Quantifying the synergies between farmland biodiversity conservation and water protection at catchment scale

Abstract

Agriculture is a significant source of excess nutrients in both inland waters and enclosed seas and its intensification contributes to loss of biodiversity on land. This study combines farmland biodiversity conservation with water protection at a catchment scale and provides an optimising tool for analysing the effect of spatial dependencies on multifunctional agriculture. We show that significant efficiency gains can be achieved by coordinating the spatial allocation and type of vegetated buffer zones at a catchment level heterogeneous landscape. When the extended vegetation cover is justified by water protection targets, higher farmland diversity benefits can be gained by including meadow nectar plants in the founding grass seed mixture. The most favourable locations for joint water protection and farmland biodiversity conservation measures are identified at the catchment scale.