A biophysical typologie in agri-environmental modelling

The reason to create an Agri-Environmental Zonation (AEnZ) is to establish an agri-environmental framework to be used in the SEAMLESS project. The framework is needed to assess the impacts of agricultural policies covering the wide biophysical variation in which agricultural activities take place in Europe. The main objective of building this AEnZ was therefore to stratify Europe on the main biophysical factors that determine the agronomic production capacity in Europe. Furthermore, the variation in environment also needs to be taken into account when assessing the impacts of agriculture on water, soil, air, climate, biodiversity and landscape. Overall it is clear that we can distinguish zones in Europe according to a rough division where agricultural activities are very much limited by climatic, soil and/or other topographic factors, while in other areas the natural factors provide good opportunities for a wide range of agricultural activities or specific types of agriculture. Within these rough zones a further subdivision can be made in units that have similar biophysical environment and therefore have the same agricultural potential and agri-environmental problems.

BARUTH Bettina;  HAZEU Gerard;  ELBERSEN Berien;  ANDERSEN Erling;  VAN DIEPEN Kees;  METZGER Marc; 

2010-04-07

Springer

JRC40604

978-90-481-3618-6,   

http://www.springer.com/life,    sciences/agriculture/book/978-90-481-3618-6,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC40604,   

10.1007/978-90-481-3619-3_7,