Reconciling nature conservation and traditional farming practices: a spatially explicit framework to assess the extent of High Nature Value farmlands in the European countryside.

ABSTRACT: Agriculture constitutes a dominant land cover worldwide, and rural landscapes under extensive farming practices acknowledged due to high biodiversity levels. The High Nature Value farmland (HNVf) concept has been highlighted in the EU environmental and rural policies due to their inherent potential to help characterize and direct financial support to European landscapes where high nature and/or conservation value is dependent on the continuation of specific low-intensity farming systems. Assessing the extent of HNV farmland by necessity relies on the availability of both ecological and farming systems' data, and difficulties associated with making such assessments have been widely described across Europe. A spatially explicit framework of data collection, building out from local administra

SUBMITTER: Lomba A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4364818 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature