Landscape agronomy: a new field for addressing agricultural landscape dynamics

Landscape dynamics increasingly challenge agronomists to explain how and why agricultural landscapes are designed and managed by farmers. Nevertheless, agronomy is rarely included in the wide range of disciplines involved with in landscape research. In this paper, we describe how landscape agronomy can help explain the relationship between farming systems and agricultural landscape dynamics. For this, we propose a conceptual model of agricultural landscape dynamics (ALaDyn) that illustrates the specific contribution of agronomy to landscape research. This model describes the relationship between three elements: farming practices, landscape patterns and natural resources. It can stimulate agronomists to deal with research issues in agricultural landscape dynamics and enhance the interdisciplinary integration of farming systems in wider landscape research. On these premises, we discuss the main research issues that will benefit from an active involvement of agronomy, to understand, but also to assess landscape dynamics and to design relevant decision support systems.