Trade-offs and synergies between ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes – a multiservice modelling approach

Abstract: Exploring how landscape changes affect multiple ecosystem services is key to design
agroecological landscapes that would foster a bundle of ecosystem services. In this study, we
focus on pollination, pest control and surface water quality (nitrate concentration). We
simulated two agricultural watersheds, in the Living Lab Gascogne in South-West of France,
and five scenarios of land-cover changes: (i) a landscape in accordance to the Ten Years For
Agroecology in Europe scenario (“Sustainable Development”), (ii) an increase in legume crops (replacing cereal crops) (“Trend”), (iii) an increase in the cultivation of cereal crops (“Liberal”), and (iv) two breakup scenarios in which all cereal crops were converted to either grasslands or forests. Spatially-explicit models were used to evaluate the impacts of the five scenarios on the levels of services delivered. At the watershed level, all three services were on average improved with the breakup scenarios, while they were reduced with the Liberal scenario. Results were contrasted for the Sustainable Development scenario, with higher potential for pest control and water quality, but lower for pollination. An analysis at a smaller spatial scale might unravel synergies and trade-offs between services linked to changes in the surrounding landscape. These results suggest that only changing land cover without changes in associated agricultural practices such as pesticide use or mineral fertilization, might not be sufficient to foster sets of ecosystem services. This modelling approach can be used to promote concerted action between stakeholders using maps, and to help design agroecological landscapes that fosters bundles of ecosystem services.