Session B-5

Title:                            Integrated assessment methods for regional and landscape levels

Session organisers:   John Antle (Montana State Univ., USA), Daniel Auclair (INRA, France)

Keynote speaker:       Jetse Stoorvogel (Wageningen University, The Netherlands)

Scope of the session: Integrated assessment of agricultural systems at regional and landscape scales involves the interaction of processes at the farm scale (farm-level biophysical processes, farm decision making for land use management) with processes at larger scales (regional and national policy, market-determined prices, technological innovation). Policy decision-makers and other interested citizens need reliable science-based information to make informed judgments regarding impacts of changes at the farm level (e.g., technological) or regional scale (e.g., policy) on the sustainability of agricultural systems. This session will focus on data and modelling tools to simulate agricultural systems at the regional or landscape scale in response to agro-environmental policies, regional or local decisions, management practices, or related to global change. The processes considered can be environmental (incl. biodiversity, "ecosystem services"), social (incl. landscape "quality"), or economic, and address relevant feedbacks. The issue of up- and down- scaling (spatial and temporal) and spatial representation of results is also relevant.