Templates for Climate-smart Landscape Design

Abstract Context – In climate-smart landscapes people manage land use for integrating sustainable production, climate change adaptation and mitigation. The spatial dimension of this multifunctionality remains to be formalised to increase effectiveness of nature-based solutions.Objectives – We aimed to systematically analyse effects of fragmentation on multifunctionality and their interactions with land-use intensity responses.Methods – We generated virtual landscapes to model interactions among six ecosystem services (ES) of different spatial sensitivities. We simulated land-use patterns on topographies from plains to mountains. Four land-use intensity treatments departed from hypothesised optimal composition for biodiversity and ES with > 30% intensive, < 30% extensive or protected and > 40% intermediate intensity use. For each composition we generated landscapes with differing fragmentation.Results – Pixel- and landscape-level multifunctionality emerge from sensitivities of the six ES to landscape composition, fragmentation and their interactions. In heterogenous landscapes of intermediate land-use intensity extensive grasslands and spatial complementarity supported multiple ES provision. Multifunctionality increased in coarser-grained landscapes, reflecting the sensitivity of the recreation model. Largest losses in multifunctionality with land-use intensity were at lower fragmentation due to simultaneous losses for nitrogen retention and pollination. Regulating ES were synergistic and showed trade-offs with recreation. Although interactions were most sensitive to intensity given its dominant effects on individual ES, fragmentation mediated interaction strength.Conclusions – Virtual simulations allow a systematic understanding of how interactions between land-use intensity and fragmentation modulate multifunctionality. This constitutes an essential step to designing templates for climate smart-landscapes tailored to regional geographies, land-use allocation and ES priorities.