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Author: Sara Parr Syswerda
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Agriculture
Languages : en
Pages : 262
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Book Description
Author: Sara Parr Syswerda
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Agriculture
Languages : en
Pages : 262
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Book Description
Author: Stephen K. Hamilton
Publisher: Long-Term Ecological Research
ISBN: 0199773351
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 449
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Book Description
Evidence has been mounting for some time that intensive row-crop agriculture as practiced in developed countries may not be environmentally sustainable, with concerns increasingly being raised about climate change, implications for water quantity and quality, and soil degradation. This volume synthesizes two decades of research on the sustainability of temperate, row-crop ecosystems of the Midwestern United States. The overarching hypothesis guiding this work has been that more biologically based management practices could greatly reduce negative impacts while maintaining sufficient productivity to meet demands for food, fiber and fuel, but that roadblocks to their adoption persist because we lack a comprehensive understanding of their benefits and drawbacks. The research behind this book, based at the Kellogg Biological Station (Michigan State University) and conducted under the aegis of the Long-term Ecological Research network, is structured on a foundation of large-scale field experiments that explore alternatives to conventional, chemical-intensive agriculture. Studies have explored the biophysical underpinnings of crop productivity, the interactions of crop ecosystems with the hydrology and biodiversity of the broader landscapes in which they lie, farmers' views about alternative practices, economic valuation of ecosystem services, and global impacts such as greenhouse gas exchanges with the atmosphere. In contrast to most research projects, the long-term design of this research enables identification of slow or delayed processes of change in response to management regimes, and allows examination of responses across a broader range of climatic variability. This volume synthesizes this comprehensive inquiry into the ecology of alternative cropping systems, identifying future steps needed on the path to sustainability.
Author: Maria Christina B. Jolejole
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Ecosystem management
Languages : en
Pages : 346
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Book Description
Author: Lindsey Renee Kemmerling
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Electronic dissertations
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
This dissertation focuses on strategies to restore biodiversity and ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes through diversifying the plant community at the landscape level. Biodiversity and ecosystem services are declining globally, and a leading cause of this decline is large-scale row crop agriculture which results in habitat loss and pollution. Simultaneously, the human population is growing, as are human demands for resources produced by agriculture. Diversifying agricultural landscapes is one method to both mitigate the loss biodiversity while providing essential human resources. I conducted three studies that test if diversifying cropping systems can increase biodiversity and ecosystem services and maintain or even increase agricultural yield. In Chapter 1, I tested the ability of multiple native, perennial bioenergy crops (alternatives to annual bioenergy crops) to provide both crop yield and conserve pollinators. I measured pollinator abundance and species richness, flower abundance and species richness, and crop yield across four native perennial biofuel crop varieties: successional land (unmanaged), restored prairie, a mix of native grasses, and seeded switchgrass. Successional land had the most diverse community of pollinators but the lowest crop yield, native grasses had the highest yield but the least diverse pollinator community, and switchgrass and restored prairie were intermediate. If both pollinator conservation and crop yield are valued similarly, restored prairie was the optimal biofuel crop. Chapter 2 tested the effects of crop management practices in row crop agriculture, including the establishment of a conservation practice called "prairie strips" on biodiversity and ecosystem services. Prairie strips are strips of farmland retired from production and actively restored with native prairie plant species. I synthesized the tradeoffs and synergies of a suite of biodiversity and ecosystem service measures across a land use intensity gradient, as well as their spillover from prairie strips into cropland. The lowest land use intensity consistently had the highest levels of biodiversity and ecosystem services other than crop yield. Treatments with prairie strips had higher pollination services and a higher abundance of butterflies and spiders than other row crop treatments. Crop yield in a treatment with low land use intensity and prairie strips remained as highest land use intensity treatment, even when including the area taken out of production for prairie strips. Biodiversity and ecosystem services decreased with increasing distance from prairie strips and this effect was more pronounced in the second year of the prairie strips than the first for several measures. These results show that, even in early establishment, prairie strips can contribute to the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services without a disproportionate loss of crop yield. Chapter 3 further investigated one of the measures addressed in Chapter 2: butterfly biodiversity. I measured butterfly and plant species richness and abundance across three years in the same land use intensity gradient. Butterfly abundance and richness increased as land use intensity decreased. Prairie strips harbored unique butterfly communities and had a higher abundance of butterflies than other row crop treatments, including conservation land. Across the 1 ha plot of which 5% was prairie strip, butterfly abundance was higher in row crops with prairie strips than in row crops without prairie strips, likely as a result of prairie strips and other crop management practices in treatments with prairie strips, such as reduced pesticides. Altogether, this work presents evidence that restoring habitat within farms can support biodiversity and ecosystem services without disproportionately impacting crop yields. Furthermore, when strategically placed, these conservation strategies can prevent unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions, and potentially increase crop yield.
