A dynamical model to study the effect of landscape agricultural management on the conservation of native ecological networks

Food production and biodiversity conservation are commonly seen as separate pursuits with contradicting implications. This view is based on a conception of agriculture as a necessarily destructive activity for the ecosystems, failing to recognize the qualitative differences among diverse types of agricultural management. We built a dynamical and spatially explicit model to test the way in which virtual ecological networks decrease in diversity as the type of agricultural activities that surround them become less and less permeable to wild species. We find that biodiversity exhibits a robust pattern of slow decrease as the agricultural activities diminish in permeability or quality.粮食生产与生物多样性保护通常被视作两个相互独立且目标相悖的实践领域。该观点将农业视作必然对生态系统具有破坏性的活动，却未意识到不同农业管理模式之间存在质性差异。我们构建了动态空间显式模型，用以验证当虚拟生态网络周边的农业活动对野生生物的可穿透性逐步降低时，其多样性的衰减规律。研究发现，随着农业活动的可穿透性减弱或质量下降，生物多样性会呈现出缓慢下降的稳健模式。