Integration of Agro-Economic Analysis and Ecological Modelling

This chapter describes a method to analyse agricultural land use in terms of net value added and employment (working time requirement) in the agricultural sector as well as a corresponding ecological indicator: the nitrogen-leaching-rate. Watershed management demands a basic approach, which deals with common statistics and spatial information from digital maps. This causes a range of uncertainties, which are calculated in relation to the data input. A metamodel derived from a process model calculates the most probable value of the ecological indicator, whereas the economic indicators are estimated by the cumulative numbers of primary production. The uncertainties are expressed as the standard deviation of all impacts as percentages. The method described is applied to a rural district in the Elbe river basin.