Biodiversity Conservation in Agricultural Landscapes. A Spatially Explicit Economic Analysis

Keywords: Biodiversity conservation; Land use modeling; Metapopulations; Spatial economics;Spatialecology.

In theNetherlandsas well as on a global scale, land use change is one of the major drivers of global biodiversity loss. In theNetherlands, urbanization and agricultural intensification have contributed to biodiversity loss as much habitat disappeared (habitat loss) and remaining habitat became more isolated (habitat fragmentation). Therefore, conservation policy should aim at restoring habitat area as well as habitat connectivity to be effective. Improving habitat connectivity, however, may be costly as the spatial configuration of land use, and hence also that of remaining habitat patches, is generally driven by economic factors. Therefore, tools are needed that can provide insight in the spatial economic and spatial ecological aspects of biodiversity conservation in agricultural areas. These tools could then be used to develop cost-effective spatial conservation strategies, to analyze the trade-off between biodiversity conservation and agriculture, and to assess the cost-effectiveness of existing habitat allocation procedures.

This thesis aims to develop a spatially explicit, integrated modeling framework to analyze the trade-off between biodiversity conservation and agricultural land use and the cost-effectiveness of current spatial habitat allocation schemes. The research questions are addressed by gradually developing an integrated model of biodiversity conservation and agriculture in four different versions of increasing complexity. The models range from a non-spatial analytical model to a spatially explicit model that integrates an economic land use model and an applied metapopulation model.

The results indicate that considerable gains in cost-effectiveness of biodiversity conservation can be achieved if the spatial economic and spatial ecological aspects, such as transport costs and habitat connectivity, are explicitly taken into consideration in conservation policy. Furthermore, these aspects should ideally be considered in an integrated interdisciplinary context.