Purpose Carbon and biodiversity footprints are increasingly calculated. However, little attention has been paid to the coherency of methodological choices and interpretation of the footprint results. This paper aims to clarify the coherency between the choice of reference land use and carbon and biodiversity footprints and discuss the challenges encountered. Methods First, we analyse features of reference land use options proposed in ISO 14067 (2018) i.e. business as usual, projected future, target, potential natural regeneration and historic baseline. Second, we discuss the connection between temporal scope and life cycle of land use. Third, we provide guidance on how to choose reference land use coherently. Fourth, we discuss specific issues related to carbon and biodiversity footprints and their relationship to reference land use. Finally, we provide conclusions and recommendations for further conceptual development. Results and discussion Choice of reference land use and determination of temporal scope of a study may significantly influence the assessment of carbon or biodiversity footprints. If the aim of a footprint study is to assess the effects of land use, reference land use should describe dynamically non-use of land. Thus, potential natural regeneration or continuation of natural state (if it is the starting point) of land is the coherent reference land use in this case. If the aim of a footprint study is to assess the effects of a decision to change land use or its management, reference land use should describe dynamically alternative use of land expected without the studied decision. Business as usual or projected future is a coherent reference land use in this case. Historic baseline or target reference land use may be useful in comparing the ecosystem value of the studied land use with a pre-set historic baseline or (policy) target. Conclusions We conclude that coherent choice of reference land use for carbon or biodiversity footprints depends on the goal and scope of a study. Beyond methodological coherency, issues related to the reliability and availability of appropriate data are relevant and vary between reference land use choices. However, difficulties in the assessment should not justify incoherent choices. We recommend that uncertainties are not overlooked but incorporated in the assessment and considered in the interpretation of the results. In addition, we recommend that key methodological choices, including the definition of the purpose of a study, chosen temporal scope and applied reference land use, should be clearly and transparently presented.

CONTEXTDespite considerable efforts, European conservation policy measures have largely failed to halt or reverse the decline of farmland biodiversity. To effectively mitigate pressures from agricultural intensification on biodiversity, conservation measures - such as agri-environmental schemes - should be tailored based on spatially explicit land system classifications that account for the interdependencies between agricultural land use and biodiversity. However, such classifications remain lacking.OBJECTIVEUsing Germany as a case study, we present a spatially explicit typology of agricultural land systems for tailoring biodiversity-focused agri-environmental schemes.METHODSWe applied a participatory, cluster-based methodology to identify patterns of agricultural land systems. The typology was derived from indicators of land cover, landscape structure, land-use intensity of different production systems, climate and topography. Experts from agriculture, conservation, and administration contributed to refining both the indicators and clustering results.RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONSClustering revealed eight distinct agricultural land system types in Germany, including arable cash crop-dominated, animal husbandry-dominated, and mosaic land-use agricultural land system types. Each type represents a characteristic combination of indicators, offering key insights into pressures on farmland biodiversity. Using the typology, we discuss entry points for tailoring of agri-environmental schemes to effectively reduce pressures on biodiversity.SIGNIFICANCEThe typology can help to increase the ecological effectiveness of agri-environmental schemes by tailoring them to the specific properties of agricultural land systems. The methodological approach presented here can be applied in other countries or scaled beyond the national level.

International audience | In a world undergoing climate and usage change, soil biodiversity, which accounts to 25 % of the terrestrial biodiversity, is under severe threats. However, scenarios of climate change are based on known sensitivity of aboveground communities while there are differences on the responses to these changes with soil biodiversity. Here, we investigate the effects of an extreme climatic – due to an exceptionally drought year in 2011 - in various land use types (grassland, arable land, forest) through a study conducted at a regional scale (146 sites in Meuse, France) during 5 years. We characterized the responses of Collembola communities to climate change using (i) taxonomic indices and species dynamics, and (ii) species' functional traits and trait-based indices to reveal community assembly mechanisms. Our results demonstrated a total of 98 Collembola species collected during the five year project over the three land uses. Density and species richness were modulated by year, by land use and by their interaction. Three different distribution patterns in response to extreme drought events were demonstrated according to land use. Our findings thus reveal various effects according to land use, with a fast recovery of communities in arable lands, a long term effect for grasslands, and almost no effects observed in forests. These results show that the diversity of Collembola communities may be used as indicators of the resilience of ecosystems facing extreme climatic events.

