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Land use change (LUC) alters habitat quality and the provision of ecosystem services that affect economic activities, such as beekeeping. For beekeeping, landscapes reveal individual decisions that determine its productive potential, thus, landscapes can be considered a common pool resource. To understand how land use preferences shape scenarios that suggest the aggregated effects of decisions on beekeeping in agricultural landscapes, a participatory valuation and an economic choice game were conducted in field workshops in Veracruz, México. We found that, although participants valued land use benefits differently, they integrated common benefits to create scenarios that sustained beekeeping, but these decisions were sensitive to external factors that disincentivize collective action. In addition, characteristics positively associated with collective action at the individual and group levels differ, suggesting emerging group identities. Exercises like these allow the exploration of CPR in complex scenarios such as landscapes, to understand the dynamics of individual and group preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agrarian change affects the supply and demand of ecosystem services (ES) by reducing the extent of natural ecosystems. Agricultural intensification can lead to changes in land covers and livelihood opportunities and it remains unclear how such changes align or misalign with the desires of local communities. Using participatry mapping, we assessed ES uses and desires of Indigenous people and local communities provided by different land cover types along a gradient of agricultural intensification (forest subsistence, agroforestry mosaic, and monoculture and market-dependence) in West Kalimantan, Indonesia. We found that mapped ES use diversity was highest in the forest-dependent zone and lowest near monoculture agricultural systems. The expressed ES uses and desires varied greatly among land cover types amidst loss of old-growth forest and greater reliance on secondary forest and shrub land. The spatial analysis showed that high priority areas of ES use was related to access in the landscape, demonstrating the importance of attending to place-based social values in ES assessments. From this study, we call for a people-centric spatial modelling approach to address the divergence of social and cultural ES values associated with land covers under different intensification contexts. Participatory mapping clarifies the ES desires of local communities, which state policy often fails to address. We recommend a place specific management strategy to reduce ES trade-offs of specific land use practices, which are currently apparent with agrarian change in Indonesia and relevant for other tropical developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forest restoration of landscapes benefits both biodiversity and multiple stakeholder groups. We examined how the concept of hybrid ecosystem restoration could be employed in invaded lowland wet forest in Hawai′i to examine biological, economic, and sociocultural benefits of restoration. We quantified the market prevalence of all species found within the Liko Nā Pilina experimental plots in comparison to an invaded lowland wet forest reference site with remnant native species. Using a combination of formal market and informal interviews with cultural practitioners, we examined the use of Non-timber Forest Products (NTFPs) from these species and determined the composition of native and introduced species. We found that the restoration experiment drastically increases the number of desirable species present onsite by more than five-fold, and that the majority of the NTFP species were introduced. Many different plant parts (e.g., stems, leaves, roots, flowers, and fruit) and most species in the restoration site were present in markets as raw and processed ingredients, with a majority sold as value-added products. The incorporation of agroforestry crops and native species is a multi-use perspective that greatly improves the condition of heavily-invaded forest ecosystems, and provides critical cultural and economic benefits to local people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stakeholder engagement has become an important aspect of sustainable natural resources management. This study analysed a landscape performance assessment by local and ‘external’ stakeholders in a transfrontier conservation area in Southern Africa. The landscape was divided into three agro-ecological zones and focus group discussions were facilitated for stakeholders to evaluate the landscape based on four ecoagriculture dimensions (production, conservation, livelihoods and institutions). The conservation dimension showed the best performance and the overall score for the landscape was 2.97, implying a fairly good performance. Perceptions and ratings did not significantly differ by age, gender or stakeholder groups. We conclude that despite their low levels of formal education and training, communal farmers can assess the performance of local landscapes in a consistent way. This study provides information about the degree to which the landscape under focus conformed to the main ecoagriculture goals and can guide development planning and extension service provision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biodiversity loss is a globally significant problem. Institutional failure to halt this loss suggests current arrangements are not fit for the purpose of conserving biodiversity. The objective of this paper is to diagnose institutional fitness for conserving biodiversity in the Tasmanian Midlands of Australia, a highly modified agricultural landscape with critically endangered biodiversity values. This paper presents and applies a novel diagnostic framework that adopts a broad view of institutional fit, drawing on concepts from adaptive governance, institutional theory, and public administration, and finds four areas of poor fit that can guide reform efforts. The first is a narrow framing of biodiversity objectives, leading to neglect of key social and ecological concerns. Second, the interplay of current arrangements fails to buffer key economic and political drivers, and compromises adaptive capacity. Third, limited government authority and embedded power relations raise questions about the effectiveness and fairness of current approaches. Finally, the reluctance of governments to devolve authority and decision-making powers to self-organizing networks constrains adaptation. This suite of fit problems constrains achievement of biodiversity conservation, particularly in dealing with landscape multifunctionality, the need to balance private landholder rights and responsibilities, and the need to consider