Grasslands enhance ecosystem service multifunctionality above and below ground in agricultural landscapes

1. Managing agricultural landscapes that can integrate production, biodiversity conservation and the flow of ecosystem services (ES) is of paramount importance to simultaneously meet production goals and environmental challenges. However, the response of farmland biodiversity and multiple ES to land-use change at multiple spatial scales remains poorly understood.
2. We explored the effects of land use at local (grassland vs. oilseed rape fields) and landscape scale (cover of permanent grasslands) on the provision of biodiversity (plants, arthropods, birds), five ES (pollination, pest control, soil fertility, carbon storage and water regulation) and overall ES-multifunctionality.
3. ES-multifunctionality was higher in grasslands than in crop fields, by 25.2% above ground and by 106.1% below ground. Multiple threshold analyses highlighted a particularly poor level of performance for belowground functions in crop fields. This habitat type was however capable of providing numerous abovegrou...