Abstract: Our paper introduces objectives and ideas of the special issue “Integrated land use and regional resource management – A cross-disciplinary dialogue on future perspectives for a sustainable development of regional resources” and provides an overview on the contributions of the single papers in the special issue to this topic. Furthermore, we discuss and present major challenges and demands on integrated land use and regional resource management and we come up with an analytical framework how to correspond these demands.

Abstract: We present an integrated land use modelling framework (ILM) to analyze impacts of climate change and CAP reform as well as farm adaptation using economic, biotic and abiotic indicators at field, farm and landscape scales. The IML is applied on the two contrasting landscapes in the Austrian MACSUR regional pilot study. The scenarios cover climate and policy changes until 2040. The anticipated policy changes lead to declines in farm gross margins by -36% and -5% in the two landscapes, respectively. In contrast, climate change leads to higher gross margins, where farms can reach pre-reform levels on average. Environmental impacts such as removing of landscape elements and increasing fertilization can be moderated by an agri-environmental program, but the opportunity costs of program participation may increase.