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Photo 1. The grey partridge, Perdix perdix L., is a typical farmland species and a culturally important gamebird in Europe. c Baudoux B.
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Agricultural changes such as intensification and specialization are thought to be the major source of the severe decline of
farmland bird populations observed on large spatial scales and over long time spans in Europe. We studied farmers’ practices
at a local level on 22 farms from the Beauce area, France, with regard to habitat preferences of grey...
Context in source publication
Context 1
... location (identi- fied from local data and experts). Poor soils (high stoniness and low soil water storage) are scattered all over the munic- ipality, but different proportions of them have been found in the surveyed farms. Fresnay-l'Évêque is located in the south- eastern part of Eure-et-Loir department (longitude 1 • 50' -lat- itude 48 • 16') ( Fig. 1). Its area is 2 926 ha; 86% is agricul- tural land (2 516 ha) and the agricultural land is almost only arable land; 80% is irrigable (SCEES, 2000). Out of a total of 40 farmers, 22 were interviewed. A total of 16 farmers had their farmstead in the municipality and six were outside the municipality. The interviews covered 85% of the ...Citations
... Moreover, some studies found no differences in Grey Partridge abundance between organic and conventional farming (Chamberlain et al. 1999(Chamberlain et al. , 2010, thereby indicating that a variety of other factors can also strongly affect abundance in agricultural landscapes. Measures that can be carried out by both, conventional and organic farmers (Bengtsson et al. 2005), are for example, the extent of pesticides and fertilizers used (Chiverton 1999), the choice of crop diversity (Ronnenberg et al. 2016), the crop sequence patterns (Joannon et al. 2008) and the provisioning of additional habitat structures (e.g. hedgerows: Batary et al. 2010;uncultivated habitats: Černý et al. 2020;manure heaps: Šálek et al. 2020). ...
Agricultural landscapes had been inhabited by a vast number of bird species in the past; however, especially in the last decades, agricultural intensification had negatively affected habitat composition. Habitat heterogeneity decreased and the number of many species inhabiting farmland has severely declined. These landscapes still offer a home for species, but with decreasing environmental variability, less suitable habitat might be available and interspecific competition might have been altered. Agricultural fields under organic farming are often assumed to provide adequate habitats for farmland birds, thus competition for these areas might be high and affect species' habitat selection. We compared habitat selection of two typical farmland bird species, Grey Partridges (Perdix perdix) and Common Pheasants (Phasianus colchicus), to determine the extent of habitat overlap in agricultural landscapes under organic and conventional farming in spring. Our study showed that both species preferred study squares with high habitat heterogeneity. In addition, squares with agricultural fields (e.g. without culture, winter cereals and fallow land) under organic farming were preferred by Grey Partridges, while Common Pheasants were mainly found on study squares containing agricultural fields under conventional farming. A broad habitat width in respect to food selection might have driven habitat choice of Common Pheasants; however, occupation of agricultural fields under organic farming by Grey Partridge males might also explain habitat selection of Common Pheasants. Awareness should be raised when releasing captive-rearing pheasants because interspecific competition between Grey Partridges and Common Pheasants could also affect fecundity and survival of both species.
... The availability of insect food is an important factor influencing farmland birds (Vickery et al., 2001;Bowler et al., 2019), including grey partridge (Perdix perdix L.) (Benton et al., 2002;Holland et al., 2006). The grey partridge is a farmland species and one of the most iconic game birds in Europe (Bro et al., 2004;Joannon et al., 2008;Aebischer & Ewald, 2012). It is often described as an archetypal farmland bird closely linked with openfarmed landscapes (Potts, 1986) and sensitive to changes in farming practices and agricultural intensification (Sotherton et al., 2014). ...
