Abstract
BackgroundAgroforestry bridges the gap that often separates agriculture and forestry by building integrated systems that address both environmental and socio-economic objectives. Agroforestry can improve the resiliency of agricultural systems and mitigate the impacts of climate change. Existing research suggests that integrating trees on farms can prevent environmental degradation, improve agricultural productivity, increase carbon sequestration, generate cleaner water, and support healthy soil and healthy ecosystems while providing stable incomes and other benefits to human welfare. Although these claims are becoming more widely accepted as the body of agroforestry research increases, systematic understanding of the evidence supporting them remains lacking for high-income countries. This systematic map will address this research need by providing a tool for identifying and visualizing the existing evidence demonstrating the impacts of agroforestry practices and interventions on agricultural productivity, ecosystem services, and human well-being. The results will be useful for informing policy decisions and future research by making the evidence easily accessible and highlighting the gaps in knowledge as well as areas with enough evidence to conduct systematic reviews.MethodsThis systematic map will identify, collect, display, and describe available evidence on the impacts of agroforestry on agricultural productivity, ecosystem services, and human well-being in high-income countries. The search strategy will cover 5 primary databases and 24 organizational websites using a pre-defined search string designed to capture studies relating agroforestry practices and interventions to outcomes in high-income countries. The searches will all be conducted in English. We will screen the identified studies for inclusion or exclusion in stages, first on title and abstract and then on full-text. We will collect data from studies included at the full-text stage to form the map and associated database. For inclusion, the study in question must assess the impacts of the deliberate promotion and/or actual integration of woody perennials (trees, shrubs, palms, bamboos, etc.) on the same land management unit as agricultural crops and/or animals.
Highlights
Agroforestry bridges the gap that often separates agriculture and forestry by building integrated systems that address both environmental and socio-economic objectives
The methods for the searches, screening, and eligibility criteria replicates those used for the low- and middle-income countries (L&MICs) evidence gap map (EGM) [15], with modifications to adapt the process to account for differences between high-income countries (HICs) and L&MIC concepts of agroforestry
Search strategy We will undertake a comprehensive search across 5 bibliographic databases and 24 organizational websites for grey literature to best capture an unbiased representation of existing literature
Summary
The methods for the searches, screening, and eligibility criteria replicates those used for the L&MIC EGM [15], with modifications to adapt the process to account for differences between HIC and L&MIC concepts of agroforestry. Assessing retrieval performance The comprehensiveness of the search string was evaluated based on a test list of studies that meet the eligibility criteria This test list consists of 44 studies, of which 22 are impact studies (18 primary studies, 4 systematic meta-analyses, and 1 farmer-managed field trial) and 22 researcher-managed field trials (which would not be included in this systematic map, per above, but which we would like to identify in the screening process for future work). Relevant types of study design We will include four kinds of studies: (1) quantitative impact evaluations, (2) systematic reviews, (3) on-farm field trials that test specific agroforestry techniques and approaches, and (4) observational studies on the effect of agroforestry practices.
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