Impact of production intensity on the ability of the agricultural landscape to generate ecosystem services: an example from Sweden

This paper identifies a number of essential ecosystem services, and estimat es their generation by the Swedish agricultural landscape under different p roduction intensities. This is exemplified with data from a low-intensity p eriod (1950s) and a high-intensity one (1990s). The services are described in qualitative and, to the extent possible, quantitative terms, and the eco logical functions that support these services are identified. About 20% of Swedish agricultural land has been removed from production during the past 40 years. Production has been strongly intensified with respect to external inputs, and specialized regionally. Local landscape mosaics have been subs tantially altered, which resulted in a decreased ability of agricultural la ndscapes to support natural ecosystem components and processes. We argue th at all of these changes affect the ability of the landscape to generate eco system services. Local, ecological 'goods and services' have largely been r eplaced by fossil fuel driven technology and the regulation of the system i s now driven much more by external factors. However, there is no notable ch ange in the system's ability to assimilate solar energy, measured by net pr imary production (NPP) and corrected for the cost of production (external i nputs considered as foregone NPP). Most of the measures we derive indicate a loss of ecosystem services from the Swedish agricultural landscape. This is tantamount to losing an important form of 'local ecological insurance', and could lead to serious problems in a future with lower access to externa l resources, or with an altered energy policy. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B. V. All rights reserved.