The intensification and specialisation of agriculture has contributed to farmland wildlife decline, including farmland birds. Grey partridge is a farmland species which has experienced a significant decline across Europe in recent decades. Chick survival rate is a key determinant of grey partridge population change and depends essentially on the availability of insect food. In this study, ground-dwelling and canopy-dwelling insects were collected using pitfall trapping and sweep netting methodologies, respectively, on different strip types in an area established for the conservation of grey partridge. The aim was to further our understanding of the value of different vegetated strip types in providing insect-rich habitats for grey partridge chicks. Overall, wildflower strip (WS) provided the greatest insect abundance. Significantly more ground-dwelling insects were found on WS, natural regeneration (NS) and leguminous strips (LS) than on grass strip (GS). Canopy-dwelling insects were also significantly more abundant on WS compared to all other strip types. This study highlights that WSs may represent important habitats in providing insect-rich food for grey partridge chicks and sowing these strips may therefore play a key role in decreasing chick mortality and supporting grey partridge conservation. It also demonstrates that other different vegetated strip types may still provide strip-specific insect taxa, in addition to other valuable resources. This study recommends a complex mosaic of different strip types to provide key resources for grey partridge, such as insect and plant food, nesting habitats and overwinter cover.
... In cultivated landscapes, land use patterns related to the diversity of land use types and their spatial arrangement into patches impact many biophysical processes, such as water, erosion, contaminants or gene fluxes (Joannon et al., 2006;Viaud et al., 2008;Wohlfahrt et al., 2010;Colin et al., 2012;Jiang et al., 2021). Land use patterns also impact biotic diversity (Joannon et al., 2008;Fahrig et al., 2011), which in turn impacts plant health, crop protection (Steinmann and Dobers, 2013;Scheiner and Martin, 2020) and, consequently, crop production. Characterizing land use patterns and their determinants is a prerequisite for the development and assessment of the impact of acceptable alternative land use scenarios and is a major challenge for landscape agronomy , Rizzo et al., 2013. ...
... For example, a patch of interest may be a continuous area of adjacent fields with a given crop or combination of crops during a crop cycle. It may also be a continuous area of adjacent fields with a given crop succession or combination of crop successions, with each crop succession being described by a fixed or flexible crop sequence or combination of crop sequences recurring over time (Joannon et al., 2008;Thenail et al., 2009). ...
... In the field of landscape agronomy, two main types of land use pattern approaches have been developed. The first type of approach assumes that crop distribution patterns at the landscape level result from farmers' decisions regarding the allocation of crops to fields (Joannon et al., 2008;Peltonen-Sainio et al., 2017;Thenail et al., 2009;Sorel et al., 2010). Studies, therefore, focus on characterizing the spatiotemporal allocations of crops to fields by farmers and their determinants. ...
CONTEXT
In cultivated landscapes, land use patterns related to the diversity of crops, their spatial arrangement into patches and their succession over several years influence many biophysical processes and the production of ecosystem services and disservices. Understanding the determinants of these patterns is a prerequisite for the development of acceptable alternative land use patterns. Most studies deem crop distribution patterns at the landscape level to be the result of individual allocations of crop successions to fields designed at the farm level. However, in some parts of the world, there are collective crop successions that apply to groups of adjacent fields on different farms.
OBJECTIVE
The objective of this study was to examine the extent to which the spatiotemporal distribution of crops at the landscape scale relates to collective crop successions.
METHODS
The study was based on a Mediterranean rainfed agricultural landscape (67.7 km²) located in northeastern Tunisia, in which collective successions respond to constraints related to agricultural land fragmentation. Combined with field mapping, remotely sensed land use time series were used to identify three-year crop sequences, classify them into crop succession types and identify clusters of adjacent fields with the same type of crop succession. We assumed that such a cluster was the result of a collective succession if the determinants of the individual crop succession locations did not explain its size (expressed in the number of fields). We related such determinants to the characteristics of the fields and their land-use environment and defined them statistically. Then, we developed a spatial permutation test to distinguish clusters resulting only from the determinants of the individual crop succession locations from those resulting from collective succession.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS
The results show that the collective successions mainly comprised biennial successions (wheat sown alternately with legumes, spices or forage crops). These successions were synchronized between adjacent fields based on wheat cultivation; all fields in the same cluster had wheat in the same year. Collective successions were secondarily comprised of fodder-dominant successions. These collective successions involved approximately 40% of the fields and their total area in the study area. These fields belonged to different clusters ranging in size from two to 96 adjacent fields.
