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.

One of the most important reasons for the degradation of biodiversity, in mountain areas and elsewhere, is that the people who make land use decisions often receive few or no benefits from biodiversity conservation. Understandably, therefore, they generally ignore potential biodiversity benefits when choosing land use practices. The end result is that biodiversity is often lost, as are many other off-site benefits such as the regulation of hydrological flows. Efforts to enhance biodiversity conservation need to take account of the constraints faced by individual land users, who decide what practices to adopt on their land. Over the years, a variety of efforts have been made to boost the profitability of biodiversity-friendly practices for land users, with mixed results. A further approach, which has received increasing attention in recent years, is to provide direct payments for the provision of environmental services such as biodiversity conservation. The simple logic of Payments for Environmental Services (PES) is that compensating land users for the environmental services a given land use provides, makes them more likely to choose that land use rather than another. The Regional Integrated Silvopastoral Ecosystem Management Project, which is being implemented by the World Bank with financing from the Global Environment Facility (GEF), is piloting the use of PES as a means of generating biodiversity conservation and carbon sequestration services in watersheds at three sites in Colombia, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua.

This study was conducted at Lore Lindu National Park, Central Sulawesi, Indonesia from Feb 2001 to April 2002 for field study, and Jul to Aug 2003 for GIS [geographical information system] analysis. Factors affecting land use changes at the individual family and village factor levels of the 15 buffer zone villages associated with four major vegetation types, namely lowland, monsoon, lower montane, and anthropogenic of Lore Lindu National Park were examined. This study aimed to determine the dominant driving factors for land use change from natural forest to non-forest, and its implications, on biodiversity. Village surveys were conducted to gather individual family data, i.e. family size, educational attainment, agricultural land possession in the village, agricultural income, ranger activity and agricultural land inside the National Park areas, using semi-structured interview. General village information included population, migration, distance to the city, and ground check for potential agricultural land in the village through key informant interviews and direct field observation. Forest monitoring with a transact of 50 m apart and length up to 1,300 meter was established for each village. The number of trees with less than 50 cm dbh, trees with 20-50 cm dbh, rattan clumps with stem less 8 m, rattan stumps, and vegetation types were used as proxy for biodiversity status. Stepwise multiple regression analysis was used to determine the dominant factors of land use changes at the individual family and village levels. Individual or a combination of the nine driving variables, namely population, family size, education attainment, number of migrant families, range activity, agricultural land possession, agricultural income, potential agricultural land in the village, and road distance to the city were tested. Pearson correlation analysis was used to determine the relationships between land use change and biodiversity status. Net present value of the natural forest and non-forest land uses were computed in the benefit and cost analysis. The dominant factors for land use change at the village level were migrants and education, and agricultural land possession at the individual family level. Hence, changes in forest structure resulted to a negative effect in biodiversity status. The net present value (NPV) of land use change from natural forest to non-forest was negative. This implies that the area should be better retained as a natural forest. Collaborative management with appropriate zonation implementation is one feasible solution to long-term biodiversity conservation in Lore Lindu National Park.

Austria is characterised by a high variety of different landscapes ranging from high mountain areas to continental lowlands. Wilderness areas as well as traditionally maintained agricultural landscapes contribute to Austria's biodiversity. Farming still is the main activity in rural areas, but it is now largely dependent on agro-environmental subsidies. We investigated the relationship between biodiversity and farming activities in selected Austrian agricultural landscapes. The negative effect of high land-use intensity on biodiversity on agricultural land could be confirmed. The concept of farming styles, which integrates human attitudes, farming objectives and economic success can be used to show the different ecological performances of farmers. A close link between mentality of farmers, land-use intensity and biodiversity could be established. Farmers who were highly production oriented supported the lowest nature values on their land, whereas both traditionally oriented and innovative farm businesses carried a higher potential to farm in concordance with the biodiversity of their landscape. The farming styles also differed in their dependency on subsidies. We conclude that agro-environmental subsidies, which are the main factor ensuring sustainable farming in less favoured areas in Austria, would have a far better effect if they were tailored to the individual needs of different regions and predominant farming styles.

BIOPRESS is a EC-FP5 research project to support GMES `Global Monitoring for Environment and Security¿. It aims to provide the EU-user community with quantitative information on how changes in land cover and land use have affected the environment and biodiversity in Europe. This report is dealing with the results of the first phase of the BIOPRESS project for the Netherlands. The report concentrates on the selection, acquisition, processing and interpretation of recent and historical aerial photographs, and the production of land use change statistics for the Netherlands. Land cover and land cover change statistics were derived for five windows (30km by 30km) for 1950 and 1990 (scale 1:100.000) and nine transects (2km by 15km) for 1950, 1990 and 2000 (scale 1:20.000). Subsequently, the historic land cover dynamics have been analysed within the Natura2000 sites as well as outside these areas, including descriptions of land cover changes and their related pressures (intensification, abandonment, afforestation and urbanisation) influencing biodiversity.

