Authors: Klein, Noëlle; Herzog, Felix;Grêt-Regamey, Adrienne;Jeanneret, Philippe;van Strien, Maarten;Kay, Sonja;

Pressured by urbanisation and growing consumption, agricultural production has become more intensive in Europe. Through increasing efficiency, landscapes have become more homogenous, which has been linked to the recent biodiversity loss. National and international strategies aim to combat this loss, but halting it remains a challenge. Thus, we need to increase our understanding of agricultural management strategies that can benefit wildlife. In our study, we collected data of birds and butterflies in two agricultural landscapes in Switzerland. We mapped land use/cover and ranked the importance of different landscape features for species groups. We then investigated the role of surrounding landscape configurations for patch-level biodiversity using statistical models. The results highlight the importance of extensively managed and non-crop habitats. Our models improved when including spatial configurations of patch-surroundings. Next, we used this knowledge to enhance the validity of SALCA-BD (Swiss Agricultural Life Cycle Assessment), an expert-based biodiversity model predicting the impact of agricultural management on different species groups, through adding the spatial context. Including spatial dimensions in biodiversity models will help to overcome shortfalls for the prediction of mobile species. Such models are valuable tools for prioritization of land-use management options through sophisticated spatial planning that favours both humans and wildlife.