McGill University
Candidat M.Sc.
superviseur(e): Elena Bennett
Début: 2020-09-01
Fin: 2024-12-15
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Projet

Déverrouiller le potentiel de la COP15 : Réconcilier la productivité agricole et les services écosystémiques via la réhabilitation des terres à faible rendement.
Efforts to ensure a plentiful supply of food have led to expansion and industrialization of agricultural regions at the expense of non-food ecosystem services (ES), reducing landscape diversity and increasing vulnerability to pest outbreaks and climate events. Recent research has highlighted habitat restoration as a solution that might increase non-food ES. In fact, the recent COP15 agreement has set targets for restoration of degraded land. However, restoring agricultural lands may result in a trade-off that reduces food production. Could this trade-off be mitigated by restoring less productive fields? And does the spatial configuration of restoration play an important role in determining the mix of ES that might be provided? We investigated the ES outcomes of a variety of scenarios to meet the COP15 targets using the Montérégie, an agricultural landscape southeast of Montreal, Quebec, Canada, as a case study. We explored scenarios ranging from no restoration to full restoration of unproductive lands, modelling the outcomes for seven ES, including crop production, maple syrup production, deer hunting, water quality regulation, above-ground carbon storage, and outdoor recreation. Our scenarios encompass different proportions of land restoration (3.3%, 12.5% and 30%) on three types of sites (random, abandoned, or degraded fields). Our analysis reveals that increasing the area restored played a key role in increasing ES provision, but the spatial pattern of restored fields was also important in determining delivery for some ES. Key outputs of this study include the creation of 64 maps (baseline + 9 different restoration patterns for each of 7 ES), illustrating the landscape-level impacts of varying levels of COP15 target achievement. These maps illustrate the potential ES outcomes of implementing COP15 agreements at a landscape scale, while also raising pertinent questions about the requisite level of restoration to attain desired benefits. Overall, this project advances our comprehension of the potential advantages and drawbacks of restoration in agricultural landscapes, underscoring the critical significance of the spatial distribution of restoration actions.