Farmland Ecosystem Assessment Support Tool (FEAST)

About the FEAST software

The FEAST software is a prototype tool that is being designed and developed to support the process of assessing farmland landscapes with respect to their potential effects on ecosystem services and biodiversity. The tool integrates a range of indicators (metrics) from several European projects including:

2020-2025

The FRAMEwork project: Farmers clusters for realising agrobiodiversity management across ecosystems, funded by European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 862731.

2016-2017

The Quantification of Ecological Services for Sustainable Agriculture (QuESSA) project, funded by FP7 (Project No 31187).

2014-2019

The Ecological Focus Areas (EFAs) Calculator project, funded by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC), Ispra, Italy (Project Ref: JRC/IPR/2014/H.4/0022/NC).

A core part of the FEAST software was initially developed for the EFA Calculator project. This contained qualitative and semi-quantitative metrics to assess the potential impact of different features (defined as EFAs under the CAP) on ecosystem services and biodiversity. This software was then extended to incorporate the outputs of the QuESSA project, which included several metrics that quantified ecosystem services. The FEAST software is now being developed to meet the needs of the FRAMEwork project. This includes harmonising and extending the indicators for ecosystem services and biodiversity; and developing functions to support the work undertaken in the farmer clusters, including accounting for landscape configuration and habitat complementation.

The software is being developed by the Agriculture and Environment Research Unit (AERU), at the University of Hertfordshire in the UK.

Functions

The main functions of the FEAST software are outlined below, along with a short video (16 mins) explaining the concept and context of the tool.

Biodiversity monitoring

Use the Biodiversity Monitoring Data tool to add, import and manage the data and Mapping tool to spatially visualise the data.

Performance assessment

Assess the performance of landscape features or whole landscapes for ecosystem services and habitat suitability (incl. spatial metrics within the map interface).

Mapping

View, create, edit, and assess data within the map interface, including biodiversity monitoring data and metrics to calculate the performance of landscapes.

Planning and guidance

Facilities to support planning and actions to improve farmland ecosystems. Tools to build reports, create maps, access relevant guidance, and develop actions plans.

Overview video:

Facts

The FEAST software consists of indicators to assess landscape features, using parameters and classes to describe the attributes of those features. These are being added to all the time. The current statistics are shown below.

Indicators

Landscape features

Parameters

Parameter classes

Download

The FEAST software will be made publicly available early 2025. If you would like to test a Beta version before then, please let us know. The FEAST software is a Windows application, designed to work on Windows 10 or higher (it may also work on Windows 7).

Coming soon

Gallery

Some example screen shots of the FEAST software are shown below (the list displayed can be adjusted using the filters below). Click of the + icon to enlarge any image.