DOI: 10.5061/dryad.msbcc2g04
title: Economic and not ecological variables shape the sparing-sharing trade-off in a mixed cropping landscape

description: 1. The framework of land sparing vs. land sharing provides a useful
 analytical tool to address the crop-production/biodiversity trade-off.
 Despite multiple case-studies testing the sparing-sharing trade-off, this
 framework still lacks the ability to identify the conditions in which
 sparing, or sharing, would be the preferred strategy for pareto-optimizing
 both food-production and biodiversity. Under some conditions, ecosystem
 services may create a positive feedback between biodiversity and crop
 production, affecting the optimization. 2. This study aims to identify the
 conditions and the relevant variables that determine the preferred
 land-use strategy in terms of maximizing both biodiversity and food
 production, while accounting for positive feedback of ecosystem services
 in this analysis. We used a simulation model with data from a mixed
 cropping landscape (100 km2) covering seven crop types, five taxonomic
 groups, three biodiversity metrics and 23 bioindicators to explore the
 variables shaping the biodiversity-production trade-off and ecosystem
 services underlying it. We explored a continuum of sparing large
 semi-natural patches to sharing by maintaining uncultivated field margins
 of varying size. 3. Land sparing outperformed land sharing in 62% of the
 scenarios and it was economically more predictable. The optimization was
 shaped by costs, associated with crop type, rather than by landscape
 composition and configuration, biodiversity metric, taxonomic group or
 bioindicator. 4. Landscape configuration and taxonomic group results
 corroborate the notion that land sharing benefits mainly small organisms,
 and that the common width of field-margins in many agri-environmental
 policies (10 m) is not cost-effective compared to land sparing. 5. Land
 sharing was the optimal strategy whenever it resulted in minimal costs,
 despite contributing little to biodiversity. Yet, when field margins were
 &gt;20 m wide (small-scale sparing), land sharing maintained higher
 biodiversity and was at least as cost-effective as sparing. 6. Synthesis
 and applications. Our model highlights the importance of socio-economic
 variables compared to ecological variables in selecting land-management
 strategy to pareto-optimize both food production and biodiversity.
 Considering opportunity costs alongside economic benefits from ecosystem
 services in various cropping systems may therefore improve the
 cost-effectiveness of biodiversity conservation policies in agricultural
 landscapes.
description: This file contains the rawdata analyzed in the statistical models
 described in the methods section of the paper (excluding personal
 ownership data): sites - sampling sites metadata
 including the type of habitat, coordinates, amount of natural habitats in
 the landscape, slope, altitude. plants...plant assoc. -
 richness and geometric mean abundance data per site (seasonal total or per
 visit), used to run the ecological statistical models
 revenue - revenue, costs and amount of field margins mapped
 around the plots used to run the economic models. Data about ownership was
 excluded.