Bridging the gaps between agricultural policy, land-use and biodiversity

The fate of biodiversity is intimately linked to agricultural development. Policy reform is an important driver of changes in agricultural land-use, but there is considerable spatial variation in response to policy and its potential impact on biodiversity. We review the links between policy, land-use and biodiversity and advocate a more integrated approach. Ecologists need to recognize that wildlife-friendly farming is not the only land-use strategy that can be used to conserve biodiversity and to research alternative options such as land sparing. There is also a need for social scientists and ecologists to bring their approaches together, so that land-use change and its consequences can be investigated in a more holistic way.

Intentions of UK farmers toward biofuel crop production: Implications for policy targets and land use change

The United States and the European Union have set targets for biofuel production to decrease reliance on fossil fuels and to reduce fossil carbon emissions. Attainment of biofuel targets d6pends upon policy and infrastructure development but also on production of suitable raw materials. Production of relevant crops relies on the decisions that farmers make in their economic and political environment. We need to identify any farmer-related barriers to biofuel production and to determine whether novel policy and technology are required to meet targets. These aspects of the emerging biofuel industry are relevant across international barriers and have notyet been addressed quantitatively. We describe a case study from the UK of farmers' intentions toward producing two biofuel crops for which refining capacity either exists or is under construction. Given farmers' intentions, current land use, and conversion efficiency, we estimate potential biofuel production. These estimates indicate that EU targets are not achievable using domestically grown raw materials without policy intervention, use of alternative feedstocks, and either significant improvements in processing efficiency or largescale changes in land use.

Implications for food production, land use and rural development of the European Union's Single Farm Payment: Indications from a survey of farmers' intentions in Germany, Portugal and the UK

The 2003 reform of the European Union's (EU) Common Agricultural Policy introduced a decoupled income support for farmers called the Single Farm Payment (SFP). Concerns were raised about possible future land use and production changes and their impact on rural communities. Here, such concerns are considered against the workings of the SFP in three EU Member States. Various quantitative studies that have determined the likely impact of the SFP within the EU and the study countries are reviewed. We present the results of a farm survey conducted in the study countries in which farmers' responses to a decoupling scenario similar to the SFP were sought. We found that little short-term change was proposed in the three, rather different, study countries with only 30% of the farmers stating that they would alter their mix of farm activities. Furthermore, less than 30% of all respondents in each country would idle any land under decoupling. Of those who would adopt a new activity, the most popular choices were forestry, woodland and non-food crops. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Arthropod diversity and community structure in relation to land use in the mekong delta, vietnam

Declining biodiversity in agro-ecosystems, caused by intensification of production or expansion of monocultures, is associated with the emergence of agricultural pests. Understanding how land-use and management control crop-associated biodiversity is, therefore, one of the key steps towards the prediction and maintenance of natural pest-control. Here we report on relationships between land-use variables and arthropod community attributes (for example, species diversity, abundance and guild structure) across a diversification gradient in a rice-dominated landscape in the Mekong delta, Vietnam. We show that rice habitats contained the most diverse arthropod communities, compared with other uncultivated and cultivated land-use types. In addition, arthropod species density and Simpson's diversity in flower, vegetable and fruit habitats was positively related to rice cover in the local landscape. However, across the landscape as a whole, reduction in heterogeneity and the amount of uncultivated cover was associated, generally, with a loss of diversity. Furthermore, arthropod species density in tillering and flowering stages of rice was positively related to crop and vegetation richness, respectively, in the local landscape. Differential effects on feeding guilds were also observed in rice-associated communities with the proportional abundance of predators increasing and the proportional abundance of detritivores decreasing with increased landscape rice cover. Thus, we identify a range of rather complex, sometimes contradictory patterns concerning the impact of rice cover and landscape heterogeneity on arthropod community attributes. Importantly, we conclude that that land-use change associated with expansion of monoculture rice need not automatically impact diversity and functioning of the arthropod community.

Suitability of cryopreservation for the long-term storage of rare and endangered plant species: a case history for Cosmos atrosanguineus

The suitability of cryopreservation for the secure, long-term storage of the rare and endangered species Cosmos atrosanguineus was investigated. Using encapsulation/dehydration of shoot tips in alginate strips, survival rates of up to 100 % and shoot regeneration of up to 35 % were achieved. Light and electron microscopy studies indicated that cellular damage to some regions of the shoot tip during the freeze/thaw procedure was high, although cell survival in and around the meristematic region allowed shoot tip regeneration. The genetic fingerprinting technique, amplified fragment length polymorphisms (AFLPs), showed that no detectable genetic variation was present between material of C. atrosanguineus at the time of initiation into tissue culture and that which had been cryopreserved, stored in liquid nitrogen for 12 months and regenerated. Wearied plantlets that were grown under glasshouse conditions exhibited no morphological variation from non-frozen controls. (C) 2003 Annals of Botany Company.

Suitability of Arabidopsis thaliana as a model for host plant-Plutella xylostella-Cotesia plutellae interactions

Successful pest management is often hindered by the inherent complexity of the interactions of a pest with its environment. The use of genetically characterized model plants can allow investigation of chosen aspects of these interactions by limiting the number of variables during experimentation. However, it is important to study the generic nature of these model systems if the data generated are to be assessed in a wider context, for instance, with those systems of commercial significance. This study assesses the suitability of Arabidopsis thaliana (L.) Heynh. (Brassicaceae) as a model host plant to investigate plant-herbivore-natural enemy interactions, with Plutella xylostella (L.) (Lepidoptera: Plutellidae), the diamondback moth, and Cotesia plutellae (Kurdjumov) (Hymenoptera: Braconidae), a parasitoid of P. xylostella. The growth and development of P. xylostella and C. plutellae on an A. thaliana host plant (Columbia type) were compared to that on Brassica rapa var. pekinensis (L.) (Brassicaceae), a host crop that is widely cultivated and also commonly used as a laboratory host for P. xylostella rearing. The second part of the study investigated the potential effect of the different A. thaliana background lines, Columbia and Landsberg (used in wider scientific studies), on growth and development of P. xylostella and C. plutellae. Plutella xylostella life history parameters were found generally to be similar between the host plants investigated. However, C. plutellae were more affected by the differences in host plant. Fewer adult parasitoids resulted from development on A. thaliana compared to B. rapa, and those that did emerge were significantly smaller. Adult male C. plutellae developing on Columbia were also significantly smaller than those on Landsberg A. thaliana.

Suitability of cryopreservation for the long-term storage of rare and endangered plant species: a case history for cosmos atrosanguineus

The suitability of cryopreservation for the secure, long-term storage of the rare and endangered species Cosmos atrosanguineus was investigated. Using encapsulation/dehydration of shoot tips in alginate strips, survival rates of up to 100 % and shoot regeneration of up to 35 % were achieved. Light and electron microscopy studies indicated that cellular damage to some regions of the shoot tip during the freeze/thaw procedure was high, although cell survival in and around the meristematic region allowed shoot tip regeneration. The genetic fingerprinting technique, amplified fragment length polymorphisms (AFLPs), showed that no detectable genetic variation was present between material of C. atrosanguineus at the time of initiation into tissue culture and that which had been cryopreserved, stored in liquid nitrogen for 12 months and regenerated. Weaned plantlets that were grown under glasshouse conditions exhibited no morphological variation from non-frozen controls.

Quantifying the impact of land-use change on European farmland bird populations

The EU has adopted the European Farmland Bird Index (EFBI) as a Structural and Sustainable Development Indicator and a proxy for wider biodiversity health on farmland. Changes in the EFBI over coming years are likely to reflect how well agri-environment schemes (AES), funded under Pillar 2 (Axis 2) of the Common Agricultural Policy, have been able to offset the detrimental impacts of past agricultural changes and deliver appropriate hazard prevention or risk mitigation strategies alongside current and future agricultural change. The delivery of a stable or positive trend in the EFBI will depend on the provision of sufficient funding to appropriately designed and implemented AES. We present a trait-based framework which can be used to quantify the detrimental impact of land-use change on farmland bird populations across Europe. We use the framework to show that changes in resource availability within the cropped area of agricultural landscapes have been the key driver of current declines in farmland bird populations. We assess the relative contribution of each Member State to the level of the EFBI and explore the relationship between risk contribution and Axis 2 funding allocation. Our results suggest that agricultural changes in each Member State do not have an equal impact on the EFBI, with land-use and management change in Spain having a particularly large influence on its level, and that funding is poorly targeted with respect to biodiversity conservation needs. We also use the framework to predict the EFBI in 2020 for a number of land-use change scenarios. This approach can be used to guide both the development and implementation of targeted AES and the objective distribution of Pillar 2 funds between and within Member States. We hope that this will contribute to the cost-effective and efficient delivery of Rural Development strategy and biodiversity conservation targets.

Land-cover classification from airborne LIDAR data fused with aerial optical images

Airborne LIght Detection And Ranging (LIDAR) provides accurate height information for objects on the earth, which makes LIDAR become more and more popular in terrain and land surveying. In particular, LIDAR data offer vital and significant features for land-cover classification which is an important task in many application domains. In this paper, an unsupervised approach based on an improved fuzzy Markov random field (FMRF) model is developed, by which the LIDAR data, its co-registered images acquired by optical sensors, i.e. aerial color image and near infrared image, and other derived features are fused effectively to improve the ability of the LIDAR system for the accurate land-cover classification. In the proposed FMRF model-based approach, the spatial contextual information is applied by modeling the image as a Markov random field (MRF), with which the fuzzy logic is introduced simultaneously to reduce the errors caused by the hard classification. Moreover, a Lagrange-Multiplier (LM) algorithm is employed to calculate a maximum A posteriori (MAP) estimate for the classification. The experimental results have proved that fusing the height data and optical images is particularly suited for the land-cover classification. The proposed approach works very well for the classification from airborne LIDAR data fused with its coregistered optical images and the average accuracy is improved to 88.9%.

Idealized model for changes in equilibrium temperature, mixed layer depth, and boundary layer cloud over land in a doubled CO2 climate

An idealized equilibrium model for the undisturbed partly cloudy boundary layer (BL) is used as a framework to explore the coupling of the energy, water, and carbon cycles over land in midlatitudes and show the sensitivity to the clear‐sky shortwave flux, the midtropospheric temperature, moisture, CO2, and subsidence. The changes in the surface fluxes, the BL equilibrium, and cloud cover are shown for a warmer, doubled CO2 climate. Reduced stomatal conductance in a simple vegetation model amplifies the background 2 K ocean temperature rise to an (unrealistically large) 6 K increase in near‐surface temperature over land, with a corresponding drop of near‐surface relative humidity of about 19%, and a rise of cloud base of about 70 hPa. Cloud changes depend strongly on changes of mean subsidence; but evaporative fraction (EF) decreases. EF is almost uniquely related to mixed layer (ML) depth, independent of background forcing climate. This suggests that it might be possible to infer EF for heterogeneous landscapes from ML depth. The asymmetry of increased evaporation over the oceans and reduced transpiration over land increases in a warmer doubled CO2 climate.