| dc.description.abstract | This thesis explores sustainable design principles for a climate-adaptive food forest (FF) at estate Zuylestein in the Utrechtse Heuvelrug. The landowner wished to integratea former forested area into the productional focus of the entire estate while restoring the look of a forest as required by national monument legislation and adapting to climate change. FFs represent an agroecological, sustainable way of producing food while benefitting the local community and nature. It can thus be seen to in crease food sovereignty. For this purpose, the estate needed to be evaluated from a social-ecological system (SES) perspective to reveal constraints, opportunities, and goals for the FF. Further, benefits, services and income opportunities of FFs needed investigation. Lastly, the vision and priorities of the main stakeholders needed to be considered. Scientifically, this thesis systematically assessesgeneral design principles for FFs in temperate regions, with a focus on climate adaptation. Further, the ap proach of the thesis being transdisciplinary with a social-ecological lens, adds to literature on transdis ciplinary projects. In this thesis, transdisciplinary work means the co-production of knowledge with the main stake holders as well as consultations with FF practitioners. Soil analyses were conducted to evaluate soil fertility and water availability. Interviews with the landowner completed the necessary social ecological knowledge on the system. What the target state of the FF should be and how a transforma tion could be facilitated was further informed by conducting a scenario and backcasting workshop with the main stakeholders. Reviewing scientific and grey literature completed the picture. By applying these methods, in an iterative process, design principles were derived. Most importantly, sufficient startup funds for the beginning years, when the system is still vulnerable need to be secured. Further, to establish resilience, effort should be put into increasing soil health by increasing the pH level and water availability through increasing the soil organic matter content. During the maturing of the FF the income streams need to be flexible as different produce can be grown at different succes sion stageswhilethe design of the FF becomes visible. To avoid disturbing the FF, most of it should not be publicly accessible. To gain revenue from food production, the layout should not be too complex to enable easy management and harvesting. These principles can be applied to sites with similar condi tions. To ensure sustainability, the local social-ecological context should always be evaluated with care and transdisciplinary collaborations fosteredto ensure context-specific results. | |
