Implementation of practices shapes the effectiveness of agricultural diversification for arthropod related ecosystem services: a meta-analysis.

生態系サービスは相互に関わり, あるサービスの向上が他のサービスを低下させるトレードオフと, 双方のサービスが共に向上するシナジーが知られる. このような理解は, より多くの生態系サービスが発揮される生態系管理に貢献することから, 本研究では, 石川県19市町を対象とし, 生態系サービス35項目, 市町の基本属性20項目について関連性を調べた. その結果, 森林面積が大きく景観のモザイク性が高いか, 耕地面積が大きく人口が多いかという市町の基本属性が, 森林に関わる生態系サービスが高いか, 農業や文化に関わる生態系サービスが高いかに関連していることが示された. 本解析は, 生態系サービス間の関わりを定量的に示すとともに, 重要な課題となる関係性の位置付けを明確にし, 効率的な意思決定を可能にするものである.

EFFECTS OF SMALLHOLDER DIVERSIFICATION ON RURAL HOUSEHOLD FOOD SECURITY IN KENYA ABSTRACT Market-oriented economic reforms are now at least 20 years old in most of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Prior to these reforms, most economies were fettered with far-ranging limits on investment, private sector trade, and other initiatives, and on the free movement of agricultural products over space. Kenya is a prime example of these earlier policies, with limits on maize marketing, agricultural inputs marketing and dairy marketing restrictions that were lifted through the reforms. Over this same time, urban populations and rural population densities have increased dramatically, further broadening the scope for trade, and setting off the process of agricultural transformation. In addition, changes in the weather patterns have often affected smallholder agricultural production and consumption decisions. How have the rural farm households been affected by these dramatically different policy, economic and climatic environments, and how have these changes and patterns shaped the welfare of rural households? The effect of smallholder diversification in rural areas is conjectured to be correlated to the agricultural transformation process. In the absence of markets, households are likely to rely solely on own production and they tend to produce mainly for subsistence. As markets begin to function, diversification is likely to increase household income and wealth, but reduce the household’s ability to be food-secure, especially if diversification implies transferring resources from food crops to commercial crops in response to market opportunities. But as markets improve (or as land sizes increase), incomes are likely to be increased through specialization, not diversification, and households no longer have to rely on self-sufficiency to be food-secure. More-specialized households at this stage in the transformation process are likely to be more food-secure. Moreover, studies also show that climate change may affect a farm household choice of income activities that ultimately determine the household welfare. This is more so pertinent in the case of rural household food security. Despite receiving considerable attention in the developing countries, food security continues to be a major challenge. In SSA, for example, it is estimated that about one-quarter of the population, most of whom reside in rural areas where agriculture is the mainstay, are faced with chronic food insecurity. In addition, most rural househlds follow highly diversified agricultural an livelihood portfolios in response to potential risks such as uncertain weather. Yet fewer studies have investigated the effect of smallholder diversification on rural smallholder food security. The purpose of the study is to determine the welfare effects of crop, agricultural and livelihood diversification on farm households food security. It is hypothesized that households diversify income portfolios in order to mitigate the risks to food security. Therefore, the overall objective of this essay is to investigate the welfare effects of agricultural and livelihood diversification at the household level. The specific objectives for the study are to: (a) determine the welfare effects of crop, agricultural and livelihood diversification on rural household food security in the presence of rainfall stress and policy reforms of the 1990s, and (b) examine heterogeneity in household welfare effects of livelihood diversification between groups of households. Using a five-period panel data of 1,243 rural farm households from Kenya collected between 1997 and 2010, this study investigates welfare effects of agricultural and livelihood diversification among smallholder farmers in rural Kenya. Dynamic Panel Data method will be used to investigate the effects of smallholder diversification on rural household food security. The dynamic panel data model is appropriate since it allows for separation of the true state dependence, observed and unobserved heterogeneity. The model assumes no serial correlation of the error term but not independence. Because of potential endogeneity problem caused by, a) the inclusion of the lagged dependent variable and, b) the potential endogeneity of some right-hand side variables, a test for validity of the instrumental variables will be carried out using the Sargan test of overidentifying restrictions. In addition, a test of no serial correlation in the error terms (Arellano-Bond test) will be carried out to ensure correct specification of the model. Household food security (the dependent variable) will be proxied by the amount of maize calories available for consumption at the household per adult equivalent.

