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Throughout the world spontaneous growth of vegetation (regrowth) often results from land use change such as reduced or ceased agricultural activity. Abundant and extensive regrowth typically has significant implications such as risks to human wellbeing (e.g. wildfire), and opportunities for low cost broad-scale land restoration and biodiversity conservation. Management of regrowth may be contentious due to differing views amongst stakeholders. Developing effective management strategies for biodiversity outcomes requires clear understanding of social perceptions of regrowth. This paper is based upon 53 semi-structured interviews exploring stakeholder perceptions, views and management of regrowth in a post-agricultural landscape in central Victoria, Australia. Aspects of discourse—in particular narratives (themes of discussion) and frames (philosophical perspectives) enabled interpretation of how different stakeholders perceived their changing landscape. Stakeholders typically viewed the shrubby regrowth through one of three frames expressed through a range of narratives that conveyed meaning: “Control”—a negative interpretation of the regrowth, “Accept”—a positive interpretation; and “Ambivalent”—a fusion of the Control and Accept frames. As frames profoundly influence behaviours, we suggest using the frames and narratives identified in the research to develop interventions that enable biodiversity outcomes from the regrowth. Social acceptability of regrowth will be fostered if the interventions acknowledge stakeholder concerns congruent with the three frames identified—in particular as expressed by the ‘use’, ‘nature’ and ‘restoration’ narratives which span the three frames. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Public expectations of soil management are gradually expanding beyond traditional primary production requirements to include diverse ecosystem services. In Australia, as in many other countries, the accommodation of these new expectations will require shifts in the practice of private land managers. In turn, this may require public intervention and the expenditure of public funds. However, public net benefits from soil management interventions are rarely established, in part due to a lack of understanding of the conceptual links between management changes, soil health, and associated services and benefits. This paper uses an ecosystem services-based approach to examine these links from an Australian perspective. Entrenchment of the popular soil health concept in field-based assessments of agricultural production potential was found to limit the concept''s applicability to questions of broader public benefit. Without expanding soil health to include more ecological indicators, the concept risks remaining peripheral to contemporary visions of multiple-outcome soil management in Australia. Conceptual and case study links were examined between soil properties and processes, soil-based services, and private and public net benefits. In this framework, benefits were produced from services, and were considered a more tangible point for public understanding and valuation than services. The qualitative case study highlighted many knowledge gaps relating to non-agricultural services and benefits from soils, particularly in the scaling-up of sub-paddock measurements, and in the form and constancy of relationships among services and benefits. Criteria for identifying priority public benefits from soil management were examined, namely, likelihood, degree, consequence, scale, direction, time lag, and valuation. Assumptions about these criteria require rigorous testing so that the what, where, when, and how of public benefits from changed soil management can be more clearly defined. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Much effort is expended toward planning for conservation, natural resource management and sustainable land use in agricultural landscapes. Although often not explicitly stated, the aims of these efforts are often to restore natural capital for the provision of ecosystem services and stimulate multifunctionality in landscapes. However, the scarcity of resources for, and the potential economic impact of, ameliorative actions that restore natural capital necessitates the identification of cost-effective geographic priorities, or hotspots, which provide multiple ecosystem goods and services. This requires the integrated spatial modelling of multiple environmental and economic processes accompanied by clear goals and performance indicators. Identification of hotspots provides guidance for highly targeted land use change that cost-effectively adds to the stocks of natural capital in a landscape. Additionally, the multifunctionality of the landscape can be increased through the provision of multiple ecosystem goods and services. This paper begins by examining data requirements for identifying geographic hotspots for land use change. This study integrates traditionally disparate landscape-scale biophysical and economic data and models. The elements of natural capital considered here are species and ecosystems, soil and water resources, and the atmosphere. It is demonstrated that locating ameliorative actions towards hotspots will be more cost-effective at restoring natural capital and stimulating landscape multifunctionality than a random targeting approach. We calculate these efficiencies using a small set of indicators for assessing aspects of multifunctionality. The focus of this study is the agricultural landscapes of the Lower Murray region of south-eastern Australia. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In many agricultural landscapes, roadside (or road verge) environments provide important refuge for threatened native species and ecosystems, and are often selected as benchmark sites to guide restoration activities. However few studies have investigated potential temporal variability in roadside vegetation conditions. In this paper we used archived cadastral maps to determine road age and examine potential variability in roadside vegetation structures in a typical rural landscape in south-eastern Australia. We found significant differences in the density of mature trees for road segments in different road-age categories. The oldest roads (<1870s) were characterized by having the greatest density of large hollow-bearing Eucalyptus trees, but few native conifer trees or shrubs. Roads surveyed when broad-scale clearing commenced (1870–1879), and not the oldest roads, were found to be more intact in terms of the density of large pre-settlement trees, range of tree stem-size classes and overall shrub diversity. By contrast, the youngest roads (post-1900s) had the greatest number of native conifer trees, but few shrubs or large Eucalyptus trees. As a result, roads of different ages had different densities of hollow-bearing trees, which is discussed in terms of past land-use legacies. These results have important implications for selecting roadsides as benchmark sites for restoration activities, and highlight the critical importance of roadsides to conserving native biota in agricultural landscapes. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Land use planners, natural resource managers and policy-makers need to better anticipate and respond to the widespread changes and increasing pressures affecting land and seascapes. Social science and social–ecological research can play an important role in addressing these issues, as many – if not all – of the issues and solutions are human in nature. This paper explores the potential for utilising social profiles of a wide range of landholders in two rapidly changing agricultural landscapes in the Wet Tropics of Australia as a means to interpret historical land use change, and to assess the potential for future landscape change trajectories. The social profiles, developed from qualitative interview analysis, are based on key characteristics of different groups of landholders and include: (1) length of farm occupancy, (2) farm size, (3) farm ‘survival’ strategy, (4) commercial crops grown, and (5) landholder values attached to place. A set of social profiles emerged from the two locations that indicate an evolving agricultural and social landscape that is associated with changing perceptions and values—especially around the themes of rural space, land occupancy and use and management of that space. These profiles, in combination with an understanding of the changing economic and social context of the region, provide a means for improving land use planning, natural resource management and policy formulation, particularly in locations where a shift in the social profile may be occurring, creating opportunities for large-scale landscape change. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]