| 1. |
- Brady, Mark V., et al.
(författare)
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Roadmap for valuing soil ecosystem services to inform multi-level decision-making in agriculture
- 2019
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Ingår i: Sustainability (Switzerland). - : MDPI AG. - 2071-1050. ; 11:19
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Agricultural soils contribute to human welfare through their generation of manifold ecosystem services such as food security, water quality and climate regulation, but these are degraded by common farming practices. We have developed a roadmap for evaluating the contribution of both private- and public-good ecosystem services generated by agricultural soils to societal welfare. The approach considers the needs of decision-makers at different levels, from farmers to policy-makers. This we achieve through combining production functions-to quantify the impacts of alternative management practices on agricultural productivity and soil ecosystem services-with non-market valuation of changes in public-good ecosystem services and benefit-cost analysis. The results show that the net present value to society of implementing soil-friendly measures are substantial, but negative for farmers in our study region. Although we apply our roadmap to an intensive farming region in Sweden, we believe our results have broad applicability, because farmers do not usually account for the value of public-good ecosystem services. We therefore conclude that market outcomes are not likely to be generating optimal levels of soil ecosystem services from society's perspective. Innovative governance institutions are needed to resolve this market failure to safeguard the welfare of future generations.
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| 2. |
- Brady, Mark V., et al.
(författare)
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Valuing Supporting Soil Ecosystem Services in Agriculture: A Natural Capital Approach
- 2015
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Ingår i: Agronomy Journal. - : Wiley. - 0002-1962 .- 1435-0645. ; 107:5, s. 1809-1821
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Soil biodiversity through its delivery of ecosystem functions and attendant supporting ecosystem services-benefits soil organisms generate for farmers-underpins agricultural production. Yet lack of practical methods to value the long-term effects of current farming practices results, inevitably, in short-sighted management decisions. We present a method for valuing changes in supporting soil ecosystem services and associated soil natural capital-the value of the stock of soil organisms-in agriculture, based on resultant changes in future farm income streams. We assume that a relative change in soil organic C (SOC) concentration is correlated with changes in soil biodiversity and the generation of supporting ecosystem services. To quantify the effects of changes in supporting services on agricultural productivity, we fitted production functions to data from long-term field experiments in Europe and the United States. The different agricultural treatments at each site resulted in significant changes in SOC concentrations with time. Declines in associated services are shown to reduce both maximum yield and fertilizer-use efficiency in the future. The average depreciation of soil natural capital, for a 1% relative reduction in SOC concentration, was 144 (sic) ha(-1) (SD 47 (sic) ha(-1)) when discounting future values to their current value at 3%; the variation was explained by site-specific factors and the current SOC concentration. Moreover, the results show that soil ecosystem services cannot be fully replaced by purchased inputs; they are imperfect substitutes. We anticipate that our results will both encourage and make it possible to include the value of soil natural capital in decisions.
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| 3. |
- Cong, Ronggang, et al.
(författare)
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Managing soil natural capital: An effective strategy for mitigating future agricultural risks?
- 2014
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Ingår i: Agricultural Systems. - : Elsevier BV. - 0308-521X .- 1873-2267. ; 129, s. 30-39
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Uncontrollable events such as adverse weather and volatile prices present considerable risks for arable farmers. Soil natural capital, which views the capacity of soil biodiversity to generate ecosystem services as a component of farm capital, could be important for the stability and resilience of arable production systems. We investigate therefore whether managing soil natural capital could be an effective strategy for mitigating future agricultural risks. We do this by constructing a dynamic stochastic portfolio model to optimize the stock of soil organic carbon (SOC)—our indicator of soil natural capital—when considering both the risks and returns from farming. SOC is controlled via the spatial and temporal allocation of cash crops and an illustrative replenishing land use. We find that higher soil natural capital buffers yield variance against adverse weather and reduces reliance on external inputs. Managing soil natural capital has therefore the potential to mitigate two serious agricultural risks: energy price shocks and adverse weather events, both of which are likely to be exacerbated in the future due to, e.g., globalization and climate change.
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| 4. |
- de Vries, Franciska T., et al.
(författare)
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Soil food web properties explain ecosystem services across European land use systems
- 2013
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Ingår i: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. - Washington, DC : Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. - 1091-6490 .- 0027-8424. ; 110:35, s. 14296-14301
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Intensive land use reduces the diversity and abundance of many soil biota, with consequences for the processes that they govern and the ecosystem services that these processes underpin. Relationships between soil biota and ecosystem processes have mostly been found in laboratory experiments and rarely are found in the field. Here, we quantified, across four countries of contrasting climatic and soil conditions in Europe, how differences in soil food web composition resulting from land use systems (intensive wheat rotation, extensive rotation, and permanent grassland) influence the functioning of soils and the ecosystem services that they deliver. Intensive wheat rotation consistently reduced the biomass of all components of the soil food web across all countries. Soil food web properties strongly and consistently predicted processes of C and N cycling across land use systems and geographic locations, and they were a better predictor of these processes than land use. Processes of carbon loss increased with soil food web properties that correlated with soil C content, such as earthworm biomass and fungal/bacterial energy channel ratio, and were greatest in permanent grassland. In contrast, processes of N cycling were explained by soil food web properties independent of land use, such as arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and bacterial channel biomass. Our quantification of the contribution of soil organisms to processes of C and N cycling across land use systems and geographic locations shows that soil biota need to be included in C and N cycling models and highlights the need to map and conserve soil biodiversity across the world.
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| 5. |
- Droste, Nils, et al.
(författare)
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Soil carbon insures arable crop production against increasing adverse weather due to climate change
- 2020
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Ingår i: Environmental Research Letters. - : IOP Publishing. - 1748-9326. ; 15:12
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Intensification of arable crop production degrades soil health and production potential through loss of soil organic carbon. This, potentially, reduces agriculture's resilience to climate change and thus food security. Furthermore, the expected increase in frequency of adverse and extreme weather events due to climate change are likely to affect crop yields differently, depending on when in the growing season they occur. We show that soil carbon provides farmers with a natural insurance against climate change through a gain in yield stability and more resilient production. To do this, we combined yield observations from 12 sites and 54 years of Swedish long-term agricultural experiments with historical weather data. To account for heterogenous climate effects, we partitioned the growing season into four representative phases for two major cereal crops. Thereby, we provide evidence that higher soil carbon increases yield gains from favourable conditions and reduces yield losses due to adverse weather events and how this occurs over different stages of the growing season. However, agricultural management practices that restore the soil carbon stock, thus contributing to climate change mitigation and adaptation, usually come at the cost of foregone yield for the farmer in the short term. To halt soil degradation and make arable crop production more resilient to climate change, we need agricultural policies that address the public benefits of soil conservation and restoration.
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| 6. |
- Dänhardt, Juliana, et al.
(författare)
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Ekosystemtjänster i det skånska jordbrukslandskapet
- 2013
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Rapport (populärvet., debatt m.m.)abstract
- Jordbrukslandskapet tillhandahåller ekosystemtjänster som utgör förutsättningen för en uthållig jordbruksproduktion och är till nytta för samhället i stort. Bakom dessa finns ekologiska processer som beror av samspel mellan en mångfald av organismer. Skånes jordbruk har genomgått betydande förändringar som förändrat landskapet och livsmiljön för många av dessa. För att bevara och förvalta ekosystemtjänsterna krävs en förståelse för sambanden mellan jordbruk, landskap och ekosystemprocesser. Rapporten beskriver ekologiska processer som ligger till grund för några viktiga ekosystemtjänster i Skånes jordbrukslandskap och visar betydelsen av biologisk mångfald för deras funktion. Där så är möjligt beskrivs hur de kan värderas. Slutligen redovisas praktiska åtgärder som gynnar dem. Rapporten visar att ekosystemtjänster inte enkelt går att ersätta med teknologiska lösningar, utan att förvaltning av dessa tjänster lönar sig. Detta kräver ökad ekologisk kunskap och anpassade styrmedel vilket kräver ökat samråd och regelbunden återkoppling mellan lantbrukare, myndigheter och forskare. Förhoppningen är att rapporten, framtagen av Lunds universitet och Region Skåne, inspirerar till detta!
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| 7. |
- Hedlund, Katarina, et al.
(författare)
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Värdering av ekosystemtjänster inom jordbruket – för effektivt beslutsfattande : Slutrapport för forskningsprojekt
- 2017
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Ekosystemtjänster kan bidra till att synliggöra värden i naturen som människor är beroende av för sin överlevnad och sin välfärd. Att utveckla markanvändning samt integrera värdet av ekosystemtjänster i lantbrukares produktionsbeslut är nödvändigt för att möta en ökad efterfrågan av jordbruksprodukter samtidigt som de svenska miljömålen ska uppnås.I projektet har verktyg utvecklats tillsammans med mottagare, vilket säkrar relevans och att värdet av ekosystemtjänster kan kommuniceras till rätt nivå för beslut; lokal, regional och nationell. Värderingsmodellerna (verktygen) har anpassats till lokal nivå (gård), regional nivå (Skåne) och nationell nivå (Sverige) för att kunna stödja beslut om skötsel av jordbruksmark från gård till myndighet för effektiv produktion av ekosystemtjänster.I rapporten undersöks hur värdet på ekosystemtjänster och naturkapital kan användas för att göra väl grundade beslut är viktigt för att bidra till bättre underlag för beslut om jordbrukspolicy. Studien visar på ett konkret sätt hur begreppet ekosystemtjänster kan komma till praktisk nytta. Den här rapporten är ett resultat från ett av sju projekt inom forskningssatsningen Värdet av ekosystemtjänster och har författats av forskare vid Lunds Universitet och SLU (Sveriges Lantbruksuniversitet). Projektet finansierades av Naturvårdsverkets miljöforskningsanslag.
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| 8. |
- López I Losada, Raül, et al.
(författare)
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Agent-Based Life Cycle Assessment enables joint economic-environmental analysis of policy to support agricultural biomass for biofuels
- 2024
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Ingår i: Science of the Total Environment. - 1879-1026 .- 0048-9697. ; 916
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Production of agricultural biofuels is expected to rise due to increasing climate change mitigation ambitions. Policy interventions promoting targeted bioenergy solutions can be motivated by the large environmental externalities present in agricultural systems and the local context of biomass production co-benefits. Introducing energy crops in crop rotations in arable land with depleted Soil Organic Carbon (SOC) levels offers the potential to increase SOC stocks and future crop yields as a step towards more sustainable agricultural systems. However, the environmental performance of a policy incentive for energy crops with SOC co-benefits is less evident when considering its land-use effects within and outside of the target agricultural system.We study the potential impacts of a change in agricultural policy on regional agricultural structure and production, and the environment with an Agent-Based Life Cycle Assessment approach. We simulate a policy payment that would achieve adoption of grass leys in crop rotations corresponding to 25 % of the highly productive land in an intensive farming region of southern Sweden. Although enhancing soil health in SOC-depleted farming regions is a desirable environmental objective, its significance is limited within the life-cycle performance of the payment. Instead, crop-displacement impacts and the grass potential as biofuel feedstock are the main drivers. The active utilisation of grasses for biofuel purposes is key in reaching a positive environmental evaluation of the policy instrument.Our environmental evaluation is likely generalisable to other regions with similar technological levels and farming intensity, while our analysis on structural shifts is specific to the policy instrument and agricultural production system under study. Overall, our work provides a method to contrast regional effects and global environmental impacts of policy instruments supporting agricultural biomass for biofuels prior to implementation. This contributes to the environmental assessment of land-based biofuels at a time when their sustainability is highly debated.
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| 9. |
- Tsiafouli, Maria A., et al.
(författare)
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Intensive agriculture reduces soil biodiversity across Europe
- 2015
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Ingår i: Global Change Biology. - West Sussex : Wiley. - 1354-1013 .- 1365-2486. ; 21:2, s. 973-985
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Soil biodiversity plays a key role in regulating the processes that underpin the delivery of ecosystem goods and services in terrestrial ecosystems. Agricultural intensification is known to change the diversity of individual groups of soil biota, but less is known about how intensification affects biodiversity of the soil food web as a whole, and whether or not these effects may be generalized across regions. We examined biodiversity in soil food webs from grasslands, extensive, and intensive rotations in four agricultural regions across Europe: in Sweden, the UK, the Czech Republic and Greece. Effects of land-use intensity were quantified based on structure and diversity among functional groups in the soil food web, as well as on community-weighted mean body mass of soil fauna. We also elucidate land-use intensity effects on diversity of taxonomic units within taxonomic groups of soil fauna. We found that between regions soil food web diversity measures were variable, but that increasing land-use intensity caused highly consistent responses. In particular, land-use intensification reduced the complexity in the soil food webs, as well as the community-weighted mean body mass of soil fauna. In all regions across Europe, species richness of earthworms, Collembolans, and oribatid mites was negatively affected by increased land-use intensity. The taxonomic distinctness, which is a measure of taxonomic relatedness of species in a community that is independent of species richness, was also reduced by land-use intensification. We conclude that intensive agriculture reduces soil biodiversity, making soil food webs less diverse and composed of smaller bodied organisms. Land-use intensification results in fewer functional groups of soil biota with fewer and taxonomically more closely related species. We discuss how these changes in soil biodiversity due to land-use intensification may threaten the functioning of soil in agricultural production systems.
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