[1]This article was published in the PNAS [2] journal in August 2019. It results from the Farmland project (2011-2015) that was financed by Biodiversa [3], and which was conducted in seven European sites of which the Camargue.
Agricultural landscape homogenization is a major ongoing threat to biodiversity and the delivery of key ecosystem services for human well-being. It is well known that increasing the amount of semi-natural cover in agricultural landscapes has a positive effect on biodiversity.
However, little is known about the role of the crop mosaic itself. Crop heterogeneity in the landscape had a much stronger effect on multitrophic diversity than the amount of semi-natural cover in the landscape, across 435 agricultural landscapes located in 8 European and North American regions. Increasing crop heterogeneity can be an effective way to mitigate the impacts of farming on biodiversity without taking land out of production.
You can access it on the Tour du Valat documentary portal. [4]
Bibliographical reference: Sirami C., Gross N., Baillod A.B., Bertrand C., Carrié R., Hass A., Henckel L., Miguet P., Vuillot C., Alignier A., Girard J., Batáry P., Clough Y., Violle C., Giralt D., Bota G., Badenhausser I., Lefebvre G., Gauffre B., Vialatte A., Calatayud F., Gil-Tena A., Tischendorf L., Mitchell S., Lindsay K., Georges R., Hilaire S., Recasens J., Solé-Senan X.O., Robleño I., Bosch J., Barrientos J.A., Ricarte A., Marcos-Garcia M.Á., Miñano J., Mathevet R., Gibon A., Baudry J., Balent G., Poulin B., Burel F., Tscharntke T., Bretagnolle V., Siriwardena G., Ouin A., Brotons L., Martin J.-L., Fahrig L. 2019. Increasing crop heterogeneity enhances multitrophic diversity across agricultural regions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences:201906419. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1906419116 [5]