Landscapes are the emergent property of land-use systems in which feedback interactions between individual actions, the biophysical- and institutional context shape the observed state of the system. Contemporary interactions lock land-use system into undesired states of the system through reinforcing feedback loops. Largely driven by demands for food and fodder, such reinforcing mechanisms generate large-scale, high intensity, and homogenous agricultural landscapes at the consequence of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Where interactions at the systems scale are complex as the feedback between individual actions and changes in the landscape are spatially and temporally decoupled, such feedbacks can be more easily closed at the individual and local level. Here we set out to explore the tipping points at which individual actions leverage larger scale changes through the concept of feedback loops. Using the Coupled Infrastructures Framework and feedback principles from the field of control engineering, we develop conceptual- and formal models of the agricultural land-use system in the Province of Groningen. Building on ongoing rural transition processes in response to the Dutch Nitrogen crisis (Dutch National Program Rural Areas), we use these models to identify the set of local interactions needed to trigger tipping points towards alternative states of the land-use system. Based on this, we demonstrate what arrangements of the biophysical- and institutional context are needed to unleash latent values for individual action in pursuit of more desired landscapes.
