Global agriculture is facing immense challenges due to the necessity to provide a growing population with sufficient and nutritious food while at the same time decreasing its pressure on many earth systems at a local and global scale. In the context of Switzerland, however, several environmental objectives set for agriculture have not been achieved, local ecosystem carrying capacities are still being exceeded and biodiversity remains impaired. While various methodological approaches aim at improving the sustainability of agriculture and food systems, an integrated toolbox of models at landscape level is still missing. In the course of the project, we will develop a spatially explicit model to map the nutrient flows and related environmental impacts of agricultural production as well as to account for local ecosystem dynamics and landscape heterogeneity. Building on this, we will develop land use scenarios to illustrate the option space and analyse trade-offs and synergies between agricultural land use, ecosystem services and biodiversity at landscape level. Through the combination of this model with a global mass-flow model, we will additionally consider geographical shifts of environmental impacts.