While there is an emerging body of research showing the consequences of land use intensity on soil biodiversity, most studies focus on biodiversity responses to a single or a limited number of agricultural practices in controlled settings or at a single field site, neglecting that multiple practices are simultaneously applied by farmers in real agroecosystems. The combined effects of various agricultural practices have, until now, been largely overlooked in agroecosystems. Here, we conducted a field soil sampling campaign on 87 farms with two land use types (39 arable fields and 48 grasslands) to investigate the relationship between land use intensity, determined by various agricultural practices, and multiple soil communities (bacteria, fungi, protists and invertebrates) at regional scales. We found that land use intensity influenced the diversity and community composition of various soil taxa differently, and these impacts strongly depended on land use type. Soil fungi were most susceptible to land use intensity in both arable fields and grasslands. Specifically, irrigation and pest control were the main practices shaping soil communities in arable fields, while phosphorus and nitrogen fertilization were the main practices structuring soil communities in grasslands. Furthermore, an increase in land use intensity led to greater soil network complexity in arable fields. Our findings reveal regional on-farm patterns of land use intensity effects on various soil communities and identified key agricultural practices that structure soil communities. A key strength of this study is that these patterns can be generalized because the samples were collected from 87 farmlands where multiple agricultural practices were implemented simultaneously. Overall, this work provides a comprehensive perspective on the different responses of multiple soil communities and their associations to land use intensity in agroecosystems.

Local land use emerges from peoples’ worldviews and values regarding nature. In neotropical forest landscapes, largely inhabited by Indigenous peoples, exploring how Indigenous land use and underlying values may converge with global values such as carbon sequestration and biodiversity conservation may provide lessons to achieve equitable ecological and social outcomes. However, most studies have focused on exploring the influence of Indigenous land use on avoiding deforestation, while few examine how local values relate to deforestation, disturbances, and forest cover stability. To address these gaps, we analyzed deforestation and disturbance spatial-temporal patterns in Indigenous lands in Panama between 2000 and 2020, using a continuous change detection algorithm and generalized additive models. Additionally, we performed participatory mapping across three Indigenous lands to identify instrumental and relational values linked to land use. Our results show that disturbances followed by recovery are the dominant cause of land cover changes in Indigenous lands. Moreover, the area of stable forest cover in Indigenous lands until 2020 was two times higher than in protected areas and other lands lacking protection. The generalized additive models demonstrate that deforestation and disturbance in Indigenous lands exhibit a low density, spatial concentration on forest edges, and temporal stability, explaining forest cover stability. According to participatory mapping, obtaining food from agriculture mainly occurs where deforestation and disturbance are more concentrated. In contrast, other instrumental (i.e., gathering food and household materials) and relational values (e.g., sacred sites) are more dispersed in forests. By weaving scales and perspectives, our results illustrate that diverse values regarding nature framed by Indigenous worldviews can beget stability to forest cover, contributing to Indigenous peoples' quality of life, climate change mitigation, and biodiversity conservation. To align these contributions with global climate and biodiversity targets, it is crucial to disarticulate land ownership from deforestation, grant formal titles to Indigenous lands, and foster equitable incentives to Indigenous peoples.

Mestrado em Gestão e Conservação de Recursos Naturais / Instituto Superior de Agronomia. Universidade de Lisboa / Universidade de Évora | The time when cities merely expected that agriculture would provide them with affordable food is over. Today’s society has other needs and expectations to be met by agriculture and rural areas. Indeed, agriculture is no longer only valued for its traditional food production function but also by a series of other functions it additionally provides to modern society, e.g. environmental protection and rural consumption functions. An integrated analytical framework was developed to assess the effects that farming systems have on biodiversity – an environmental protection function dimension – and on tourism – a rural consumption function dimension. The methodology used combines farming systems (FS) and land use/land cover (LULC) variables assessed at farm and parish levels to fully characterize the production system in a closer to farmers’ way. The separation of FS into different dimensions contributes to deconstruct the conceptual amalgam that is usually called agricultural intensification into separate dimensions, related e.g. with per-hectare output or input (intensity sensu stricto), specialization level and pattern, or the labour-land ratio; and separately analyse the effect of each on biodiversity and tourism. Therefore, an analytical and more informative character is given to the notion of intensity. Although the relationship between the production system and biodiversity or tourism is verified, the effects FS/LULC variables have on biodiversity and tourism are different, being the latter much weaker. Even so, the results stress the need to focus on more than one agricultural function in an integrated way, as the maximization of a single function, i.e. food production, protection or consumption, may negatively affect the provision of the others. However, not only trade-offs but also complementarities were found between the food production function of agriculture and biodiversity: trade-offs between land productivity (intensity sensu stricto) and biodiversity; complementarities between the landscape-level share of land used as farmland and biodiversity | N/A

