Agriculture and natural areas as parts of landscape matrices: Biodiversity in agricultural matrices

Background/Question/Methods

The perceived contradiction between biodiversity conservation and food production is examined from a theoretical point of view. Both a static and dynamic approach will be presented. The static approach examines the process of jointly optimizing the the ecology of production/conservation combined with the economy of valuation, stipulating conditions under which land sparing or land sharing will be optimal. The dynamic approach takes into account the metapopulation dynamics almost certain to be operative at landscape levels in human dominated landscapes and focuses attention on the quality of the matrix as it relates to both food production and biodiversity conservation.

Results/Conclusions

The most recent manifestation of the age-old question of how agriculture relates to biodiversity conservation is the so-called land sparing versus land sharing debate. Our results show that this debate is resolvable if the problem is viewed in a static fashion, wherein some circumstances indeed do suggest a land sparing optimum. However, taking a dynamic point of view based on metapopulation theory suggests that the static framework could be misleading if the long term consequences of land-use planning are taken into account. Rather, attention should be focused on the development of a high quality matrix.