Where to add landscape features: a practical mapping and prioritisation approach

The Nature Restoration Regulation requires restoring diverse landscape features in intensive agricultural areas. This practice abstract provides guidance on where restoration could be prioritized.

We developed a transferable, multi-scale approach to mapping and measuring existing landscape features across agricultural landscapes; sorting landscape parcels into five types, from “simple” to “complex mosaics”; and prioritising specific restoration sites at the local scale by focusing on lower production-potential areas and areas with higher erosion risk.

The approach should support practitioners, landscape planners and administrators with clear priority areas for targeting funding, planning and monitoring of landscape features.

For farmers, the practical idea is to place new or expanded landscape features where they ‘hurt least’ economically (lower production potential) and ‘help most’ environmentally (erosion-prone areas).