In November, ialeUK ran its second special edition of our Landscape Connections webinar series, in honour of the late Bob Bunce, a founding member of ialeUK. This Bunce Lecture focussed on agroforestry - the combination of woody features with arable and livestock farming. Agroforestry was selected as it is a topical issue that is gaining traction in the UK as one way to help achieve tree planting and net zero targets whilst providing a diversity of benefits to farms, people, animals, and wildlife. Given the great deal of debate over where and how can we better implement and scale up agroforestry in the UK, ialeUK organised this Bunce lecture to encourage this discussion and to learn from our European neighbours, who have a longer established tradition of agroforestry. Our keynote speaker, Teresa Pinto-Correia (Professor of Geography, University of Évora), provided a European perspective on the landscape ecology of agroforestry. Using the Portuguese traditional ‘Montado’ agroforestry system as an exemplar, Teresa highlighted the difficulties of mapping and characterising the dispersed woody features associated with these mosaic landscapes, as well as the practical challenges of trying to balance the needs of livestock with tree health and productivity under a changing climate. She demonstrated some of the decision support tools and policy instruments that have been developed in Portugal to help land managers to better consider the economic and wide cost-benefits of different approaches to managing these systems. Her insightful talk was followed by reflections from British experts in light of the UK agroforestry system (Davy McCracken (Professor of Agricultural Ecology, SRUC); Rory Lunny (Senior Policy Advisor, DEFRA Agroforestry Policy Team) and Sally Westaway (a PhD student studying the impact of increasing farmland tree cover, Royal Agricultural University and the University of Reading)), and a lively discussion (which could have gone on for much longer than the allotted time!) with the webinar audience.
If you missed this Bunce lecture and would like to catch up, you can watch a recording on the ialeUK YouTube channel.
We are now taking a short break from the Landscape Connections webinar series until the spring. Please get in touch with connections@iale.uk if you would like to volunteer to present your landscape ecology work or to make a suggestion.