Specific objectives
Overall aim of TALE
- to disentangle and quantify the multifaceted links between agricultural production, biodiversity and ecosystem services in different European landscapes; and
- provide a learning environment that supports the design and evaluation of policy options particularly regarding the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) that can help to reconcile conflicting demands, namely the production of agricultural commodities while at the same time ensuring the provision of ESS and conservation of biodiversity.
TALE addresses the effects of different land use structures and land use intensities in a set of agricultural landscapes using selected site-specific measures of biodiversity and ecosystem services (ESS) indicators. Main aspects include the identification of
- synergies and quantitative trade-offs between ESS, biodiversity and agricultural production at different scales;
- how agricultural production, ESS supply and biodiversity conservation, as well as the synergies and trade-offs between them, might change under different scenarios representing various land use strategies, climate change conditions and objectives across scales;
- those land management strategies and policy instruments that could help to reduce trade-offs between ESS and biodiversity conservation in the different regions.
Innovations and expected results
A key aim of the project is the assessment of relevance of existing measures and payments (and conditions for receiving these payments) for biodiversity, targeted land use types and selected ESS. Moreover, TALE aims at closing a knowledge gab by establishing a set of quantified indicators of ESS and biodiversity for current land use and climate, and under climate change.
The project is innovative in that sense as it provides conclusions on how to bring optimization into practice. It includes the
- identification of policy options to best reconcile food production, biodiversity and ESS provision;
- provision of insight on the scale-dependence of optimal land use strategies (land sharing and sparing);
- evaluation of the robustness of alternative management options based on scenarios of change. These scenarios are also socially robust as they are stakeholder driven;
- development of a learning environment where scientists, practitioners, policy makers and students can exchange knowledge in the context of this study and where study results can be made available.