Back to the future: Traditional agroforestry systems as NbS to face multiple societal challenges (ERA NET BIODIVERSA+, “TRANSFOrm”)

Traditional agroforestry systems provide a variety of ecosystem services that are essential for crop productivity and sustainability. However, agricultural intensification and landscape homogenization can negatively affect these services. This project aims to integratively assess how ground cover and landscape heterogeneity influence the provision of ecosystem services in traditional agricultural systems, using cherry orchards as a case study within the European Biodiversa+ TRANSFOrm project. To this end, it will first examine the role of biodiversity and its relationship with pest control and pollination, analyzing how landscape structure and management practices affect pollinators, birds, pests, and their natural enemies through standardized surveys and artificial intelligence-based tools. Subsequently, the project will investigate how different management regimes and levels of landscape heterogeneity generate synergies or trade-offs among services such as yield, soil fertility, pest control, and pollination, using ecological and agronomic indicators. Finally, it will quantify the economic value of these ecosystem services through environmental economics methods that integrate biophysical and socioeconomic data, with the goal of developing management strategies that simultaneously enhance the sustainability, productivity, and profitability of cherry agroecosystems.