Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/322274 
Year of Publication: 
2025
Series/Report no.: 
SustainableFood Discussion Paper No. 26
Publisher: 
Georg-August University of Göttingen, RTG 2654 Sustainable Food Systems, Göttingen
Abstract: 
Preserving ecosystem services and economic and environmental benefits will require future landscape policies to identify and incorporate specific landscape features. In this paper we define the term, agricultural landscape simplification, as the reduced compositional and configurational heterogeneity characterized by lower diversity and smaller numbers, sizes, and simpler arrangements of agricultural land uses, which can impair multiple regulating ecosystem services. To examine the causal effects of agricultural landscape simplification on grassland drought impact, we derive a novel remote-sensing product to measure spatial variation in the impact of drought in grasslands during a prolonged drought and heatwave in 2018, and relate it to a multidimensional index of landscape simplification based on landscape metrics. Our causal identification strategy relies on a spatially explicit fuzzy Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD) and uses Germany's former inner border as an exogenous predictor of agricultural landscape simplification intensity. We identify that a 10 % increase in agricultural landscape simplification is associated with a 7 % increase in grassland drought impact at the former inner border, and quantify the potential forgone revenues associated with the decrease in grassland productivity at approximately 52 € per ha. Our results suggest that identifying the full range of agricultural landscape simplification's adverse environmental and economic effects would improve preventive landscape policy designs enhancing drought resistance and fostering climate change adaptation strategies.
Subjects: 
Drought
Grassland
Landscape Simplification
Former Inner German Border
Fuzzy RDD
JEL: 
Q54
Q15
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.