SIGNIFICANCE
The developed approach is a tool for mapping the likely presence of collective successions and considering this factor in the definition of sustainable land use scenarios at the landscape level for better soil and water management.
... climatique) peuvent amener celui-ci à modifier certaines cultures ou leur ordre au cours de la rotation (Ridier et al., 2016). C'est pourquoi le terme de succession de cultures est souvent préféré à celui de rotation culturale (Joannon et al., 2008;Thenail et al., 2009). 1. La germination des graines est une série d'événements qui commencent par l'imbibition et se terminent par l'émergence de la radicule du tégument de la graine (Srivastava, 2002). ...
Dans beaucoup de régions du monde marquées par une forte variabilité saisonnière et interannuelle hydroclimatique, les retenues d'eau sont considérées comme une solution pour sécuriser la ressource en eau en vue de son utilisation pour l'irrigation des cultures. Le développement et la multiplication des retenues dans un bassin versant agricole peuvent cependant avoir des effets cumulés importants, aussi bien sur l'hydrologie que d'autres composantes environnementales (géomorphologie, écologie…). La modélisation constitue une approche pour estimer et quantifier ces effets cumulés. Cette thèse avait pour objectif de développer et tester un modèle agro-hydrologique distribué qui couple hydrologie, développement des cultures et décisions des agriculteurs dans un bassin versant avec retenues d'eau. Ce modèle, appelé MHYDAS-Small-Reservoirs, a pour originalité de représenter explicitement les principaux éléments du bassin versant (parcelle, bief, retenue, nappe) et les liens hydrologiques et agronomiques entre ces éléments. Le modèle a été vérifié numériquement et informatiquement et a été appliqué et évalué sur un cas d'étude, le bassin versant du Gélon, France (20 km²). Le modèle simule de manière satisfaisante débits et rendements des cultures. En outre, les bases de données utilisées pour paramétrer le modèle sont pour la plupart nationales, ce qui permettrait d'appliquer le modèle à d'autres bassins versants.Nous avons analysé l'intérêt du modèle pour quantifier et comprendre les effets cumulés des retenues sur le fonctionnement hydrologique du bassin versant et sur les rendements des cultures dans une diversité de configurations en termes de climat, de densité de retenues et d'assolement. Cette analyse a été effectuée à partir de situations théoriques du bassin versant du Gélon. Les simulations montrent en particulier l'intérêt du modèle pour évaluer à la fois les effets locaux et les effets cumulés, et les liens entre ces effets. De plus, elles permettent d'identifier un certain nombre de résultats contre-intuitifs, de les quantifier et de les comprendre. Enfin, ces simulations ont permis de démontrer et d'expliquer des effets locaux associés aux retenues contraires à l'effet de l'ensemble des retenues sur le bassin versant.
... Heterogeneous landscapes dominated by small-sized fields and higher proportion of uncultivated habitats play an important role for the grey partridge (Šálek et al. 2004;Joannon et al. 2008). These two habitat features improve survival of partridges (Kaiser 1998) and also increase nest success (Casas and Viñuela 2010) which is the key factor for stability of grey partridge populations (Potts 1986;Bro et al. 2000c;Aebischer and Ewald 2004). ...
