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Managing ecosystem services for agriculture:Will landscape-scale management pay?

Cong, Ronggang LU ; Smith, Henrik LU ; Olsson, Ola LU orcid and Brady, Mark LU orcid (2014) In Ecological Economics 99. p.53-62
Abstract
Agriculture's reliance on ecosystem services creates economic and ecological interdependencies between crop production and biodiversity. Interactions with mobile organisms are particularly complex because they depend on the spatial configuration of habitat at large scales. As such conserving habitat is likely to benefit multiple farmers whereas conservation costs are born individually, creating potential interdependencies among farmers. We explore under what conditions landscape-scale management of ecosystem services is likely to benefit farmers compared to managing them at the farm-scale. To do this we develop an agent-based model (ABM) to predict the landscape configuration emerging from farm-scale management under different conditions:... (More)
Agriculture's reliance on ecosystem services creates economic and ecological interdependencies between crop production and biodiversity. Interactions with mobile organisms are particularly complex because they depend on the spatial configuration of habitat at large scales. As such conserving habitat is likely to benefit multiple farmers whereas conservation costs are born individually, creating potential interdependencies among farmers. We explore under what conditions landscape-scale management of ecosystem services is likely to benefit farmers compared to managing them at the farm-scale. To do this we develop an agent-based model (ABM) to predict the landscape configuration emerging from farm-scale management under different conditions: initial landscape, crop and pollinator characteristics. As a benchmark, the landscape configuration from landscapescale management is derived through a global optimization procedure. Not only do we find that efficiency improves with landscape-scale management, but also that all farmers would benefit from it (given dependence of crop yields on ecosystem services). However, we also find that the individual incentives to avoid maintaining habitat on one's own land are relatively high; therefore creating conditions for a Prisoner's Dilemma-type problem. On the other hand we also demonstrate that an incentive-compatible contract exists that can promote efficient landscape management (by combining side-payments with fines for defection). (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
; ; and
organization
publishing date
type
Contribution to journal
publication status
published
subject
keywords
Agent-based model Ecosystem service Environmental policy Habitat conservation Pollination Landscape-scale management
in
Ecological Economics
volume
99
pages
53 - 62
publisher
Elsevier
external identifiers
  • wos:000332820900006
  • scopus:84893436553
ISSN
0921-8009
DOI
10.1016/j.ecolecon.2014.01.007
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
d1050e29-e6d2-4b9a-a566-7d0bd80b9f82 (old id 4281328)
alternative location
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800914000111
date added to LUP
2016-04-01 13:10:35
date last changed
2024-05-09 03:25:22
@article{d1050e29-e6d2-4b9a-a566-7d0bd80b9f82,
  abstract     = {{Agriculture's reliance on ecosystem services creates economic and ecological interdependencies between crop production and biodiversity. Interactions with mobile organisms are particularly complex because they depend on the spatial configuration of habitat at large scales. As such conserving habitat is likely to benefit multiple farmers whereas conservation costs are born individually, creating potential interdependencies among farmers. We explore under what conditions landscape-scale management of ecosystem services is likely to benefit farmers compared to managing them at the farm-scale. To do this we develop an agent-based model (ABM) to predict the landscape configuration emerging from farm-scale management under different conditions: initial landscape, crop and pollinator characteristics. As a benchmark, the landscape configuration from landscapescale management is derived through a global optimization procedure. Not only do we find that efficiency improves with landscape-scale management, but also that all farmers would benefit from it (given dependence of crop yields on ecosystem services). However, we also find that the individual incentives to avoid maintaining habitat on one's own land are relatively high; therefore creating conditions for a Prisoner's Dilemma-type problem. On the other hand we also demonstrate that an incentive-compatible contract exists that can promote efficient landscape management (by combining side-payments with fines for defection).}},
  author       = {{Cong, Ronggang and Smith, Henrik and Olsson, Ola and Brady, Mark}},
  issn         = {{0921-8009}},
  keywords     = {{Agent-based model Ecosystem service Environmental policy Habitat conservation Pollination Landscape-scale management}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  pages        = {{53--62}},
  publisher    = {{Elsevier}},
  series       = {{Ecological Economics}},
  title        = {{Managing ecosystem services for agriculture:Will landscape-scale management pay?}},
  url          = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2014.01.007}},
  doi          = {{10.1016/j.ecolecon.2014.01.007}},
  volume       = {{99}},
  year         = {{2014}},
}