Sustaining altitude pastures in mountain landscapes-a fuzzy cognitive model approach.

Similarly to other European mountain areas, in Serra da Estrela the grazing pressure has been reducing due to social and economic drivers that have pushed shepherds and sheep to the foothill, or plainly out of the sector. Shrub encroachment on commons and other previously grazed land is one of the most tangible effects of pastoral abandonment in Serra de Estrela. The impacts of the resulting increase in landscape continuity and biomass availability were made clear in the severe fires of 2017 and 2022. As fire risk is likely to increase with climate change, it becomes urgent to understand what strategies can be deployed to keep fragmentation in these landscapes. Key actors such as shepherds should be involved in this discussion to understand their perceptions, points of view and reasons for abandoning upland pastures. In this study, we use fuzzy cognitive mapping to identify the key variables and mechanisms affecting the pastoral system according to local shepherds. In our study, we developed with local stakeholders a framework outlining the local pastoral system. Based on that, we carried out the fuzzy cognitive mapping collecting 14 questionnaires. We found that shepherds' income is a central issue, but that it is highly dependent on many factors. Increasing the Common Agricultural Policy payments alone is not enough to incentivise the use of upland pastures. More targeted strategies, such as more support for shrub clearing, and direct payments conditional to transhumance are more impactful. Despite a contentious discourse between conservation and shepherding values in Serra da Estrela, we find that shepherd's values are aligned with biodiversity conservation and a potential nature-based solution for minimizing fire risk through woody fuel management. This opens up possibilities for new governance strategies, that put Serra da Estrela's social, environmental and cultural values at its core.

Farmland expansion and intensification do not foster local food self-sufficiency. Insights from the Mediterranean area.

Bridging the gap between the micro and the macro scale in modelling food security to inform context-specific regionalised policies remains a major scientific challenge. A better understanding of the relations between global and local drivers impacting local food self-sufficiency (LFSS) is essential. We applied to the whole Mediterranean environmental area (Southern and Northern) a modelling framework for structural estimates (PLS-PM) using qualitative and quantitative methods to combine local-level information from field surveys and participatory workshops with global-level data. Our findings show that farmland expansion and intensification spatially disconnected from urban consumption areas do not appear to foster LFSS. On the other hand, public policies appear key to enhancing LFSS in the Mediterranean area if appropriate to the particular regional context. We outline how this multi-level modelling methodology can contribute to a place-based approach by informing context-specific regionalised policies aimed at food security.

The PRECOS framework: Measuring the impacts of the global changes on soils, water, agriculture on territories to better anticipate the future.

In a context of increased land and natural resources scarcity, the possibilities for local authorities and stakeholders of anticipating evolutions or testing the impact of envisaged developments through scenario simulation are new challenges. PRECOS's approach integrates data pertaining to the fields of water and soil resources, agronomy, urbanization, land use and infrastructure etc. It is complemented by a socio-economic and regulatory analysis of the territory illustrating its constraints and stakes. A modular architecture articulates modeling software and spatial and temporal representations tools. It produces indicators in three core domains: soil degradation, water and soil resources and agricultural production. As a territory representative of numerous situations of the Mediterranean Basin (urban pressures, overconsumption of spaces, degradation of the milieus), a demonstration in the Crau's area (Southeast of France) has allowed to validate a prototype of the approach and to test its feasibility in a real life situation. Results on the Crau area have shown that, since the beginning of the 16th century, irrigated grasslands are the cornerstones of the anthropic-system, illustrating how successfully men's multi-secular efforts have maintained a balance between environment and local development. But today the ecosystem services are jeopardized firstly by urban sprawl and secondly by climate change. Pre-diagnosis in regions of Emilia-Romagna (Italy) and Valencia (Spain) show that local end-users and policy-makers are interested by this approach. The modularity of indicator calculations and the availability of geo-databases indicate that PRECOS may be up scaled in other socio-economic contexts.

Efficiency and equity in land conservation: the effects of policy scale.

This paper studies the effects of policy scale for land conservation schemes based on global objectives but implemented at local levels. They are explored in the classical reserve site selection framework for policy efficiency, to which we add the common social objective of equity between spatial units. We first analyze the role of the biophysical attributes of land available for conservation. These natural endowments are then combined with different implementation scales to improve a particular land-based social function: natural habitats for biodiversity. An empirical illustration, based on data from the Provence region of France, is used to explore what we identify as a policy scale trade-off between administrative units. This shows the importance of land availability in predicting the distribution of the costs and benefits of conservation schemes. In terms of equity, we find an interior solution that minimizes an inequality metric (the Gini coefficient) along policy scales. Our approach should lead to more socially acceptable conservation objectives, between the usual two extreme cases of autarky and specialization.