Felix Herzog

Agroscope · Agricultural landscapes and biodiversity

Targeted conservation and promotion of wild bees in agroecosystems requires understanding of relationships between different groups of bees and available floral resources across land-use types during the season and at the landscape scale. Here, we quantified floral resource amount and diversity across habitat types at different times during the sea...

Grasslands host a significant share of Europe’s species diversity but are among the most threatened vegetation types of the continent. Resurvey studies can help to understand patterns and drivers of changes in grassland diversity and species composition. However, most resurveys are based on local or regional data, and hardly reach back more than ei...

Diverse agricultural land uses are a typical feature of multifunctional landscapes. The uncertain change in the drivers of global land use, such as climate, market and policy technology and demography, challenges the long-term management of agricultural diversification. As these global drivers also affect smaller scales, it is important to capture...

Darüber, wie sich die Schweizer Landwirtschaft entwickeln soll, gibt es unterschiedliche Vorstellungen. Wir haben die landwirtschaftlichen Veränderungen der vergangenen zwanzig Jahre in drei Schweizer Regionen untersucht. Um die Richtung der landwirtschaftlichen Entwicklung zu be-urteilen, haben wir sie mit drei unterschiedlichen Visionen vergliche...

Life cycle assessment (LCA) aims at providing standardized evaluations of processes involving resource use, human health, and environmental consequences. Currently, spatial dependencies are most often neglected, though they are essential for impact categories like biodiversity. The "Swiss Agricultural Life Cycle Assessment for Biodiversity (SALCA-B...

Agricultural intensification has profoundly changed agricultural landscapes with important biodiversity impacts. There is increasing knowledge on the general effects of landscape structure and management practices on plant and animal species but understanding the role of surrounding landscape structure for patch-scale biodiversity is more complex....

Agricultural expansion and intensification are key drivers of biodiversity decline. There is mounting evidence that modern farming impacts the effectiveness of protected areas as one of the key instruments of biodiversity conservation through, for example, eutrophication, pesticide emissions or increasing access to remote areas [1]. This is increas...

Climate and land-use changes are main drivers of insect declines, but their combined effects have not yet been quantified over large spatiotemporal scales. We analysed changes in the distribution (mean occupancy of squares) of 390 insect species (butterflies, grasshoppers, dragonflies), using 1.45 million records from across bioclimatic gradients o...

Zusammenfassung Rund 30 % der Fruchtfolgeflächen der Schweiz (137 000 ha) sind drainiert. Zunehmend stellt sich für die älteren Drainagen die Frage der Erneuerung und der entsprechenden Kostenfolgen. Gleichzeitig sind Feuchtlebensräume in der Agrarlandschaft durch die grossflächige Entwässerung selten geworden. Die Entwässerung beeinflusst verschie...

Terre assolée humide, périodiquement saturée d'eau jusqu'à la surface. (Photo: Thomas Walter, Agroscope) Résumé En Suisse, environ 30 % des surfaces d'assolement (137 000 ha) sont drainées. De plus en plus, la question de la rénovation des anciens drainages se pose et avec elle, celle des conséquences financières qui en découlent. Parallèlement, le...

Agriculture plays a central role in achieving most Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Sustainable intensification (SI) of agriculture has been proposed as a promising concept for safeguarding global food security, while simultaneously protecting the environment and promoting good quality of life. However, SI often leads to context-specific susta...

It has been shown that the COVID-19 pandemic affected some agricultural systems more than others, and even within geographic regions, not all farms were affected to the same extent. To build resilience of agricultural systems to future shocks, it is key to understand which farms were affected and why. In this study, we examined farmers' perceived r...

Floral resources are crucial for wild pollinators. Identifying the spatio-temporal floral resource use of wild pollinators and effects of resource distribution on their development might help to promote them and their pollination services to crops in agricultural landscapes. We established populations of Osmia cornuta and Osmia bicornis, two solita...

The slow adoption by the agricultural sector of practices to promote biodiversity are thought to originate from three interrelated issues. First, we know little about which incentives effectively motivate farmers to integrate biodiversity into daily farm management. Second, few studies so far have produced evidence that biodiversity-based approache...

A range of intensifying pressures is making the future of European agriculture dynamic and contested. Insights into these pressures are needed to inform debates about the future of the sector. In this study, we use a foresight approach to identify, quantify and map megatrends. Megatrends are long-term driving forces which are observable today and w...

Context Flowering plants can enhance wild insect populations and their pollination services to crops in agricultural landscapes, especially when they flower before the focal crop. However, characterizing the temporal availability of specific floral resources is a challenge. Objectives Developing an index for the availability of floral resources at...

