for food production. However, a comprehensive impact assessment that considers multiple ecosystem services (ESS) and biodiversity is needed to identify the environmentally best feedstock option, as trade-offs are inherent. In this study, we simulate the spatial distribution of short rotation coppices (SRCs) in the landscape of the Mulde watershed in Central Germany by modeling profit-maximizing farmers under different economic and policy-driven scenarios using a spatially explicit economic simulation model. This allows to derive general insights and a mechanistic understanding of regional-scale impacts on multiple ESS in the absence of large-scale implementation. The modeled distribution of SRCs, required to meet the regional demand of combined heat and power (CHP) plants for solid biomass, had little or no effect on the provided ESS. In the policy-driven scenario, placing SRCs on low or high quality soils to provide ecological focus areas, as required within the Common Agricultural Policy in the EU, had little effect on ESS. Only a substantial increase in the SRC production area, beyond the regional demand of CHP plants, had a relevant effect, namely a negative impact on food production as well as a positive impact on biodiversity and regulating ESS. Beneficial impacts occurred for single ESS. However, the number of sites with balanced ESS supply hardly increased due to larger shares of SRCs in the landscape. Regression analyses showed that the occurrence of sites with balanced ESS supply was more strongly driven by biophysical factors than by the SRC share in the landscape. This indicates that SRCs negligibly affect trade-offs between individual ESS. Coupling spatially explicit economic simulation models with environmental and ESS assessment models can contribute to a comprehensive impact assessment of bioenergy feedstocks that have not yet been planted.

Biomass for bioenergy is debated for its potential synergies or tradeoffs with other provisioning and regulating ecosystem services (ESS). This biomass may originate from different production systems and may be purposefully grown or obtained from residues. Increased concerns globally about the sustainable production of biomass for bioenergy has resulted in numerous certification schemes focusing on best management practices, mostly operating at the plot/field scale. In this study, we compare the ESS of two watersheds in the southeastern US. We show the ESS tradeoffs and synergies of plantation forestry, i.e., pine poles, and agricultural production, i.e., wheat straw and corn stover, with the counterfactual natural or semi-natural forest in both watersheds. The plantation forestry showed less distinct tradeoffs than did corn and wheat production, i.e., for carbon storage, P and sediment retention, groundwater recharge, and biodiversity. Using indicators of landscape composition and configuration, we showed that landscape planning can affect the overall ESS supply and can partly determine if locally set environmental thresholds are being met. Indicators on landscape composition, configuration and naturalness explained more than 30% of the variation in ESS supply. Landscape elements such as largely connected forest patches or more complex agricultural patches, e.g., mosaics with shrub and grassland patches, may enhance ESS supply in both of the bioenergy production systems. If tradeoffs between biomass production and other ESS are not addressed by landscape planning, it may be reasonable to include rules in certification schemes that require, e.g., the connectivity of natural or semi-natural forest patches in plantation forestry or semi-natural landscape elements in agricultural production systems. Integrating indicators on landscape configuration and composition into certification schemes is particularly relevant considering that certification schemes are governance tools used to ensure comparable sustainability standards for biomass produced in countries with variable or absent legal frameworks for landscape planning.

Bioenergy is receiving increasing attention because it may reduce greenhouse gas emissions, secure and diversify energy supplies and stimulate rural development. The environmental sustainability of bioenergy production systems is often determined through lifecycle assessments that focus on global environmental effects, such as the emission of greenhouse gases or air pollutants. Local/regional environmental impacts, e.g., the impacts on soil or on biodiversity, require site-specific and flexible options for the assessment of environmental sustainability, such as the criteria and indicators used in bioenergy certification schemes.In this study, we compared certification schemes and assessed the indicator quality through the environmental impact categories, using a standardized rating scale to evaluate the indicators. Current certification schemes have limitations in their representation of the environmental systems affected by feedstock production. For example, these schemes predominantly use feasible causal indicators, instead of more reliable but less feasible effect indicators. Furthermore, the comprehensiveness of the depicted environmental systems and the causal links between human land use activities and biophysical processes in these systems have been assessed. Bioenergy certification schemes seem to demonstrate compliance with underlying legislation, such as the EU Renewable Energy Directive, rather than ensure environmental sustainability. Beyond, certification schemes often lack a methodology or thresholds for sustainable biomass use. Lacking thresholds, imprecise causal links and incomplete indicator sets may hamper comparisons of the environmental performances of different feedstocks. To enhance existing certification schemes, we propose combining the strengths of several certification schemes with research-based indicators, to increase the reliability of environmental assessments. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.