Fitting Agroforestry to the Landscape

Agroforestry practices are typically planned and implemented on individual farms and ranches. Understanding how individual sites contribute to the larger landscape will help to identify where to locate and how to design agroforestry practices that will efficiently produce landscape-scale environmental benefits. Benefits such as greater diversity of wildlife, healthier aquatic ecosystems, and cleaner stream water normally accrue to significant levels only through multiple installations over a large area. Planning at a landscape level involves looking beyond the fence line to determine how a planning site is affected by off-site conditions and how the site affects the surrounding landscape.

The National Agroforestry Center will release three new technical notes in May 2008 that address planning agroforestry practices at the landscape scale.  Landscape Planning for Environmental Benefits will explain why larger landscape areas should be considered when planning agroforestry practices.  Landscape assessments and plans will be defined as well as how they are used.  Conducting Landscape Assessments for Agroforestry will describe a basic landscape assessment process and will provide examples.  Indicators and Guidelines for Landscape Assessment and Planning for Agroforestry will provide indicators for assessing resource conditions in agricultural landscapes and guidelines for the placement and design of agroforestry practices to improve them.  Guidance is given to assess and map resource problems and identify promising agroforestry locations and designs for producing environmental benefits in agricultural landscapes.

Visit the National Agroforestry Center’s Website in late May 2008 to read and download these new agroforestry technical notes.
Your contact is NRCS agroforester Bruce Wight at 402-437-5178 ext. 4036.