**3. Scheduling conservation action into productive landscapes**

#### **3.1. Potential conservation value of productive landscapes**

Production ecology and conservation biology have long been viewed as two opposing approaches to managing ecological systems. With increasing global food demand projected in the next 50 years and decreasing biological diversity that is vital to future productivity, separating the two fields seems counter-productive. A study by Broussard *et al.* [31] evaluated a range of approaches to agricultural management and found that by integrating an ecological approach into environmental management it is possible to feed growing populations without further encroaching into natural systems. To do so, however, may require adopting a landscape management approach to intensification, biodiversity, and ecosystem service protection [32].

There is growing evidence that productive land use can contribute to the conservation of biological diversity [33–36]. Some studies highlight the importance of population exchanges among areas of different disturbance regimes and among early and late successional habitats [37, 38]. Though intensified land use is undeniably the main cause of biodiversity loss, there are opportunities for low intensity land-use systems or those in the form of polycultures and/ or agroforestry patterns to play important roles in large-scale biodiversity conservation. Moreover, pockets of native vegetation found in productive landscapes are refuges for native flora and fauna [39–41] and provide land corridors for a range of wildlife [42]. These frag‐ mented landscapes are also of great importance for the establishment of studies related both to species preservation in the long term (including the re-introduction and translocation of species) and to the genetic health of isolated populations. Remaining riparian habitats can also play a major role for both humans and nature in productive landscapes [35] by providing habitat for wildlife and maintaining important ecosystem services (such as clean water) that are important for productivity.

diversity is not clear, indicating no single biodiversity measure could be used as a substitute

Global efforts to conserve biological diversity have the potential to deliver economic benefits to people [28]. Whether biodiversity conservation could be justified on economic grounds depends on the scale over which benefits are measured [29] or the policy context [30]. A recent study [29] found that at local and global scales conservation benefits outweigh the benefits offered by development, but the balance changes when assessing economic benefits at the national level. For example, the strong positive correlations between species richness and productivity might be interpreted as a win-win for economic growth and the protection of species; however, the economic benefit of conserving high value land at the national scale is limited, and conservation is more likely through smaller scale reserve selection, which would

Greater diversity in terms of numbers of species may be linked to greater system productivity [19]. For example, decreased local diversity can lead to lower ecosystem productivity, lower use of limiting resources, and lower temporal stability. This is of potential relevance to economists because it provides evidence of the direct value of biodiversity to ecosystem function and the services provided to society by ecosystems. However, there are a number of ecosystem services that are not adequately represented by productivity measures, such as pollination and control of pests. This presents an on-going joint challenge between economists and ecologists – how to quantify these services in a way that can be valued by tools of

Production ecology and conservation biology have long been viewed as two opposing approaches to managing ecological systems. With increasing global food demand projected in the next 50 years and decreasing biological diversity that is vital to future productivity, separating the two fields seems counter-productive. A study by Broussard *et al.* [31] evaluated a range of approaches to agricultural management and found that by integrating an ecological approach into environmental management it is possible to feed growing populations without further encroaching into natural systems. To do so, however, may require adopting a landscape management approach to intensification, biodiversity, and ecosystem service protection [32].

There is growing evidence that productive land use can contribute to the conservation of biological diversity [33–36]. Some studies highlight the importance of population exchanges among areas of different disturbance regimes and among early and late successional habitats [37, 38]. Though intensified land use is undeniably the main cause of biodiversity loss, there are opportunities for low intensity land-use systems or those in the form of polycultures and/ or agroforestry patterns to play important roles in large-scale biodiversity conservation. Moreover, pockets of native vegetation found in productive landscapes are refuges for native

**3. Scheduling conservation action into productive landscapes**

**3.1. Potential conservation value of productive landscapes**

for ecosystem services, and vice versa.

4 Biodiversity - The Dynamic Balance of the Planet

likely benefit only a few species.

economists.