BIOPRESS is a EC-FP5 research project to support GMES `Global Monitoring for Environment and Security¿. It aims to provide the EU-user community with quantitative information on how changes in land cover and land use have affected the environment and biodiversity in Europe. This report is dealing with the results of the first phase of the BIOPRESS project for the Netherlands. The report concentrates on the selection, acquisition, processing and interpretation of recent and historical aerial photographs, and the production of land use change statistics for the Netherlands. Land cover and land cover change statistics were derived for five windows (30km by 30km) for 1950 and 1990 (scale 1:100.000) and nine transects (2km by 15km) for 1950, 1990 and 2000 (scale 1:20.000). Subsequently, the historic land cover dynamics have been analysed within the Natura2000 sites as well as outside these areas, including descriptions of land cover changes and their related pressures (intensification, abandonment, afforestation and urbanisation) influencing biodiversity.

This report describes the biodiversity for the Pechora River basin Integrated System Management (PRISM). The Pechora River Basin, situated just west of the Ural Mountains, Russia, consists of vast boreal forests and tundra landscapes, partly pristine and undisturbed. The concept of biodiversity is discussed and parameters are selected which are descriptive for biodiversity at both the landscape and stand level. Based on these parameters the biodiversity is assessed to describe or quantify impacts of certain forest or land use exploitation scenarios. The chosen parameters for biodiversity should therefore be meaningful for the expected or possible changes. The biodiversity is described, based on field data which was collected for vascular plants, lichens, mosses, invertebrates, birds, mammals, fishes, reptiles and amphibians and benthos. For the different taxa it is described and discussed what the biodiversity is of the Pechora River Basin, for the different land units that have been defined. The results are extrapolated to the River Basin level

Traditional economic models of land‐use change have focused on factors such as distance to population centers, available labor supply, population density, and patterns of existing infrastructure, such as roads. While such models can reproduce urban sprawl, they do not address such fundamental issues as the causes of initial human settlement locations, variation in the growth rates of different urban centers, and the ecological consequences of different economic drivers. A complementary approach, based on properties of the environment related to net primary productivity, predicts the temporal and spatial patterns of development and land‐use change associated with three distinct phases of economic development: agricultural, industrial, and information/communication. Initial land‐use patterns, established in response to environmental constraints on agriculture, are selectively amplified based on the subsequent requirements for industrialization. These environmental constraints are later relaxed during the information/communication phase of development, which affects portions of the landscape that were little affected by the first two phases. This sequence of events produces a predictable change in the distribution of human population density and land‐use intensity that impacts different components of biodiversity over time. The agricultural phase tends to eliminate those components of biodiversity that depend on high‐productivity environments, while preserving those components that can survive on marginal lands. However, the transition from an industrial to an information‐driven economy breaks the linkage between productivity and land‐use intensity, and allows intensification of human impacts in areas that had been protected by the constraints imposed by agricultural and industrial economies. As a consequence, the remaining reservoirs of biodiversity on marginal lands are now being threatened as formerly remote rural areas are being developed for recreational and residential use, particularly in the western United States.

Agriculture and forestry have transformed European Landscape almost to a full extent over millennia. A major consequence is that changing human activities have shaped ecological systems and the continuation of these activities is, in many instances, a prerequisite for the conservation of ecological characteristics. The construction of biodiversity by human activities since the Neolithic can be studied through archaeological records and reconstruction of land use history based on archival materials and historical cadastral maps. The case of biodiversity is striking, as many species are so dependent on historical land uses that they vanish in case of drastic land use changes either in the direction of abandonment or in the direction of more intensive usages. In this context, the understanding of the role of history, social and policy regimes are of overriding importance as an entry point to study biodiversity. The transitions from the area-based energy system of agricultural societies to the fossil-fuel based industrial energy system is a major driver of these changes. The Zones Atelier Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) network in France is an example of a national network of research sites that provides an opportunity to analyse the effects of climatic differences and local practices on biodiversity. But an additional network across the European Union is necessary to understand the role of high-level policies such as the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). The CAP is a main driver of land use in agricultural/ rural landscapes across Europe. It became the rule in Western Europe at different dates since 1970 and is now implemented in Central and Eastern Europe where agriculture has been collectively or State run till 1990. Other relevant policies include the aim to double renewable energy use, including biomass, as stated in the EU white book on renewable energy, and European policies on spatial planning, trans-european networks (TENs), etc. In this paper we describe the development of national and European networks of sites designed to address questions related to biodiversity and society. The eventual aim is to establish a pan-European network of LT(S)ER sites (where the S stands for socio-economic) through which we can understand the main policy and socio-economic drivers affecting biodiversity loss.