Rice is a staple food for half of the human population, but the effects of diversification on yields, economy, biodiversity and ecosystem services have not been synthesized. Here we quantify diversification effects on environmental and socio-economic aspects of global rice production. We performed a second-order meta-analysis based on 25 first-order meta-analyses covering four decades of research, showing that diversification can maintain soil fertility, nutrient cycling, carbon sequestration and yield. We used three individual first-order meta-analyses based on 39 articles to close major research gaps on the effects of diversification on economy, biodiversity and pest control, showing that agricultural diversification can increase biodiversity by 40%, improve economy by 26% and reduce crop damage by 31%. Trade-off analysis showed that agricultural diversification in rice production promotes win-win scenarios between yield and other ecosystem services in 81% of all cases. Knowledge gaps remain in understanding the spatial and temporal effects of specific diversification practices and trade-offs.

Ecosystem service is an emerging concept that grows to be a hot research area in ecology. Spatially explicit ecosystem service values are important for ecosystem service management. However, it is difficult to quantify ecosystem services. Remote sensing provides images covering Earth surface, which by nature are spatially explicit. Thus, remote sensing can be useful for quantitative assessment of ecosystem services. This paper reviews spatially explicit ecosystem service studies conducted in ecology and remote sensing in order to find out how remote sensing can be used for ecosystem service assessment. Several important areas considered include land cover, biodiversity, and carbon, water and soil related ecosystem services. We found that remote sensing can be used for ecosystem service assessment in three different ways: direct monitoring, indirect monitoring, and combined use with ecosystem models. Some plant and water related ecosystem services can be directly monitored by remote sensing. Most commonly, remote sensing can provide surrogate information on plant and soil characteristics in an ecosystem. For ecosystem process related ecosystem services, remote sensing can help measure spatially explicit parameters. We conclude that acquiring good in-situ measurements and selecting appropriate remote sensor data in terms of resolution are critical for accurate assessment of ecosystem services.