This study examines the habitat selection of grey partridge (Perdix perdix) and the effect of habitat type within partridge home ranges on nest site choice and nest success. Data were collected via radio-tracking in three different areas in the Czech Republic between 2002 and 2010. Compositional analysis was performed on 12 habitat types and uncultivated habitats (such as ruderals, field margins and game refuges) were selected the most during the pre-nesting and nesting periods. Grey partridges tended to nest in uncultivated habitats and avoided nesting in dominant cereal monocultures. We tested six variables that may determine nest site choice and success. Of these, the study area, proportion of selected habitat and habitat diversity (expressed by the Simpson’s diversity index) significantly affected nest placement in uncultivated habitats. Despite this, the lowest nest failure rate was observed in the predominant cereal habitat. Our findings suggest a possible ecological trap for partridges throughout our study areas. Due to the lack of uncultivated habitats, partridges favoured nesting in habitats with a higher predation risk. Conservation managers should increase the proportion of uncultivated areas and promote habitat diversity for partridge populations in central Europe.
... Indicator selection relied on literature reviews of the evaluation of farming system sustainability (Deytieux et al. 2015;Sadok et al. 2008) and on the farmers' expectations about cropmanure exchanges (Table 2). For instance, economic, environmental, and social indicators at the farm level came from previous studies of indicator-based assessment of farming systems (Bockstaller et al. 2015), landscape and crop diversity (Joannon et al. 2008), and labor organization (Hostiou and Dedieu 2012). ...
Integrating crops and livestock is an agroecological way of farming as it enables maintaining production levels while limiting negative environmental impacts. At the farm scale, crop–livestock systems declined due to globalized markets, policies, and limited availability of workforce and skills. Exchanges of manure and crops among already specialized farms are one option to overcome these limiting factors but are still underdeveloped in the reality. This study aimed to design reality-based agroecological scenarios of integrated crops and livestock systems within a collective of seven neighboring farmers. We focused on 7 farms in southwestern France already interested in developing exchanges to achieve self-sufficiency in fertilizer and animal-feed inputs. We applied a participatory method involving the collective of farmers and a group facilitator to define the problem and generate scenarios, as codesign increases the potential for adoption among farmers. The scenarios selected were evaluated using a supply–demand balance model and a multi-criteria framework including economic, environmental, and social dimensions. Among the four alternative scenarios evaluated, the selected scenario considered both (i) the insertion of cereal–legume mixtures into crop rotations of arable farms and (ii) transfers of manure from livestock farmers to crop farmers. In this scenario, individual gross margins increased and environmental impacts decreased, but workload, logistical, and social issues, such as knowledge development, increased. Compared to more ambitious scenarios, the trade-offs between individual and collective benefits appeared acceptable and resulted in greater autonomy in decision-making at the collective level. This methodology can be applied in other contexts, in particular with other farm collectives.
... Agricultural landscapes provide ecosystem services and disservices that are driven by land use pattern dynamics resulting from crop spatiotemporal distribution (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005, IAASTD, 2009. Crop mosaics related to spatial patch arrangement and crop succession impact the sustainability of agricultural production (Jackson et al., 2007) as well as numerous biophysical processes such as water, erosion and contaminant fluxes (Joannon et al., 2006;Wohlfahrt et al., 2010;Colin et al., 2012), biotic diversity (Joannon et al., 2008) and gene fluxes (Viaud et al., 2008). Therefore, characterizing the drivers of crop allocation to fields is a prerequisite for (1) exploring and simulating spatially explicit plausible land use scenarios, and (2) quantifying the subsequent ecosystem services and disservices Rizzo et al., 2013). ...
... As discussed in previous studies, land use pattern dynamics on agricultural landscapes result from crop allocation rules that are defined at the farm scale and that drive both the successions of crops over several years and the annual distributions of crops among farmlands (Joannon et al., 2008;Thenail et al., 2009;Castellazzi et al., 2010;Houet et al., 2010;Sorel et al., 2010;Schaller et al., 2012;Stoebner and Lant, 2014). Once crops are selected for any year, allocation rules concern a choice (1) of suitable cultivation area for each crop (all suitable plots for the considered crop), (2) of the crop surface area (total area of a considered crop on the farmland), (3) of crop return time (acceptable time to reseed the same crop on the same plot) and (4) of preceding-following crop pairs (acceptable temporal crop sequences) (Aubry et al., 1998). ...
