7. Agricultural and productive landscapes

A1. Finding future pathways for sustainable agricultural landscapes in Europe: concepts and empirical evidence in different European contexts

Vasco Diogo, Felix Herzog, Teresa Pinto-Correia, Peter Verburg

The symposium aims to provide a platform for exchanging with researchers that are currently working on projects aiming to identify future pathways for sustainable agricultural landscapes in the European context. This may include different perspectives and concepts such as sustainable intensification, precision agriculture, agroforestry, High Nature Value (HNV) farming, organic farming, sustainable water use in agriculture, and climate-smart agriculture. Participants are invited to present study designs, methods and results from their projects.

A2. Novel perspectives on traditional agricultural features, structures and practices promoting landscape sustainability

Cristina Quintas Soriano, María García-Martín, Mario Torralba, Tobias Plieninger

This session will centre on local agricultural practices and structures that, despite their limited extension, have disproportionate importance in the promotion of landscape sustainability. Typically, these features and structures are associated with multifunctional agricultural landscapes and are supported by rich local-ecological knowledge. The context-specific nature of these agricultural features and practices makes them difficult for integration in planning policies, while the scholar literature is rather fragmented. As such, this session will welcome innovative approaches for mapping, valuing or assessing the importance of these practices and structures by applying biophysical, socio-cultural or inter- and transdisciplinary approaches.

A3. Defining a safe operating space for the future development of European agricultural landscapes

Felix Herzog, Sonja Kay, Florian Danzinger, Peter Zander, Johannes Schuler, Thomas Wrbka, Kalev Sepp

European agricultural landscapes are changing, often with significant environmental costs for ecosystem services (ESS) and for biodiversity. To protect these and improve the adaptive capacity of the agro-ecological system to changing land use, region-specific ecological infrastructures need to be identified and (policy) instruments must be put in place to maintain them. The symposium seeks contributions on how a safe operating space for the future development of agricultural landscapes can be identified. This will include production perspectives, their ecological impacts, and barriers to implementing biodiversity and ESS protection policies.

A4. Productive urban landscapes – benefits, co-benefits and new modes for planning

Werner Rolf, Simona R. Graƒdinaru

In this symposium, we want to explore how landscape ecology can provide knowledge for better addressing the relationship between agriculture and the urban environment. We encourage contributions which focus on functions and processes related to productive landscapes, as well as the role of spatial planning on how to address them.