Land use intensity determines the provision of multiple important ecosystem services of agriculture. In Switzerland, agricultural policy developments have aimed and still aim to extensify agricultural systems and especially grassland use. We here provide a spatial and temporal analysis of changes in grassland use intensity and discuss them in the context of agricultural policy developments to assess potential policy impacts. W...

Agriculture in Alpine regions plays an important role for multiple ecosystem services (ES) supplied from permanent grassland (PG). This paper investigates the feasibility of sward renewal, overseeding, and rising plate meters on PG for the Swiss Alpine region and analyses their expected effects on ES supply. Sward renewal and overseeding are management options implemented in response to a decline of grassland yields and nutrit...