In addition to contributing to biodiversity protection, productive landscapes are interrelated to a range of ecosystems services that are associated with biological conservation. Such landscapes receive services such as pollination, soil fertility, and water retention from sur‐ rounding natural systems but also contribute to services such as soil retentions and food production. The approach adopted for managing productive landscapes can have significant impact on the services on which it depends or provides. Water quality, pollination and nutrient cycling, soil retention, carbon sequestration, and biodiversity conservation are all highly vulnerable to changes in management practices. Some relationships are easy to identify, while others are much more difficult to measure [43]. For example, the relationship between the number of pollinators, crop yields, and the use of pesticides is easy to identity (pollinators will directly increase with crop yield and decrease with increased use of insecticides), while the benefits of wetlands are much more indirect (wetlands reduce the load of nitrogen in surface water resulting from agricultural fields).

Another important ecosystem service that has been associated with biodiversity is natural pest control [32, 44, 45]. Natural pest control provides environmental and economic benefits. Although productive landscapes with networks of natural habitat can provide refuge for a range of pests [46], there is evidence that multiple non-productive habitat types may also favour natural pest control (e.g. grassland, herbaceous wooden habitats and wetlands) [44, 47, 48]. Spatial scale and the distribution of natural habitat may influence the natural pest control function. For example, diverse small-scale landscapes provide better conditions for natural pest control than do large-scale landscapes [49]. Overall, there is a need for more studies to quantify the effects of landscape composition on natural pest control, and further investigation into the benefits biodiversity restoration programmes may offer to productive landscapes.

#### **3.2. Integrated conservation planning in productive landscapes**

There is an increasing expectation that productive (i.e. agricultural) landscapes should be managed to preserve or enhance biodiversity (e.g. [50]). Often, the impacts of pressures associated with productive landscapes (and management interventions aimed at mitigating them) are assessed using local measures, such as native species richness or dominance. However, it is questionable how relevant such measures are for national-scale conservation priorities, since they may merely reflect changes in the occurrence and abundance of common, unthreatened indigenous species [50]. Ideally, any attempts to enhance biodiversity in productive landscapes should contribute to national conservation objectives. Integrated conservation planning [51] provides an obvious means for achieving this.

Generally, two independent strands contribute to integrated conservation planning – ecosys‐ tem-centred and species-centred prioritisation [52]. An ecosystem-centred approach prioritises efforts that increase the representation of indigenous biodiversity across the full range of environment, ecosystem, and habitat types by enhancing or protection highly modified ecosystem types (thus enhancing or protecting Environmental Representation). A speciescentred approach prioritises species based on their conservation status, or some measure of current vs potential distribution – with conservation efforts benefiting the most severely threatened species receiving the highest priority. Some frameworks also consider existing conservation efforts in prioritising new efforts. For instance, threatened species or environment types that already receive a high degree of protection may be assigned lower priority than those that receive little or no protection.

This has obvious implications for designing funding models and legislative frameworks to enhance biodiversity in productive landscapes. For instance, if society decides that biodiversity enhancement in a requirement for agricultural industries to obtain a licence to operate, it may be inefficient to demand that every landowner embarks on a significant biodiversity enhance‐ ment programme. Rather, it will be more efficient for biodiversity enhancement to operate at the industry level, where industry bodies collect fees from landowners which are then used to fund management in areas of high potential biodiversity gain. Similarly, it would be inefficient to offer every landowner a subsidy in return for carrying out biodiversity enhancements. Rather, it would be better to target subsidies at landowners whose farms contain large areas

Prioritising Land-Use Decisions for the Optimal Delivery of Ecosystem Services and Biodiversity Protection in…

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/58255

7

**4. Land-use planning for ecosystem services and biodiversity protection in**

Spatial optimisation is a powerful method to explore the potentials of a given area to improve the spatial coherence of land-use functions. It is suitable for identifying land-use configurations which optimally match with spatially varying ecosystem characteristics as well as stake-holder

Spatial optimisation models have been successfully used to address complex spatial planning problems [61–65] including forest management and timber harvest [66], agricultural issues [61, 65, 67], general issues of land-use change [68], and habitat suitability [69]. Modelling method‐ ologies range from dynamic models based on difference equations of exponential growth [66,

