LEGATO plans to:

1. investigate the interactions between rice cropping systems, the landscapes in which they are imbedded, and the socio-cultural perceptions and valuation of both the landscapes and the agricultural practices;
2. quantify (incl. the assessment of uncertainty) the current and future dependencies of ecosystem functions (ESF) & services (ESS) of these cropping systems on local & regional land use intensity and its driving forces, biodiversity, climate and socio-economic and cultural drivers/constraints;
3. study three ESF/ESS strands: nutrient cycling & crop production (including consequences of water budget and quality; provisioning service = PS), crop related biocontrol & pollination (regulating service = RS), and agricultural landscape related cultural identity & aesthetics (cultural service = CS) and their feedbacks with the driving forces behind pressures resulting from land use intensity;
4. develop valuations and respective integrative indicator sets of the investigated ESF/ESS strands through monetary as well as non-monetary methods, and evaluate their relevance for the provision of the different ESS;
5. test and further improve already existing indicators for ESF/ESS and their values and develop and/or test new ones where appropriate and necessary on intra-, trans- and superregional scales via a cross national comparison;
6. develop an indicator based assessment of risks and opportunities of crop production in the light of ESF/ESS impacted or enhanced through changes in land use intensity, socio-cultural conditions, biodiversity and climate change;
7. develop guidelines for decision makers (incl. farmers) and test their implementation in order to further enhance ESF/ESS provision, in particular through ecological engineering;
8. develop socio-economic analytical frameworks and tools for promotion of advanced land management practices, based on analyses of driving forces & stakeholders;
9. build a basic framework for motivating laymen to assist in data gathering on biodiversity data for pest control and support for the assessment of risks and opportunities. The framework on which LEGATO builds consists of organisational structures and the technical backbone to manage citizen science data.