Biodiversity has been decreasing in the agro-ecosystems for decades. It is landscape simplification brought on by the intensification of agriculture, which is thought to be the main reason along with a widespread pesticide use. ELONTA has a particular focus on source-sink dynamics as these interact with landscape structure to alter impacts and recovery potential of species in agro-ecosystems.
The methods are based on generating dynamic and realistic landscape representations into, which NTA agent-based models are placed. These models represent populations of NTAs as individuals breeding, moving and dying following very realistic patterns. The model NTAs react to their local context, and can be affected by environmental or management changes. This is used to create scenarios to evaluate the impact of changes, such as pesticide effects or mitigation measures. These scenarios will include spatio-temporal patterns of use of pesticide, including detailed modelling of fate and exposure.
The data and analysis from this project will be used to make recommendations for how landscape approaches could be used in regulatory risk assessment in Germany, including the mitigation potential linked to landscape structure as part of the integral assessment.
2020-2023
The German Environmental Agency (UBA)