how to respond to emerging novel and hybrid ecosystems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a research frontier in landscape architecture—landscape performance benefits assessment. In an initiative proposed by the Landscape Architecture Foundation (LAF), leading landscape architecture firms and academic institutions have been collaborating on studies that quantitatively assess environmental, economic and social benefits of high-profile landscape design projects. This study describes the components and processes of LAF landscape performance research and specifically evaluates the status of social benefits assessment, a critical though under-investigated aspect of landscape design sustainability. Using 58 published LAF case studies, the study examines to what extent social benefits are quantified compared with stated design goals, the benefits across the LAF case portfolio (e.g. per benefit category and project type), and methods and data options available to perform the analyses. Finally, the study provides suggestions on improving landscape performance research, particularly social benefits, in the enterprise of achieving evidence-based designs that are anchored in quantitative performance measures. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Amenity migration to attractive and accessible non-metropolitan areas changes social and environmental relations with consequences for natural resource management and landscape composition and trajectories. Lifestyler oriented rural landholders are often cast as a problem for land management and extension. Managers and some researchers see them as a cause of landscape and social fragmentation and report difficulties in engaging such landowners on natural resource management issues and responsibilities. In contrast, limited existing research indicates that lifestylers do join and form networks of personal and other contacts for advice and support in land management. We contribute to this research with a survey of rural landholders in southeastern New South Wales (NSW). We explicitly compare the sources of advice for land management for lifestylers with those of farmers. We focus on the types of sources available to rural landholders in Australian regions and their relative importance to these two landholder groups. We find that lifestylers and farmers are different in their sources of advice but that both prefer personal sources rather than sources such as agencies. We reflect on the significance of the differences for engagement with lifestyle oriented rural landowners and for understanding landscape change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of multifunctionalism to conceptualise contemporary rural landscapes has focused attention on the increased extent and impact of non-farmers in traditionally agriculture-based rural communities. Typologies of rural landholders have been developed as part of that research effort. However, those typologies are not grounded in established theory, including collective identity theory that could provide an important foundation for the study of occupational identity. Indeed, most quantitative studies may be flawed in drawing on only one of the seven elements contributing to collective identity. This paper examines the efficacy of relying on self-declared occupational identity through the analysis of rural landholder survey data in an Australian region. Tests for expected relationships between self-declared identity of farmer/non-farmer and social and farming variables expected to be correlated with occupation, such as property size, profitability, hours worked on- and off-property, enterprise type and membership of farming-related local organisations found that the expected relationships existed. It seems that self-declared occupational identity is a valid and cost-effective way to explore occupational identity amongst rural landholders. Collective identity, however, is complex and it is unlikely that important research questions can be adequately explored without a more holistic approach to the study of farmer identity in multifunctional landscapes. The paper concludes with a discussion of the potential benefits of moving beyond self-declared occupation to include other elements in the collective identity construct. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The potential of agriculture, forestry, and other land uses to sequester carbon offers a powerful tool for controlling the global climate regime, but practices capable of creating 'collateral' benefits for landscape conservation have thus far been disregarded. This paper calls for greater integration of scattered trees into agricultural landscapes, hypothesizing that agroforestry practices effectively store carbon and deliver other important ecosystem services as well. Several agroforests from the Upper Lusatia area in eastern Germany have been selected for analysis. They cover relatively large areas of land (8.2%), even within this intensively used agricultural landscape, and their extent increased from 1964-2008 by 19.4%. Practices of conserving or promoting six agroforest classes are compared with a catalogue of essential properties for becoming effective 'carbon offset projects'. Criteria from mandatory and voluntary carbon markets for carbon sequestration are then applied (additionality, baselines, permanence, and carbon leakage). The study concludes that steps towards realization of 'carbon sequestration projects' should include collecting empirical evidence regarding the carbon sequestration potential of temperate agroforestry systems, developing localized demonstration projects, and upscaling these projects to participate in established carbon markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been limited international research examining the recent trend to higher turnover in rural property ownership in developed nations. In this article we discuss findings from innovative Australian research that analyzed property sales records and spatially referenced rural landholder survey data. Large scale and increasing rates of turnover were identified with 50% of properties in our case study predicted to change ownership in the next decade, double the previous rate. New property owners are significantly different from longer term landholders in that they own smaller properties; are less likely to be farmers by occupation; self-report lower levels of knowledge of land management; are more likely to value conservation over agricultural production; and are less likely to adopt recommended sustainability practices. We explore the implications of these trends for natural resource management, including the difficulties of engaging an increasing number of nonfarmer and absentee landholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]