Valuing Agricultural Sustainability by Modelling Socioeconomy, Landscape and Ecosystem Services

Dear colleagues,

Traditional agriculture, involving extensive and semi-extensive agriculture, takes production, culture  and conservation aspects into consideration. The maintenance and development of traditional agriculture have been related to local knowledge and the transmission of information from one generation to another, promoting the sustainable use of resources. Many regions that are characterized by having a long agricultural history, often show an integration of agriculture and conservation within multifunctional landscapes. These heterogeneous landscapes provide a remarkably diverse set of ecosystem services. However, they are threatened by two opposite tendencies: agricultural intensification and rural abandonment. Both threats affect the supply of ecosystem services.
The sustainability of the traditional agriculture has to be considered in the context of the cultural landscape and its relationships with the socio-economy. Therefore, it is necessary to know how socioeconomic changes affect the cultural landscape in general, and the the provision of ecosystem services in particular.
This special issue focuses on the application of different models to study the sustainability of traditional agriculture in cultural landscapes. Relevant topics include, but are not limited to, modeling the provision of ecosystem services given socioeconomic, land use or climate changes, or the synergy of these changes.

Prof. Dr. Pedro A. Aguilera
Prof. Dr. Ana D. Maldonado
Prof. Dr. María Morales
Prof. Dr. Antonio Salmerón
Guest Editors

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