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The impacts of agricultural land use are far-reaching and extend to areas outside production. This paper provides an overview of the ecological status of agricultural systems across the European Union in the light of recent policy changes. It builds on the previous review of 2001 devoted to the impacts of agricultural intensification in Western Europe. The focus countries are the UK, The Netherlands, Boreal and Baltic countries, Portugal, Hungary and Romania, representing a geographical spread across Europe, but additional reference is made to other countries. Despite many adjustments to agricultural policy, intensification of production in some regions and concurrent abandonment in others remain the major threat to the ecology of agro-ecosystems impairing the state of soil, water and air and reducing biological diversity in agricultural landscapes. The impacts also extend to surrounding terrestrial and aquatic systems through water and aerial contamination and development of agricultural infrastructures (e.g. dams and irrigation channels). Improvements are also documented regionally, such as successful support of farmland species, and improved condition of watercourses and landscapes. This was attributed to agricultural policy targeted at the environment, improved environmental legislation, and new market opportunities. Research into ecosystem services associated with agriculture may provide further pressure to develop policy that is targeted at their continuous provisioning, fostering motivation of land managers to continue to protect and enhance them. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

SummaryUnder the Kyoto Protocol, the European Union is committed to a reduction in CO2 emissions to 92% of baseline (1990) levels during the first commitment period (2008–2012). The Kyoto Protocol allows carbon emissions to be offset by demonstrable removal of carbon from the atmosphere. Thus, land-use/land-management change and forestry activities that are shown to reduce atmospheric CO2 levels can be included in the Kyoto targets. These activities include afforestation, reforestation and deforestation (article 3.3 of the Kyoto Protocol) and the improved management of agricultural soils (article 3.4). In this paper, we estimate the carbon mitigation potential of various agricultural land-management strategies and examine the consequences of European policy options on carbon mitigation potential, by examining combinations of changes in agricultural land-use/land-management. We show that no single land-management change in isolation can mitigate all of the carbon needed to meet Europe's climate change commitments, but integrated combinations of land-management strategies show considerable potential for carbon mitigation. Three of the combined scenarios, one of which is an optimal realistic scenario, are by themselves able to meet Europe's emission limitation or reduction commitments. Through combined land-management scenarios, we show that the most important resource for carbon mitigation in agriculture is the surplus arable land. We conclude that in order to fully exploit the potential of arable land for carbon mitigation, policies will need to be implemented to allow surplus arable land to be put into alternative long-term land-use. Of all options examined, bioenergy crops show the greatest potential for carbon mitigation. Bioenergy crop production also shows an indefinite mitigation potential compared to other options where the mitigation potential is finite. We suggest that in order to exploit fully the bioenergy option, the... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]