Ecological and economic modelling in agricultural land use scenarios

Agricultural production and its associated land use comprise the most important key factor regarding biodiversity and environmental impact within the wider countryside in Denmark. Currently, a number of land use changes are implemented in environmental action plans, such as afforestation, restoring wetlands and protection of drinking water catchments. Growing attention is put on the potential of GIS (Geographical Information System) as spatial decision support tools in local and regional environmental impact assessment, planning and implementation of governmental policies at local level. The work presented is part of a multidisciplinary research project, addressing the consequences of changes in agricultural production with respect to ecology, environment and economy. In this paper, focus is put upon linking vegetation ecology and farm economy. Ecological effects are assessed in terms of type, area and fragmentation of biotopes at landscape level. Assessment is based upon the output of a spatial detailed Biotope Landscape Model, describing the distribution of plant communities and nature types in Danish natural and semi-natural terrestrial biotopes. A model, assessing the costs of agricultural land use changes at the farm level, has been implemented. Both models are linked to a GIS, allowing scenario definition and integrated evaluation of model results, including their spatial representation. Three different scenario set-ups of extensified agricultural production are presented here. The scenarios chosen take precedence from ecological as well as economic priorities. Results illustrate possibilities of weighting out objectives against each other by assessing their economic and ecological consequences.