... Nevertheless, 40% of the variability remained unexplained. We must further explore other variables that were reported as potential drivers in previous studies (e.g., Joannon et al. 2008;Thenail et al. 2009;Morlon and Benoit, 1990). ...
Mediterranean agricultural landscapes provide ecosystem services and disservices that are driven by land use pattern dynamics, the latter of which results from the crop spatiotemporal distribution. Farmland fragmentation is known to be a driver of crop management and farm performance. However, existing studies on farmland fragmentation have not addressed the impact of farmland fragmentation and the subsequent neighbouring interactions on decision-making about annual crop allocation. Therefore, the current study aims to explore how much farmland fragmentation can drive the decisions made by farmer about annual crop allocation by characterizing and quantifying the influences of both crop sequences and neighbouring crops at the field scale. We addressed this issue within the Lebna watershed (210 km² size, located on the Cap Bon Peninsula in Tunisia), which is typified by a hilly topography, rainfed mixed farming (cereals, fodder, legumes, spices) and livestock (cattle, sheep and goat), and strong farmland fragmentation. The experimental phases consisted of conducting 30 farmer interviews and collecting data regarding the field spatial distribution for a total number of 360 fields in 2015 and 355 fields in 2016, hereafter called farmer fields. We also recorded (1) crop types for the farmer fields in 2015 and 2016 and (2) land uses (including crop types) in the neighbouring pieces of land in 2016. Data analysis relied on differentiating the farmer fields between isolated and non-isolated fields. Isolation/non-isolation depended upon farmland fragmentation and field dispersion relative to the other farm fields and to the farmstead. Using univariate and linear discriminant analysis on both crop sequences and neighbouring crops, data analysis revealed a significant effect of farmland fragmentation on farmer decision-making regarding crop allocation. When fields are isolated (fragmented farmlands), farmers implement with some of their neighbours, collective rules of crop allocation that permit the management of common constraints, such as the lack of roads to access fields. The landscape subsequently depicts aggregates of fields with the same type of crop. When fields are non-isolated (aggregated farmlands close to the farmsteads), the allocation constraints are mainly related to the cropping systems, with a strong impact from the crop sequences. Overall, these results indicate that to improve our understanding of crop allocation drivers at the landscape level, it is not only sufficient to address rules and drivers at the field and farm scales but it is also necessary to account for the collective contexts in which farmers operate.
... Classically, crop rotations are fixed sequences of crops repeated in cycles. Nowadays, these rotations have been replaced by variable and often short sets of crop sequences (Joannon, Bro, Thenail, & Baudry, 2008). Therefore we use 'crop sequences' instead of 'crop rotation'. ...
Questions
Does the mere introduction of maize into the crop sequence change the weed species community? Does a growing share of maize cropping lead to a more problematic weed species community? Do we generally have to expect problematic weed species communities when maize is continuously cultivated?
Location
Northern Germany.
Methods
Weeds in 224 maize fields were surveyed in three years and management data of these fields was collected for the previous ten cropping years. We arranged seven parameters describing maize cropping patterns and used them as constraining variables in redundancy analysis.
Results
The weed species community was immediately altered by the introduction of maize into the crop sequence. Of those weed species known to be adapted to maize, in our study Echinochloa crus‐galli and to a lesser extent Setaria spp. were strongly related to dense maize cropping patterns, other summer annuals were much less affected.
Conclusions
The spatial growth of areas dedicated to maize cropping will change the weed species communities and, in turn, the arable landscape. E. crus‐galli deserves particular attention due to its tendency to develop herbicide resistance and its positive reaction to dense maize cropping patterns.
