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# The causal effect of agricultural landscape simplification on Germany's grasslands during a compound drought and heatwave in 2018

## Details

**Authors** Marco Ferro, Jan Börner, Silke Hüttel, Katja Kowalski, Patrick Hostert, Krisztina Kis-Katos

**Year** 2026

**Publisher** American Journal of Agricultural Economics

**Kind of work** article

**Discipline** Economics

**Secondary disciplines** Ecology

[Read it at the publisher](https://doi.org/10.1002/ajae.70096) 
10.1002/ajae.70096

## In authors' words

### Abstract

Preserving ecosystem services, along with economic and environmental benefits, will require future landscape policies to identify and incorporate relevant landscape features. In this paper, we investigate the causal effect of agricultural landscape simplification on drought‐related grassland damages. We use a novel remote‐sensing product to measure spatial variations in unproductive grassland due to compound drought and heatwave events, and relate it to a landscape metric measuring agricultural land use heterogeneity. Our causal identification strategy employs a spatially explicit fuzzy Regression Discontinuity Design, leveraging Germany's former inner border as an exogenous predictor of agricultural landscape simplification intensity. We find that decreasing agricultural land use heterogeneity increases the share of grasslands rendered unproductive by the drought. Our results suggest that landscape simplification can undermine drought resistance by affecting water availability, decreasing grassland dry matter yields. Overall, this study emphasizes how landscape‐scale heterogeneity can increase ecosystem functionality and farm resilience.

### What they set out to do (purpose)

Establish whether simplified (more homogeneous) agricultural landscapes causally worsen grassland damage during drought and heatwave events.

### Who or what was studied (sample)

Remote-sensing grassland productivity data across Germany during the 2018 compound drought and heatwave.

### How they did it (methods)

Spatially explicit fuzzy Regression Discontinuity Design using Germany's former East-West inner border as an exogenous source of variation in landscape simplification.

### What they found (results)

Using the former German inner border as a natural experiment, the study finds that decreasing agricultural landscape heterogeneity causally increases the share of grassland rendered unproductive during drought and heatwave conditions.

## Commentary

### In short

The finding demonstrates a causal relationship in which reduced landscape-scale heterogeneity, itself a system-composition property of the agricultural landscape, directly worsens an ecological outcome under drought stress.

**Patterns it shows** S, R

**Added** 2026-09-16

**How to cite this** Marco Ferro, Jan Börner, Silke Hüttel, Katja Kowalski, Patrick Hostert, Krisztina Kis-Katos (2026). The causal effect of agricultural landscape simplification on Germany's grasslands during a compound drought and heatwave in 2018. American Journal of Agricultural Economics.