Author: Maria A. Tsiafouli
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
ISBN: 2889452964
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 201
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Book Description
Agricultural land is subjected to a variety of societal pressures, as demands for food, animal feed, and biomass production increase, with an added requirement to simultaneously maintain natural areas and mitigate climatic and environmental impacts. The biotic elements of agricultural systems interact with the abiotic environment to generate a number of ecosystem functions that offer services benefiting humans across many scales of time and space. The intensification of agriculture generally reduces biodiversity including that within soil, and impacts negatively upon a number of regulating and supporting ecosystem services. There is a global need toward achieving sustainable agricultural systems, as also highlighted in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. There is hence a need for management regimes that enhance both agricultural production and the associated provision of multiple ecosystem services. The articles of this Research Topic enhance our knowledge of how management practices applied to agricultural systems affect the delivery of multiple ecosystem services and how trade-offs between provisioning, regulating, and supporting services can be handled both above- and below-ground. They also show the diversity of topics that need to be considered within the framework of ecosystem services delivered by agricultural systems, from knowledge on basic concepts and newly-proposed frameworks, to a focus on specific ecosystem types such as grasslands and high nature-value farmlands, pollinator habitats, and soil habitats. This diversity of topics indicates the need for broader-scope research, integrated with targeted scientific research to promote sustainable agricultural practices and to ensure food security.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Agricultural land is subjected to a variety of societal pressures, as demands for food, animal feed, and biomass production increase, with an added requirement to simultaneously maintain natural areas and mitigate climatic and environmental impacts. The biotic elements of agricultural systems interact with the abiotic environment to generate a number of ecosystem functions that offer services benefiting humans across many scales of time and space. The intensification of agriculture generally reduces biodiversity including that within soil, and impacts negatively upon a number of regulating and supporting ecosystem services. There is a global need toward achieving sustainable agricultural systems, as also highlighted in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. There is hence a need for management regimes that enhance both agricultural production and the associated provision of multiple ecosystem services. The articles of this Research Topic enhance our knowledge of how management practices applied to agricultural systems affect the delivery of multiple ecosystem services and how trade-offs between provisioning, regulating, and supporting services can be handled both above- and below-ground. They also show the diversity of topics that need to be considered within the framework of ecosystem services delivered by agricultural systems, from knowledge on basic concepts and newly-proposed frameworks, to a focus on specific ecosystem types such as grasslands and high nature-value farmlands, pollinator habitats, and soil habitats. This diversity of topics indicates the need for broader-scope research, integrated with targeted scientific research to promote sustainable agricultural practices and to ensure food security.
Author: A Robson
Publisher: Elsevier
ISBN: 0323156223
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 319
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Book Description
Soil Acidity and Plant Growth emerged from concerns over increasing acidification of soils under improved pastures over wide areas of southern Australia. While the book has its origin in the problems of acidification of Australian soils under pastures, the authors examine soil acidity within a much broader framework, making their views relevant to all agricultural and natural ecosystems on acid soils. The book's first two chapters discuss the chemistry of soil acidity and the ecological processes leading to it. This is followed by separate chapters on biological responses to soil acidity, covering mineralization of soil nitrogen, incidence of plant diseases, plant mycorrhizal associations, symbiotic nitrogen fixation in legumes, and genetic variability in plant response to toxicities. The remaining chapters focus on the correction of soil acidity problems by liming. These include studies on the rates of application and effectiveness of liming materials; and the development and use of computer modelling procedures to help researchers identify the effects and interactions of soil pH on component processes and to provide assistance to farmers in the management of long-term subterranean clover pastures.
Author: Miralles-Wilhelm, F.
Publisher: Food & Agriculture Org.
ISBN: 9251339074
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 68
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Book Description
In recent years, considerable progress has been made in the area of Nature-based Solutions (NbS) that improve ecosystem functions of environments and landscapes affected by agricultural practices and land degradation, while enhancing livelihoods and other social and cultural functions. This has opened up a portfolio of NbS options that offer a pragmatic way forward for simultaneously addressing conservation, climate and socioeconomic objectives while maintaining healthy and productive agricultural systems. NbS can mimic natural processes and build on land restoration and operational water-land management concepts that aim to simultaneously improve vegetation and water availability and quality, and raise agricultural productivity. NbS can involve conserving or rehabilitating natural ecosystems and/or the enhancement or the creation of natural processes in modified or artificial ecosystems. In agricultural landscapes, NbS can be applied for soil health, soil moisture, carbon mitigation (through soil and forestry), downstream water quality protections, biodiversity benefits as well as agricultural production and supply chains to achieve net-zero environmental impacts while achieving food and water security, and meet climate goals.
Author: Robert A. Gleason
Publisher: Geological Survey (USGS)
ISBN:
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 74
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Book Description
Author: Paulo S. Oliveira
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110715975X
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 461
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Book Description
The first volume devoted to anthropogenic effects on interactions between ants and flowering plants, considered major parts of terrestrial ecosystems.