Biodiversity and associated ecosystem services in cultural landscapes are declining due to increasing agricultural production. Human population growth and changing consumption patterns cause higher demands on agricultural products and accelerates the intensification of agricultural practices. Intensification of agricultural management is a major reason of ecological problems such as homogeneity of landscapes, rising greenhouse gas emissions, eutrophication, loss of soil fertility and productivity. These negative externalities of intensive agricultural production result in high loss of biodiversity and associated ecosystem services, such as the loss of species, pollination, and biological pest control as well as reduced carbon sequestration, enhanced nutrient leaching and higher soil erosion. To mitigate these ecological problems, a new model called “Diversified farming system” has been proposed. Diversified farming systems include a range of agricultural management practices that promote ecosystem functioning and related ecosystem services at different spatial and temporal scales and contribute to the promotion of critical ecosystem services. Further diversified farming practices may replace agricultural production inputs such as fertilizer or chemical plant protection measures, which is economically advantageous. This thesis focuses on a better understanding of the ecological and economic consequences of diversified farming systems. The ecological-economic expectations of farmers regarding benefits and costs of diversified farming practices were analyzed, including the discrepancy between scientific evidence and farmers’ arguments for low adoption of diversified farming practices. The thesis ends with recommendations on how and which political incentives may lead to higher implementation rates of diversified farming practices. For such purpose, the thesis is divided into four chapters: A first introductory chapter gives a general overview, summarizing and discussing current scientific knowledge and research gaps of diversified farming systems. Furthermore, the first chapter gives an outline of the thesis. In the second chapter, we systematically reviewed and synthesized scientific evidence of the ecological and economic performance of diversified farming practices. We found that diversified farming practices provide substantially greater biodiversity and associated ecosystem services than non-diversified systems. The ecological benefits for the farmer were partly insufficient to outbalance economic costs in the short term, even though many examples showed that diversified farming practices can lead to higher and more stable yields, increase profitability, and reduce risks in the long-term. In the third and fourth chapter of this thesis, we present results from face-to-face interviews of farmers on the perception of ecological-economic performance and risk change by potential implementations of diversified farming practices in Germany. The results of the third chapter show that gross margin increased for diversified crop rotation, while reduced tillage and direct seeding resulted in lower gross margin, because of expected yield reduction and higher variable costs. High soil quality leads to higher gross margin expected. The fourth chapter expands on the perception of risk change by implementation of diversified farming practices. We found that farmers expected a risk reduction by cover crops and diversified crop rotation, due to the portfolio effect, but a risk increase by reduced tillage and direct seeding, due to greater weed pressure. Large farm sizes and less fertile soils are related to the perception of reduced yield risk, presumably because of additional opportunities to increase profits through the implementation of diversification. In conclusion, diversified farming systems can substantially contribute to maintain biodiversity and to support the provision of ecosystem services. In order to increase the implementation rate of diversified farming practices, incentives are needed to reward for ecological benefits on the farm level. However, consideration of farm features and farmers’ experience and expectations may help to adjust incentives by agri-environmental policies.

Wildfires are a widespread phenomenon in forests across the Mediterranean Basin but have increased in severity and extent in recent decades. Post-fire treatments are measures that help recover burned vegetation and their functionality but to what extent they also help recover soil functionality is currently unknown. The main objective of this study was to assess the effect of post-fire treatments on ecosystem multifunctionality after a large wildfire in the Cabrera mountain range in 2017 (NW Spain) where close to 10000 Ha of forest were burnt. At the end of 2017 and during 2018, the administration applied different post-fire treatments in high fire severity affected areas: i) straw mulching, ii) woody debris and iii) subsoiling and iv) mechanical hole afforestation. In each treatment, we established ten 2 x 2 m plots and ten adjacent untreated burned plots and collected a composite soil sample from each plot four years after the fire (2021). We calculated regulating services as the standardized mean of total soil organic C (climate regulation), soil water repellence (water regulation) and soil aggregation (soil protection). Supporting services were measured as the standardized mean of mineral N-NH4+ and N-NO3- and available P (soil fertility), β-glucosidase, urease and acid phosphatase (nutrient cycling) and microbial biomass (soil quality). Ecosystem multifunctionality was measured as the standardized mean of all functions measured. Application of straw mulch and woody debris increased regulating ecosystem services in relation to burned control plots. Afforestation with holes had not impact but subsoiling decreased regulating ecosystem services in relation to burned control plots. Post-fire treatments did not have any effect on supporting services. Straw mulch, Woody debris and afforestation with holes improved ecosystem multifunctionality when compared with subsoiling methods. These results show that post-fire stabilisation treatments, in particular straw mulching have a significant positive impact on regulating services and are effective measures in restoring the ecosystem multifunctionality, helping develop effective management based-decisions for the recovery of ecosystem services and functioning after large wildfires.

The growing demands of satisfying human well-being call for a sustainable way of managing the landscape, which requires the introduction of tools for evaluating and assessing ecosystem services. The aim of the study is to evaluate regional differentiations in the values of regulating ecosystem services in relation to natural potential in four small pilot regions of the Slovak Republic with the application of the modified matrix approach. The results in the pilot regions of the Slovak Republic indicated that the spatial distribution of individual ecosystems in the country, in combination with a higher altitude and a larger area of forests and protected areas, can represent significant factors influencing the potential of the territory to provide benefits resulting from regulating ecosystem services. Mountain areas generally have a higher capacity to provide regulating ecosystem services, mainly due to their rich forest vegetation. Regulating ecosystem services, to the greatest extent, reflects the multifunctionality of the territory.

