Food & Landscape Biodiversity
Every year ASI awards seed money to promising interdisciplinary projects. "Food & Landscape Biodiversity" is one of four ASI Seed Money winners 2025 and the winner of our Innovation Research Booster grant.
The "Food & Landscape Biodiversity" project addresses the interconnected biodiversity, climate, and health crises by exploring the relationship between biodiverse diets and biodiverse landscapes in high-income countries. While previous studies have focused on these elements separately or in low- and middle-income regions, this project investigates the potential synergies between diet and landscape biodiversity in industrialized nations, starting with the United Kingdom. Using existing datasets on individual and household dietary patterns, grocery purchases, and land cover data, the study aims to calculate spatially explicit indicators of diet and landscape biodiversity. By analysing these relationships alongside other factors, the project will provide critical insights into how biodiversity in local landscapes influences food security and dietary diversity.
This pilot study will provide a proof of concept to elaborate into a full project proposal. Data cleaning, processing, indicator calculation, and analysis will be conducted, followed by workshops to bring together a multidisciplinary team and lay the foundations for a full proposal. The outcomes will provide evidence of how landscape and diet biodiversity are interconnected in high-income settings, contributing to understanding the ecological and health dimensions of food systems. The project emphasises integrated approaches to simultaneously address the biodiversity, climate, and health crises and inform policies for sustainable food systems in industrialised nations.
Research Team
- Natalie Davis, Assistant Professor, Environmental Geography, IVM (VU)
- Nynke Schulp, Associate Professor, Environmental Geography, IVM (VU)
- Margreet Olthof, Associate Professor, Nutrition and Health (VU); Aging & Later Life, Amsterdam Public Health (APH) research institute (VU); and Health Behaviors & Chronic Diseases, APH (VU)
- Ingeborg Brouwer, Professor, Health Sciences (VU) and Health Behaviors & Chronic Diseases, APH (VU)