The complexity of an optimisation model depends on the complexity of the ecosystem (number of variables, degree of non-linearity, etc.) and the spatial complexity (size of the study area, grid cell size, number of spatially interacting processes). Within land-use planning linear optimisation methods are often not applicable because of the qualitative character of the relations and the large number of variables and/or relations to be optimised. In this case, heuristic methods such as Genetic Algorithms are applied, given that there are few restrictions

Using spatial optimisation tools that systematically consider a range of scenarios, objectives, constraints, and stakeholder or societal preferences helps decision-makers gain insight into the full spectrum of feasible solutions. The tools also allow them to explore opportunities creatively in relation to the imposed limits. However, such use also can result in a simplified representation of options and trade-offs. The accuracy of the result of a spatial optimisation exercise depends on the quality of the input data and the complexity of the model. The more complex the model and the more spatial relationships considered, the greater the uncertainty in the optimisation. Furthermore, a relatively stable land-use pattern indicates a larger degree of freedom in terms of planning alternatives, whereas a relatively unstable land-use pattern

69] to complex models based on systems of non-linear differential equations [70].

regarding the formulation of the variables and their relations [61].

of high potential biodiversity gain.

**4.1. Spatial optimisation of ecosystem services**

**productive landscapes**

expectations.

Clearance of indigenous vegetation for agriculture and land-use intensification has severely reduced indigenous biodiversity representation within productive lowland ecosystems (i.e. has reduced environmental representation), so that there is often little or no remnant habitat available for conservation (e.g. [53, 54]. Consequently, ecological restoration is necessary to ensure representation of these ecosystems in conservation networks [53, 55, 56].

In many countries, clearance of indigenous vegetation has been especially severe in environ‐ ments of limited geographic extent, such as coastal and riparian habitats (e.g. [57]), or ecosys‐ tems on unusual substrates (e.g. [58, 59]). Thus areas providing very high gains in environmental representation through restoration or protection will often occupy very small sites. This leads to a right-skewed distribution where most sites provide low environmental representation gains while a few sites provide very large gains. Because environmental representation gain will often be strongly right-skewed, it may be especially vulnerable to trade-offs in multi-objective optimisations of restoration effort. This arises because high values for environmental representation gain are unlikely to co-occur with high values for ecosystem service gains [60]. This means that when ecosystem service benefits are included as criteria for deciding where to apply restoration effort, environmental representation gains will often be much lower than if it were the only criterion. The environmental representation strand of integrated conservation planning thus reveals that a focus on non-biodiversity objectives in designing restoration programmes may result in drastically lower rates of biodiversity gain per unit of restoration effort.

Perhaps the most important implication of integrated conservation planning for biodiversity enhancement schemes is that programmes focussed on the farm scale will likely be very inefficient at contributing to national biodiversity objectives. Not all farms will contain significant areas of highly modified environment types. Hence the potential gain in environ‐ mental representation for many farms will often be quite low. Similarly, few farms are likely to contain any threatened species, or have the potential to provide suitable habitat for threat‐ ened species. Therefore, any scheme that operates primarily by incentivising individual landowners to manage for biodiversity will result in relatively low gains in national-level conservation priorities per unit effort. By contrast, schemes focussing on the landscape scale will be able to target resources to areas where the potential gains are highest.

This has obvious implications for designing funding models and legislative frameworks to enhance biodiversity in productive landscapes. For instance, if society decides that biodiversity enhancement in a requirement for agricultural industries to obtain a licence to operate, it may be inefficient to demand that every landowner embarks on a significant biodiversity enhance‐ ment programme. Rather, it will be more efficient for biodiversity enhancement to operate at the industry level, where industry bodies collect fees from landowners which are then used to fund management in areas of high potential biodiversity gain. Similarly, it would be inefficient to offer every landowner a subsidy in return for carrying out biodiversity enhancements. Rather, it would be better to target subsidies at landowners whose farms contain large areas of high potential biodiversity gain.