The private sector is increasingly engaged in formulating biodiversity strategies that aim to achieve net-positive outcomes. Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methodologies are a leading approach for quantifying ‘biodiversity footprints’, providing baselines for biodiversity mitigation strategies. However, differences between existing LCIA methods remain understudied in this context. Using a large agricultural organisation case study, we compared biodiversity footprints from two LCIA methodologies: LC-IMPACT and ReCiPe2016. Results varied considerably, with LC-IMPACT attributing the largest impacts to international land use change from imported livestock feeds and ReCiPe2016 highlighting the impacts from imported feeds related to other pathways, such as water use, alongside on-farm GHG emissions. These differences suggest that using different methodologies could lead to substantially different corporate biodiversity strategies and sub-optimal prioritisation. To design effective biodiversity strategies, corporations must address uncertainties in biodiversity footprinting methods, and further research is needed to ensure these methodologies drive effective action to combat global biodiversity loss.

Land use is both a driver and a lever to address sustainability challenges like biodiversity loss, climate change, and food security. Yet, it is often oversimplified in sustainability planning, ignoring the diversity of actors or the multiple claims on land. We developed an approach to capture the complex and contested nature of land use by mapping it as social-ecological systems that can overlap in space. Demonstrating our approach for the Dry Chaco and Chiquitano forests in South America revealed three main insights. First, we mapped actors that are typically overlooked, such as forest-dwelling smallholders. Second, substantial land use overlap, particularly between smallholders and agribusinesses, signals land competition that risks marginalizing smallholders. Third, our maps showed conservation areas overlapping with other land systems, highlighting opportunities for co-benefits but also competition. Overall, our transferable approach captures land use complexity and visualizes often overlooked actors, thereby potentially contributing to more just and effective sustainability planning.

Global biodiversity rates remain in decline despite the fact that worldwide 16% of the land is protected. Some argue that to stop the biodiversity decline, a shift from “land-sparing” (agricultural production and nature conservation on different plots of land) towards “land-sharing” (both activities on the same plot of land) may be needed. We use the regime dimensions of the multi-level perspective to analyze the development and implementation of land-sparing and land-sharing in Dutch national parks as they are experimenting with this. Our qualitative text-based analysis of Dutch national park policy documents from 1930 until 2022 shows that the first Dutch national parks focused on nature conservation and land-sparing. In contrast, the so-called Dutch national landscape parks were the first serious attempt to integrate nature conservation and agriculture and to implement land-sharing. However, this failed because of the misalignment between nature conservation and agriculture at that time. A new attempt is currently being made with the national parks “new style” in which more land-sharing should take place. We argue that for this, a hybrid agriculture nature-conservation regime is needed for which different dimensions of both regimes should align, which currently appears to be starting in The Netherlands.

Changes in food production, often driven by distant demand, have a significant influence on sustainable management and use of land and water, and are in turn a driving factor of biodiversity change. While the connection between land use and demand through value chains is increasingly understood, there is no comprehensive conceptualisation of this relationship. To address this gap, we propose a conceptual framework and use it as a basis for a systematic review to characterise value-chain connection and explore its influence on land-use and -cover change. Our search in June 2022 on Web of Science and Scopus yielded 198 documents, describing studies completed after the year 2000 that provide information on both value-chain connection and land-use or -cover change. In total, we used 531 distinct cases to assess how frequently particular types of land-use or -cover change and value-chain connections co-occurred, and synthesized findings on their relations. Our findings confirm that 1) market integration is associated with intensification; 2) land managers with environmental standards more frequently adopt environmentally friendly practices; 3) physical and value-chain distances to consumers play a crucial role, with shorter distances associated with environmentally friendly practices and global chains linked to intensification and expansion. Incorporating these characteristics in existing theories of land-system change, would significantly advance understanding of land managers’ decision-making, ultimately guiding more environmentally responsible production systems and contributing to global sustainability goals.