Theme: Biodiversity Abstract Traditional agroforestry systems such as Dehesas/Montados, high-stem fruit orchards, hedgerow landscapes (bocage, Knick) or woody pastures are renowned for biodiversity and ecosystem services. Can we expect similar benefits from modern temperate agroforestry systems such as alley cropping? Here we summarize results of r...

Orchard meadows, a traditional agroforestry system in Switzerland combining the dual use fruit and fodder production, are declining, even though the farmland managed under agri-environmental schemes (AES) has been expanding. Despite increasing interest in agroforestry research for developing sustainable agriculture, it is poorly understood how subs...

Agri-environmental schemes (AES) aimed at promoting farmland biodiversity are a key agricultural policy instrument in Switzerland. While the share of farmland managed under AES has expanded, traditional orchard meadows, regarded as agrobiodiversity hotspots, are declining. It is not clear yet what role AES play in maintaining orchard meadows, consi...

Seventy five percent of the world's food crops benefit from insect pollination. Hence, there has been increased interest in how global change drivers impact this critical ecosystem service. Because standardized data on crop pollination are rarely available, we are limited in our capacity to understand the variation in pollination benefits to crop y...

Context Predatory insects contribute to the natural control of agricultural pests, but also use plant pollen or nectar as supplementary food resources. Resource maps have been proposed as an alternative to land cover maps for prediction of beneficial insects. Objectives We aimed at predicting the abundance of crop pest predating insects and the pe...

There is broad agreement that agriculture has to become more sustainable in order to provide enough affordable, healthy food at minimal environmental and social costs. But what is "more sustainable"? More often than not, different stakeholders have opposing opinions on what a more sustainable future should look like. This normative dimension is rar...

Crop Pollination by Wild and Honey Bees in Switzerland: Importance, Potential for Yield Increases and Support Measures Pollinating insects such as the domestic honey bee as well as numerous wild-bee species and other wild pollinators play an essential role in the provision of pollination services for crop production and wild plants in agroecosyst...

Conversion of semi-natural habitats, such as field margins, fallows, hedgerows, grassland, woodlots and forests, to agricultural land could increase agricultural production and help meet rising global food demand. Yet, the extent to which such habitat loss would impact biodiversity and wild species is unknown. Here we survey species richness for fo...

Rural Europe encompasses a variety of landscapes with differing levels of forest, agriculture, and agroforestry that can deliver multiple ecosystem services (ES). Whilst provisioning and regulating ES associated with individual land covers are comparatively well studied, less is known about the associated cultural ES. Only seldom are provisioning,...

Context Agroecology combines agronomic and ecological concepts. It relies on the enhancement of biodiversity and related ecosystem services to support agricultural production. It is dependent on biological interactions for the design and management of agricultural systems in agricultural landscapes. Objectives We review the role of landscape ecolo...

In Switzerland-as in many other European countries-Agroforestry systems are long-term investments for farmers. The woody component provides income earliest after 5 years from a continuous fruit or energy production and latest after 30 or 100 years when timber is harvested in Europe. To guarantee a sustainable and resilient production over this whol...

Standard size cherry trees with high stems are a major element of traditional agroforestry systems in northern Switzerland. Nowadays the cultivation of standard fruit trees with cherries is under pressure in this area. High harvest and crop management costs combined with declining income make the cultivation of high stem trees in combination with g...

Two major targets of the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations (https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/) are the attainment of “Zero Hunger” and “Life on Land” by 2030. While “Zero Hunger“ refers to the end of hunger and achievement of food security and improved nutrition through the practice of sustainable agriculture, Life on Land im...

Agroforestry is a traditional land use system that may contribute to the solution of environmental problems in agriculture. Agroforestry is the practice of deliberately integrating woody vegetation (trees or shrubs) with crops and/or animal systems to benefit from the resulting ecological and economic interactions. Recent research indicates that a...

A correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10457-021-00641-7

Report in The State of Biodiversity in the Swiss Agricultural Landscape. In German, with summaries in English, French and Italian

Wild bumblebees are key pollinators of crops and wild plants that rely on the continuous availability of floral resources. A better understanding of the spatio-temporal availability and use of floral food resources may help to promote bumblebees and their pollination services in agricultural landscapes. We placed colonies of Bombus terrestris L. in...

Der Hochstammfeldobstanbau mit Kirschen in der Schweiz steht zunehmend unter Druck. Steigende Kosten, sinkende Einnahmen und Schädlinge wie die Kirschessigfliege machen den Anbau wirtschaftlich unattraktiv. Als Alternative wird in der vorliegenden Arbeit das Potenzial der Mandel für einen Anbau in der Schweiz untersucht. Mittels Befragung von in- u...

