SALBES

Biodiversity and ecosystem service (ESS) governance of agricultural landscapes needs to account for agricultural land use, landscape structures and the relevant stakeholders. Agricultural activities dominantly impact the environment and are continuously adapting to drivers, i.e. economic incentives, scientific and technological developments, socio-political framework, climate change etc. This complex of drivers will probably continue to act unabated, while its importance varies regionally. Since the conservation of biodiversity in agricultural landscapes is essential for maintaining their functionality and adaptability, SALBES takes a landscape perspective of the agricultural system to safeguard an ecological infrastructure, the related farmland biodiversity and its functions (ESS) under current and future driving forces. Accepting planetary boundaries and the search for a safe operating space (S OS; Steffen et al., 2015) as binding guidelines for environmental policy making, SALBES aims at applying this principle to agricultural landscapes, as a theory, concept and policy objective, based on integrated, implementation oriented, stakeholder guided, IT supported, evidence based analyses. This is elaborated and tested in four case study areas in Europe, for evidence based specifications of a “safe operating space” for sustainable landscape development.

Climate change is one important external driver for biodiversity and ESS changes in regions. PIK delivers respective background data to the assessments of the case studies, including climate scenario data, estimations of future crop yields, and identification of regions whose present-day climate approximates future climate scenarios for the case study areas. This provides additional anchor points for realistic biodiversity scenario development. The three major objectives of PIK' s task are: provision of a qualified climate scenario ensemble (from several GCM), prediction of climate-induced crop yields and assessment of regional equivalents for future climate conditions in the case study areas.