Land sharing vs. land sparing: new insights from ecological-economic modelling

How can we conserve biodiversity and the ecosystem services it provides in the face of growing demand for food and limited funds for conservation? This inter-disciplinary project combines ecology and economics to evaluate the costs and benefits of two key approaches to conservation in farmed landscapes: land sparing and land sharing. We will quantify the biodiversity consequences and economic costs of these competing landscape-scale conservation strategies whilst accounting for the negative spillover effects imposed by past and present farming on non-farmed habitats. We will identify cost-effective conservation strategies, and quantify how these change according to biodiversity priorities and landscape history