Mapping hotspots of multiple landscape functions: a case study on farmland afforestation in Scotland |
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| Authors: | Alessandro Gimona Dan van der Horst |
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| Institution: | (1) Macaulay Institute, Craigiebuckler, Aberdeen, AB15 8QH, UK;(2) School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK |
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| Abstract: | Many conservation and restoration efforts in developed countries are increasingly based on the premise of recognising and
stimulating more ‘multi-functionality’ in agricultural landscapes. Public policy making is often a pragmatic process that
involves efforts to negotiate trade-offs between the potentially conflicting demands of various stakeholders. Conservationists’
efforts to influence policy making, can therefore benefit from any tool that will help them to identify other socio-economic
functions or values that coincide with good ecological conservation options. Various types of socio-economic objectives have
in recent years been mapped across landscapes and so there are now important opportunities to explore the spatial heterogeneity
of these diverse functions across the wider landscape in search of potential spatial synergies, i.e. ‘multiple win locations’
or multifunctional ‘hotspots’.
This paper explores the potential occurrence of such synergies within the agricultural landscape of northeast Scotland and
evaluates an existing woodland planting policy using and combining three different policy objectives. Our results show that
there are indeed broad areas of the studied landscape where multiple objectives (biodiversity, visual amenity and on-site
recreation potential) could be achieved simultaneously (hotspots), and that the case study which we evaluate (the Farm Woodland
Premium Scheme) could be much better spatially targeted with regards to each individual objective as well as with regards
to these hotspots of multifunctionality.
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| Keywords: | Farm woodlands GIS Spatial targeting Biodiversity Recreation Visual amenity Landscape Multifunctionality |
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