There is widespread consensus among scientists, policy makers, and practitioners that agriculture should become more sustainable, while maintaining the ability to meet future food demand. However, there are still many diverging views on what sustainable intensification means, and how to get there. In this article, we present a conceptual framework...

Agroforstsysteme, die Kombination von Gehölzen und landwirtschaftlicher Nutzung auf der gleichen Fläche, haben als Hochstamm-Feldobst (= Streuobst), Waldweiden und Kastanienselven eine lange Tradition in der Schweiz. In den letzten Jahren wurden die Systeme in moderner Form reaktiviert, d.h. ihr Pflanzdesign wurde an die Mechanisierung angepasst un...

Floral plantings are promoted to foster ecological intensification of agriculture through provision-ing of ecosystem services. However, a comprehensive assessment of the effectiveness of different floral plantings, their characteristics and consequences for crop yield is lacking. Here we quantified the impacts of flower strips and hedgerows on pest...

Elucidating the diets of insect predators is important in basic and applied ecology, such as for improving the effectiveness of conservation biological control measures to promote natural enemies of crop pests. Here, we investigated the aphid diet of two common aphid predators in Central European agroecosystems, the native Coccinella septempunctata...

There is an increasing demand to study the long-term effects of land use from both local farm and wider societal and environmental perspectives. This study applied an approach to evaluate both the financial profitability of arable, agroforestry, and tree-only systems and the wider societal benefits over a period of 30-60 years. The biophysical inpu...

Mosaics of agricultural land, forests, and other semi-natural areas represent landscapes providing valuable habitats and resources for various insect groups. We investigated the added value of agroforestry, the combination of crops or grasslands with woody elements, for important pollinating insects e.g. wild bees and associated pollination service...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1470160X19307824 Agricultural life cycle analysis (LCA) provides information about the environmental footprint of farming. Life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) includes social and economic indicators. As a contribution to LCSA, we developed an indicator measuring the impact of individual far...

Continuous availability of food resources, such as pollen, is vital for many insects that provide pollination and pest control services to agriculture. However, there is a lack of knowledge about the shared or complementary use of floral resources by such species, which hampers more effective landscape management to simultaneously promote them in a...

Agroscope-Forscher haben auf mehr als 100 Produktionsstandorten in verschiedenen Anbauregionen untersucht, welchen Beitrag Honig- und Wildbienen leisten. Je nach Kultur sind Honig- oder Wildbienen besonders wichtig, jedoch ist fast immer ideal, wenn sich Honigbienen und Wildbienen ergänzen.

Rural development policies in many Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries promote sustainable landscape management with the intention of providing multiple ecosystem services (ES). Yet, it remains unclear which ES benefits are perceived in different landscapes and by different people. We present an assessment...

Managing agricultural landscapes to support biodiversity and ecosystem services is a key aim of a sustainable agriculture. However, how the spatial arrangement of crop fields and other habitats in landscapes impacts arthropods and their functions is poorly known. Synthesising data from 49 studies (1515 landscapes) across Europe, we examined effects...

Agroforestry, relative to conventional agriculture, contributes significantly to carbon sequestration, increases a range of regulating ecosystem services, and enhances biodiversity. Using a transdisciplinary approach, we combined scientific and technical knowledge to evaluate nine environmental pressures in terms of ecosystem services in European f...

The «Agriculture-Related Environmental Objectives» (AEOs) set binding targets for the conservation of species and habitat diversity in the agricultural landscape. For these, lists of species meriting particular consideration (AEO species) were drawn up. An initial evaluation of the ALL-EMA «Agricultural Species and Habitats» Monitoring Programme sh...

The study assessed the economic performance of marketable ecosystem services (ES) (biomass production) and non-marketable ecosystem services and dis-services (groundwater, nutrient loss, soil loss, carbon sequestration, pollination deficit) in 11 contrasting European landscapes dominated by agroforestry land use compared to business as usual agricu...

Managing agricultural landscapes to support biodiversity and ecosystem services is a key aim of a sustainable agriculture. However, how the spatial arrangement of crop fields and other habitats in landscapes impacts arthropods and their functions is poorly known. Synthesising data from 49 studies (1515 landscapes) across Europe, we examined effects...

Context Agroforestry systems in temperate Europe are known to provide both, provisioning and regulating ecosystem services (ES). Yet, it is poorly understood how these systems affect ES provision at a landscape scale in contrast to agricultural practises. Objectives This study aimed at developing a novel, spatially explicit model to assess and qua...

Agroforestry systems are known to provide ecosystem services which differ in quantity and quality from conventional agricultural practices and could enhance rural landscapes. In this study we compared ecosystem services provision of agroforestry and non-agroforestry landscapes in case study regions from three European biogeographical regions: Medit...