Biodiversity enhancement on arable land: the effects of local management and landscape context

Rising global human populations will increase competition for land, water, and energy. It seems likely that agricultural systems will suffer further degradation which will increase losses of biodiversity and disrupt key ecosystem services. Globally a number of mitigation and adaptation strategies are being implemented to preserve or enhance biodiversity in agricultural landscapes. Removal of land from agricultural production to create wildlife habitats has proved to be an effective and practical means of providing conservation benefits. Recent work has focused on how the landscape context interacts with farming to determine conservation success, ecosystem services and other benefits. Results show that both, habitat quality, food resources, and the abundance, diversity and population dynamics of key farmland taxa are significantly enhanced by both targeted local management and enhancements at the landscape scale.