Servicescape of the Greater Serengeti-Mara Ecosystem: Visualizing the linkages between land use, biodiversity and the delivery of wildlife-related ecosystem services

Agricultural intensification is a leading cause of global biodiversity loss, which can reduce the provisioning of ecosystem services in managed ecosystems. Organic farming and plant diversification are farm management schemes that may mitigate potential ecological harm by increasing species richness and boosting related ecosystem services to agroecosystems. What remains unclear is the extent to which farm management schemes affect biodiversity components other than species richness, and whether impacts differ across spatial scales and landscape contexts. Using a global metadataset, we quantified the effects of organic farming and plant diversification on abundance, local diversity (communities within fields), and regional diversity (communities across fields) of arthropod pollinators, predators, herbivores, and detritivores. Both organic farming and higher in-field plant diversity enhanced arthropod abundance, particularly for rare taxa. This resulted in increased richness but decreased evenness. While these responses were stronger at local relative to regional scales, richness and abundance increased at both scales, and richness on farms embedded in complex relative to simple landscapes. Overall, both organic farming and in-field plant diversification exerted the strongest effects on pollinators and predators, suggesting these management schemes can facilitate ecosystem service providers without augmenting herbivore (pest) populations. Our results suggest that organic farming and plant diversification promote diverse arthropod metacommunities that may provide temporal and spatial stability of ecosystem service provisioning. Conserving diverse plant and arthropod communities in farming systems therefore requires sustainable practices that operate both within fields and across landscapes.

Chapter 11 - Ecosystem services in relation to carbon cycle of Asansol–Durgapur urban system, India

The concept of ecosystem services is increasingly being used by scientists and policy makers. However, most studies in this area have focussed on factors that regulate ecosystem functions (i.e. the potential to deliver ecosystem services) or the supply of ecosystem services. In contrast, demand for ecosystem services (i.e. the needs of beneficiaries) or understanding of the concept and the relative ranking of different ecosystem services by beneficiaries has received limited attention. The aim of this study was to identify in three European mountain regions the ecosystem services of grassland that different stakeholders identify (which ecosystem services for whom), the relative rankings of these ecosystem services, and how stakeholders perceive the provision of these ecosystem services to be related to agricultural activities. We found differences: (1) between farmers’ perceptions of ecosystem services across regions and (2) within regions, between knowledge of ecosystem services gained by regional experts through education and farmers’ local field-based knowledge. Nevertheless, we identified a common set of ecosystem services that were considered important by stakeholders across the three regions, including soil stability, water quantity and quality, forage quality, conservation of botanical diversity, aesthetics and recreation (for regional experts), and forage quantity and aesthetic (for local farmers). We observed two contrasting stakeholder representations of the effects of agricultural management on ecosystem services delivery, one negative and the other positive (considering low to medium management intensity). These representations were determined by stakeholders’ perceptions of the relationships between soil fertility and biodiversity. Overall, differences in perceptions highlighted in this study show that practitioners, policy makers and researchers should be more explicit in their uses of the ecosystem services concept in order to be correctly understood and to foster improved communication among stakeholders.

Ecosystem services are defined as the ecological and socio-economic value of goods and services provided by natural and semi-natural ecosystems. Ecosystem services are being impacted by many human induced stresses, one of them being nitrogen (N) deposition and its interactions with other pollutants and climate change. It is concluded that N directly or indirectly affects a wide range of provisioning, regulating, supporting and cultural ecosystem services, many of which are interrelated. When considering the effects of N on ecosystem services, it is important to distinguish between different types of ecosystems/species and the protection against N impacts should include other aspects related to N, in addition to biodiversity. The Working Group considered the following priorities of ecosystem services in relation to N: biodiversity; air quality/atmosphere; ecosystem changes; NO3 leaching; climate regulation and cultural issues. These are the services for which the best evidence is available in the literature. There is a conflicting interest between greenhouse gas ecosystem services and biodiversity protection; up to some point of increasing N inputs, net greenhouse gas uptake is improved, while biodiversity is already adversely affected.

Changing the landscape has serious environmental impacts affecting the ecosystem services, particularly in the tropics. In this paper, we report changes in ecosystem services in relation to land use and land cover over an 18-year period (1988--2006) in the Menglun Township, Xishuangbanna, Southwest China. We used Landsat TM/ETM and Quickbird data sets to estimate changes in ten land use and land cover categories, and generalized value coefficients to estimate changes in the ecosystem services provided by each land category. The results showed that over the 18-year period, the land use and land cover in the study area experienced significant changes. Rubber plantations increased from 12.10% of total land cover to 45.63%, while forested area and swidden field decreased from 48.73 and 13.14 to 27.57 and 0.46%, respectively. During this period, the estimated value of ecosystem services dropped by US $11.427 million (approximately 27.73%). Further analysis showed that there were significant changes in ecological functions such as nutrient cycling, erosion control, climate regulation and water treatment as well as recreation; the obvious increase in the ecological function is provision of raw material (natural rubber). Our findings conclude that an abrupt shift in land use from ecologically important tropical forests and traditionally managed swidden fields to large-scale rubber plantations result in a great loss of ecosystem services in this area. Further, the study suggests that provision of alternative economic opportunities would help in maintaining ecosystem services and for an appropriate compensation mechanisms need to be established based on rigorous valuation.

This chapter addresses opportunities and challenges in urban planning by implementing the concept of ecosystem services in an urban tourism and destination development context. In analysing ecosystem services in urban tourism, we contribute to an emerging literature focusing on urban ecosystem services. An important research gap is also addressed; despite the importance of tourism for cities, there is hardly anything written about the relationship between urban tourism and ecosystem services. This chapter first examines the concept of ecosystem services in relation to the development of urban green infrastructure, primarily based on a literature review. Thereafter, two case studies are conducted in cities in the south of Sweden, to examine the development of green infrastructure in practice. These studies are based on a combination of document analysis, interviews, and on-site observations. In this chapter, it is argued that ecosystem services is a fruitful concept for understanding sustainability challenges in relation to urban tourism. Ecosystem services can also be used as a framework for developing management solutions in urban tourism, aiming both at adapting to effects of climate change and at enhancing tourist experiences in urban environments.

Ecosystem services that sustain human well-being depend on the continued functioning of ecosystems, proper management and supporting institutions. However, the interaction between these factors and ecosystem services is poorly understood. Therefore, we assessed how ecosystem services are represented in policy measures, recognized by local population and affected by weather extremes. We studied the Hungarian and Romanian parts of the flood-exposed Tisza River Basin, where all these factors are relevant for regional land and water management. Our qualitative assessment shows that, although the two regions share similar environmental conditions, the different social and institutional settings of the two countries cause a divergence in ecosystem services. Locally produced provisioning services are better recognized in Romania, while regulating (particularly water-regulation) and cultural services are better recognized in Hungary. Food supply is most affected by climate-related weather extremes and most strongly controlled by policy measures in both countries. However, especially in Romania, policy measures support medicinal and genetic resources, and some regulating (e.g. pest regulation) and cultural services, only weakly or indirectly. We conclude that the analysis of ecosystem services in relation to climate-related weather extremes, policy measures and people’s recognition can contribute to a better management of the Tisza River Basin. We suggest that a better incorporation of ecosystem services in policy and management strategies could enhance and diversify the ecosystem service supply. A further quantification of ecosystem services can, therefore, provide a base for targeted and integrated planning and improved regional policy making.