Sustainable land management enhances ecological and economic multifunctionality under ambient and future climate

Friedrich Scherzinger, Martin Schädler, Thomas Reitz, Rui Yin, Harald Auge, Ines Merbach, Christiane Roscher, W Stanley Harpole, Evgenia Blagodatskaya, Julia Siebert, Marcel Ciobanu, Fabian Marder, Nico Eisenhauer () and Martin Quaas
Additional contact information
Friedrich Scherzinger: Puschstr. 4
Martin Schädler: Puschstr. 4
Thomas Reitz: Puschstr. 4
Rui Yin: Puschstr. 4
Harald Auge: Puschstr. 4
Ines Merbach: Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ, Theodor-Lieser-Str. 4
Christiane Roscher: Puschstr. 4
W Stanley Harpole: Puschstr. 4
Evgenia Blagodatskaya: Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ, Theodor-Lieser-Str. 4
Julia Siebert: Puschstr. 4
Marcel Ciobanu: Branch of the National Institute of Research and Development for Biological Sciences, Str. Republicii 48
Fabian Marder: Puschstr. 4
Nico Eisenhauer: Puschstr. 4

Nature Communications, 2024, vol. 15, issue 1, 1-17

Abstract: Abstract The currently dominant types of land management are threatening the multifunctionality of ecosystems, which is vital for human well-being. Here, we present a novel ecological-economic assessment of how multifunctionality of agroecosystems in Central Germany depends on land-use type and climate. Our analysis includes 14 ecosystem variables in a large-scale field experiment with five different land-use types under two different climate scenarios (ambient and future climate). We consider ecological multifunctionality measures using averaging approaches with different weights, reflecting preferences of four relevant stakeholders based on adapted survey data. Additionally, we propose an economic multifunctionality measure based on the aggregate economic value of ecosystem services. Results show that intensive management and future climate decrease ecological multifunctionality for most scenarios in both grassland and cropland. Only under a weighting based on farmers’ preferences, intensively-managed grassland shows higher multifunctionality than sustainably-managed grassland. The economic multifunctionality measure is about ~1.7 to 1.9 times higher for sustainable, compared to intensive, management for both grassland and cropland. Soil biodiversity correlates positively with ecological multifunctionality and is expected to be one of its drivers. As the currently prevailing land management provides high multifunctionality for farmers, but not for society at large, we suggest to promote and economically incentivise sustainable land management that enhances both ecological and economic multifunctionality, also under future climatic conditions.

Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-48830-z Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:15:y:2024:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-024-48830-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-48830-z

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().