Agron Sustain Dev 27:279–291īaudry J, Burel F, Aviron S, Martin M, Ouin A, Pain G, Thenail C (2003) Temporal variability of connectivity in agricultural landscapes: do farming activities help? Landscape Ecol 18:303–314īeddington J, Asaduzzaman M, Clark M, Fernández-Bremauntz A, Guillou MD, Howlett DJB, Jahn MM, Lin E, Mamo T, Negra C, Nobre CA, Scholes RJ, Van Bo N, Wakhungu J (2012) What next for agriculture after Durban? Science 335:289–290īenoît M, Mignolet C, Herrmann S, Rizzo D, Moonen C, Bàrberi P, Galli M, Bonari E, Silvestri N, Thenail C, Lardon S, Rapey H, Marraccini E, Le Ber F, Meynard JM (2007) Landscape designed by farming systems: a challenge for landscape agronomists in Europe. Landsc Urban Plan 38:105–117īastian O, Corti C, Lebboroni M (2007) Determining environmental minimum requirements for functions provided by agro-ecosystems. Environ Conserv 38:151–171Īntrop M (1997) The concept of traditional landscapes as a base for landscape evaluation and planning. On these premises, we discuss the main research issues that will benefit from an active involvement of agronomy, to understand, but also to assess landscape dynamics and to design relevant decision support systems.Īcevedo MF (2011) Interdisciplinary progress in food production, food security and environment research. It can stimulate agronomists to deal with research issues in agricultural landscape dynamics and enhance the interdisciplinary integration of farming systems in wider landscape research. This model describes the relationship between three elements: farming practices, landscape patterns and natural resources. For this, we propose a conceptual model of agricultural landscape dynamics that illustrates the specific contribution of agronomy to landscape research. In this paper, we describe how landscape agronomy can help explain the relationship between farming systems and agricultural landscape dynamics. Nevertheless, agronomy is rarely included in the wide range of disciplines involved in landscape research. The paper presents a comprehensive classification of fodder and grassland types in the agricultural area and a multilingual vocabulary.Landscape dynamics increasingly challenge agronomists to explain how and why agricultural landscapes are designed and managed by farmers. They consist mainly in: (i) better definitions of grassland terms including for pastures and meadows, permanent, agriculturallyimproved, semi-natural and natural grasslands (ii) the classification of temporary grasslands in three categories: pure legume sowings, pure grass sowings and grass-legume mixtures (iii) the classification of permanent grasslands in three categories: agriculturally-improved, natural and semi-natural, no longer used for production and (iv) the introduction of a new category for grazed fallow land. Improvements of the current situation are proposed.

It can thus not represent all species-rich grassland types. The term ‘rough grazing’ does not include all types of natural and semi-natural grasslands, especially all types of rangelands, forest pastures and traditional hay meadows. Some terms like ‘meadows’ and ‘pastures’ are often used in an imprecise and misleading way. Temporary grasslands are recorded as ‘Leguminous plants’ and ‘Temporary grass’ which induces doubt on the classification of grass-legume mixtures and often leads to the underestimation of temporary grassland areas. The official definition of grasslands does not include vast areas of grazed shrubby and wooded ecosystems.

Grasslands are represented in an unsatisfactory manner in agricultural statistics.

Agricultural landscape definition