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... Виявлене вище свідчить також про виняткову еколого-господарську важливість створення оптимальної мозаїчності агроландшафтів, сформовану озимими зерновими та багаторічними кормовими культурами, що належать до І групи трофічної цінності для досліджуваних видів мисливської фауни (Kornieiev, 1960;Gruzdev, 1974;Rudenko, 1986;Osmolovskaia, 1966;Orłowski, Czarnecka, & Panek, 2011;Joannon et al., 2008), для організації їх успішного існування, принаймні у сучасному Лісостепу України, і стимулювання просторового розподілу тварин за рівномірно-агрегованим типом. Це дасть змогу прогнозовано та ефективніше здійснювати господарське управління локальними ценопопуляціями, а також збільшити показники оптимальної місткості мисливських угідь та, відповідно, оптимальної чисельності дичини. ...
Доведено, що законодавчо регламентовані підходи до бонітування відкритих ландшафтів України, зокрема її лісостепової зони, базуються переважно на оцінюванні середовищетвірних властивостей природних та антропогенно змінених екосистем. Це опосередковано характеризує захисні якості польових угідь, тоді як кормові – залишає поза класифікацією. Виявлено, що зимуючі рослинні культури своїм топографічним розташуванням спричиняють просторовий перерозподіл зайця сірого на досліджуваній території за агрегованим типом. Тоді як з віддаленням від озимих посівів зазначений тип розподілу поступово переходив у притаманний виду – дифузний. Обґрунтовано провідну роль посівів озимих злакових та багаторічних бобових культур у сучасних агроландшафтах Лісостепу України як трофічно привабливих стацій для денного залягання зайця сірого у невегетаційний період. Для удосконалення чинної методики мисливського бонітування орних земель держави запропоновано передусім використовувати оцінкові критерії природної і штучної мозаїчності ландшафтів на фоні просторово-часових характеристик їх укомплектованості багаторічними природними фітоценозами та озимими агрофітоценозами І групи трофічної цінності саме у невегетаційний період, як два визначальні показники якості польових угідь не залежно від періоду року та пересічності місцевості. Висловлені зауваження та пропозиції рекомендовано розглядати як тимчасовий варіант покращення ситуації до кардинального переформатування чинної нормативно-правової бази з упорядкування мисливських угідь держави.
... Others have stated that AEMs are not always suited for all kinds of farms (Evans and Morris, 1997;Hodge and Reader, 2010), and over/under compensation can be expected, in addition to several application problems (Klimek et al., 2008). On the other hand, there is evidence that the landscape spatial organisation can affect environmental processes like biodiversity conservation (Benton et al., 2003;Joannon et al., 2008;Kleijn and Sutherland, 2003) and water pollution (Beaujouan et al., 2001;Benoit et al., 1997;Toderi et al., 2007). ...
An Agri-environmental measure (AEM) is a payment to farmers to reduce environmental risks or to preserve cultivated landscapes. The single farm scale that is the basis for the AEM has often inhibited the achievement of the environmental goals since many biophysical processes (e.g. soil erosion, water pollution, biodiversity losses) occur at landscape scale. This creates a spatial scale mismatch between the implementation scale of the measures and the ecological processes controlling the target agri-environmental issues. In this paper, we propose how to address this spatial scale mismatch by analysing nine case studies of AEMs implementation at landscape scale concerning biodiversity conservation and water protection. The analysis highlights that the inclusion of the landscape scale in AEMs depends on the level of the involvement of the local stakeholders (SH) in the building process. When the authorities created the space for the SHs to participate in the defining process of AEMs, the inclusion of local knowledge led to the emergence of new landscape and site-specific AEMs which were not previously considered by the autorities. On the contrary, when the SHs were only allowed to choose among the AEMs predefined by the authorities, many site specificity and acceptance issues arose. The creation of space in Rural Development Programmes for collaborative, bottom-up and landscape scale AEMs and the overcoming of institutional constraints in the design of specific actions are the key ingredients for the successful adoption of measures and for enhancing their effectiveness. In this paper, we explore in depth what made these stories successful and provide a framework for the implementation of site-specific and landscape AEMs.
