Smaller farm size and ruminant animals are associated with increased supply of non-provisioning ecosystem services.

ABSTRACT: To balance trade-offs between livestock's negative environmental impacts and their positive contributions (e.g. maintaining semi-natural grasslands, varied agricultural landscapes and crop rotations), a better understanding is needed of how the supply of ecosystem services differs across farms. We analysed a suite of indicators for non-provisioning ecosystem services on a large subset of Swedish farms (71% of farms, covering 82% of agricultural land) and related these to farm type, farm size and livestock density. The analysed indicators exhibited clear geographical patterns with hotspots especially in less productive regions. Controlling for this spatial variation we still found that small-scale and ruminant farms were associated with more varied landscapes, small-scale habitats, semi-nat

SUBMITTER: Karlsson JO 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9287507 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature