Soil function assessment: review of methods for quantifying the contributions of soils to ecosystem services.

Soil physical quality response to sugarcane expansion in Brazil

As global demand for livestock products (such as meat, milk and eggs) is expected to double by 2050, necessary increases to future production must be reconciled with negative environmental impacts that livestock cause. This paper describes the LivestockPlus concept and demonstrates how the sowing of improved forages can lead to the sustainable intensification of mixed crop-forage-livestock-tree systems in the tropics by producing multiple social, economic and environmental benefits. Sustainable intensification not only improves the productivity of tropical forage-based systems but also reduces the ecological footprint of livestock production and generates a diversity of ecosystem services (ES) such as improved soil quality and reduced erosion, sedimentation and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Integrating improved grass and legume forages into mixed production systems (crop-livestock, tree-livestock, crop-tree-livestock) can restore degraded lands and enhance system resilience to drought and waterlogging associated with climate change. When properly managed tropical forages accumulate large amounts of carbon in soil, fix atmospheric nitrogen (legumes), inhibit nitrification in soil and reduce nitrous oxide emissions (grasses), and reduce GHG emissions per unit livestock product. The LivestockPlus concept is defined as the sustainable intensification of forage-based systems, which is based on 3 interrelated intensification processes: genetic intensification - the development and use of superior grass and legume

LivestockPlus - The sustainable intensification of forage-based agricultural systems to improve livelihoods and ecosystem services in the tropics *

The production of sufficient food for an increasing global population while conserving natural capital is a major challenge to humanity. Tree-mediated ecosystem services are recognized as k...

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/21513732.2017.1399167

Contribution of trees to the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes

As a highly valuable region that provides multiple important ecosystem services, the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau is vulnerable to climate change and human activities, which have induced significant land cover changes from 1990 to 2015. However, the impact of these changes on the ecosystem service values in the 25 years remains unknown. In this study, we used the combined approach of land cover proxy and unit value transfer method to assess changes in ecosystem service values. The results showed that total ecosystem service values including provisioning, regulating, habitat and cultural services has increased from ca. 1.77 trillion in 1990 to ca. 1.81 trillion US dollars in 2015, mainly due to the considerable expansion of rivers and lakes and a decrease of bare lands and glacier and snow. Although the elasticity analysis found that the response of ESV changes is not that elastic to LULC changes in three periods, 1990–2000, 2000–2010 and 2010–2015, it can still be used as a detector to locate unusual changes in different regions and to indicate urgent need for specific ecosystem management.

Orlando Arguello

Papers

Soil ecosystem services and land use in the rapidly changing Orinoco River Basin of Colombia