Agricultural production in mountain regions poses a significant threat to the integrity of ecosystems and the natural environment, demanding urgent action to ensure the resilience of these sensitive landscapes. Today, the interplay and effects of several environmental, agronomic, and socio-economic pressures increasingly undermine not only the long-term sustainability but also the cultural heritage they embody. At the same time, mounting evidence shows that biodiversity and nature-based solutions, ranging from within-field plant community management to landscape-scale compositional and configurational diversification, can leverage ecological processes, enhance ecosystem service-based multifunctionality and strengthen the sustainability and resilience of these landscapes.
For the session “Pathways to resilient agricultural landscapes in mountain regions: Integrating nature-based solutions for sustainable farming”, we invite contributions that explore and demonstrate how biodiversity, stakeholder-driven, and multi-scale nature-based interventions can foster more integrated, diversified and multifunctional agricultural landscapes. We especially encourage submissions that adopt inter- and transdisciplinary approaches and incorporate stakeholder perspectives, including those of farmers, consultants, cooperatives, policymakers, and local communities, whose knowledge, priorities, and constraints are crucial for the design, adoption, and long-term success of nature-based strategies.
We welcome empirical, modelling, conceptual, and policy-oriented work that identifies knowledge gaps, evaluates ecosystem service outcomes, proposes and test innovative and nature-based solutions, or provides multi-actor and cross-scale insights to support and enhance the resilience, adaptive capacity and multiple benefits in agriculture-dominated socio-ecological systems in mountain regions.
Registered Abstracts
ID: 3.63
Giving Orchard Meadows a Place: Spatially Explicit Data for More Resilient Landscapes
Orchard Meadows (OM) are traditional agroforestry systems that provide multiple ecosystem services. By enhancing regional resilience and preserving social heritage, they can hold significant potential as Nature-based Solutions (NbS). However, they have experienced a sharp decline due to the agricultural intensification on valley bottoms and abandonment on less accessible, marginal slopes. While this general trend is known to affect Orchard Meadows in Central Europe, the specific extent of this loss remains unclear on the local scale, especially in mountain regions. This work presents a comparative, spatially explicit data set assessing the change in Orchard Meadows distribution in the Alpine region of South Tyrol (Italy) over a 70-year interval. By comparing historical orthophotos (1954-56) with current imagery (2020-25), it quantifies areas of persistence, loss, and current distribution patterns. This enables the localization of areas where they resisted despite the dramatic loss, and crucially, areas where management remained feasible and valued by stakeholders. Hence, it can provide land managers, planners, and policymakers with a spatially explicit baseline to identify priority areas for conservation, restoration, and sustainable management, supporting evidence-based planning of Nature-based Solutions at local and regional scales.
ID: 3.74
The role of Nature-based Solutions (NbS) in the resilience of rural livelihoods: sustainable development as an indicator of biodiversity
Ignacio J. Diaz-Maroto
Abstract/Description
Our goal is to foster debate through evaluation and analysis on the role that Nature-based Solutions (NbS) play in enhancing the resilience of rural livelihoods. Sustainable development acts as a critical and multidimensional indicator of biodiversity, reflecting the health of ecosystems that underpin human survival as well as social and economic systems. This issue is complex, as it encompasses socioeconomic, political, and environmental dimensions, requiring effective coordination among all stakeholders. Mountain regions, which host approximately 50% of the world’s biodiversity hotspots, provide a vast array of ecosystem services that support the livelihoods of millions of people. These ecosystems present a high number of endemic plant and animal species and deliver essential services, including water regulation, carbon sequestration, cultural values, and the maintenance of biologically diverse landscapes. However, mountain ecosystems are also on the front line of climate change. Rising temperatures, glacier retreat, and altered precipitation regimes are disrupting hydrological processes and ecosystem functioning, exacerbating natural hazards and constituting significant threats to biodiversity, livelihoods, and local communities. At the same time, many mountainous areas are experiencing increasing pressure from anthropogenic activities, particularly unsustainable agricultural and forestry practices. Traditional land-use systems that were historically in balance with natural ecosystems are being replaced by intensive monocultures, often driven by land abandonment linked to rural depopulation and population aging, followed by the introduction of non-native species. These dynamics are leading to significant changes in species composition, soil quality, and landscape heterogeneity, directly affecting biodiversity at both local and regional scales and highlighting the urgent need for measures that enhance the resilience of these socio-ecological systems. In this framework, the effects of environmental, agronomic, forestry, and socioeconomic pressures increasingly challenge not only long-term sustainability but also the cultural heritage embedded within mountain landscapes. Nature-based Solutions emerge as a promising approach to integrate ecological restoration with sustainable land management, strengthening adaptive capacity, enhancing ecosystem multifunctionality, and supporting governance frameworks that reconcile conservation goals with socioeconomic development.
Submitted Abstracts
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-> checkbox to set your final review (when activated, you confirm your final choice and will close the review process of this abstract)
-> optional: comments to share with your co-chair(s) and the organizing committee (max. 50 characters, not visible for the authors of the abstract) INFO: You can leave comments without making your final review as often as you want. Changes are overwritten and not archived. When activating the checkbox, you make your final review and close the review process for this abstract. In case of an erroneous review, you can of course contact us via contact form (please provide the abstract number). You can do the review no matter if your co-chair(s) have already submitted a review recommendation or not.
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