Agroecology, scaling and interdisciplinarity

Dalgaard, Tommy; Hutchings, Nicholas J.; Porter, John R.

doi:10.1016/s0167-8809(03)00152-x

Cited by 321 publications

(210 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…Agricultural systems, or agroecosystems, are amended ecosystems (Conway 1985;Gliessman 1998Gliessman , 2005Olsson & Folke 2001;Dalgaard et al 2003;Odum & Barrett 2004;Swift et al 2004) that have a variety of different properties (table 2). Modern agricultural systems have amended some of these properties to increase productivity.…”

Section: Improving Natural Capital For Agroecosystemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Agricultural sustainability: concepts, principles and evidence

Pretty

2007

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

1,372

746

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Concerns about sustainability in agricultural systems centre on the need to develop technologies and practices that do not have adverse effects on environmental goods and services, are accessible to and effective for farmers, and lead to improvements in food productivity. Despite great progress in agricultural productivity in the past half-century, with crop and livestock productivity strongly driven by increased use of fertilizers, irrigation water, agricultural machinery, pesticides and land, it would be over-optimistic to assume that these relationships will remain linear in the future. New approaches are needed that will integrate biological and ecological processes into food production, minimize the use of those non-renewable inputs that cause harm to the environment or to the health of farmers and consumers, make productive use of the knowledge and skills of farmers, so substituting human capital for costly external inputs, and make productive use of people's collective capacities to work together to solve common agricultural and natural resource problems, such as for pest, watershed, irrigation, forest and credit management. These principles help to build important capital assets for agricultural systems: natural; social; human; physical; and financial capital. Improving natural capital is a central aim, and dividends can come from making the best use of the genotypes of crops and animals and the ecological conditions under which they are grown or raised. Agricultural sustainability suggests a focus on both genotype improvements through the full range of modern biological approaches and improved understanding of the benefits of ecological and agronomic management, manipulation and redesign. The ecological management of agroecosystems that addresses energy flows, nutrient cycling, population-regulating mechanisms and system resilience can lead to the redesign of agriculture at a landscape scale. Sustainable agriculture outcomes can be positive for food productivity, reduced pesticide use and carbon balances. Significant challenges, however, remain to develop national and international policies to support the wider emergence of more sustainable forms of agricultural production across both industrialized and developing countries.

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Section: Improving Natural Capital For Agroecosystemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Agricultural sustainability: concepts, principles and evidence

Pretty

2007

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

1,372

746

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“…Into this first family group falls scientific agroecology, which has traditionally focused on ecological processes of food production at a plot or farm scale, rather than the wider social, cultural or political processes, considering them to contrast with scientific knowledge [9]. Scientific agroecology therefore tends to support technological and production-oriented initiatives.…”

Section: Streams Within the Agroecology Movementmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Turning to questions of epistemology, there has been substantive consideration of whether agroecology is a science [1], with Dalgaard et al [9] concluding that the principles of scientific agroecology adhere to Western scientific epistemologies, norms and methodologies. As previously discussed, several agroecologists consider that science is moving beyond disciplinary silos, and agroecology represents a dynamic opportunity for genuine transdisciplinary innovation and the opportunity to embrace imperfection and uncertainty in knowledge claims [12].…”

Section: Further Research and Knowledge Gapsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Addressing the Knowledge Gaps in Agroecology and Identifying Guiding Principles for Transforming Conventional Agri-Food Systems

Bellamy

Ioris

2017

Sustainability

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Abstract:Today's society faces many challenges when it comes to food production: producing food sustainably, producing enough of it, distributing food, consuming enough calories, consuming too many calories, consuming culturally-appropriate foods, and reducing the amount of food wasted. The distribution of power within the current mainstream agri-food system is dominated by multinational agri-businesses that control the flow of goods and wealth through the system. This hegemony has implemented a regime whose structures reinforce its control. A growing response to the current agri-food regime is the rise of agroecology, in both developed and developing country contexts. This is not a new phenomenon, but it has evolved over time from its Latin American origins. However, agroecology is not a monolithic block and represents many different perceptions of what it means to advance agroecology and ways in which it can help today's society tackle the crisis of the agri-food system. This paper addresses these sometimes discordant view points, as well as the gaps in our knowledge regarding agroecology in an effort to lay out some guiding principles for how we can move forward in transforming the current agri-food system to achieve sustainability and a more equitable distribution of power and resources.

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“…However, multiscale ecological studies are relatively rare (Dalgaard et al 2003, Moser et al 2007, probably due to the lack of high-resolution data covering large geographic areas. We found that the topographic influence on local plant diversity and distribution patterns became less evident at horizontal resolutions coarser than 10 m. Hence, our multiscale modeling suggests that the mechanisms underlying the local vegetation-topography relationships presented here operate primarily at the 10 m scale.…”

Section: Scale Effects On Vegetation-topography Relationshipsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Topographically controlled soil moisture is the primary driver of local vegetation patterns across a lowland region

et al. 2013

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Citation: Moeslund, J. E., L. Arge, P. K. Bøcher, T. Dalgaard, M. V. Odgaard, B. Nygaard, and J.-C. Svenning. 2013.Topographically controlled soil moisture is the primary driver of local vegetation patterns across a lowland region. Ecosphere 4(7):91. http://dx.doi.org/10.1890/ES13-00134.1Abstract. Topography is recognized as an important factor in controlling plant distribution and diversity patterns, but its scale dependence and the underlying mechanisms by which it operates are not well understood. Here, we used novel high-resolution (2-m scale) topographic data from more than 30500 vegetation plots to assess the importance of topography for local plant diversity and distribution patterns across Denmark, a 43000 km 2 lowland region. The vegetation data came from 901 nature conservation sites (mean size ¼ 0.16 km 2 ) distributed throughout Denmark, each having an average of 34 plots (five-meter radius) per site. We employed a variety of statistical measures and techniques to investigate scale dependence and mechanistic drivers operating within the study region. Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) multiple regression modeling scaled at different spatial resolutions (2 3 2, 10 3 10, 50 3 50, 100 3 100 and 250 3 250 m) was used to identify the horizontal resolution yielding the strongest vegetation-topography relationships. Using data scaled at this resolution, we quantified local (within-site) and regional (among sites) relationships between elevation, mechanistic topographic factors (slope, heat index, potential solar radiation, wind exposure, wetness index) and 10 vegetation measures representing species composition, richness and functional composition (average plant preferences along key environmental niche axes). We also investigated how overall site-level environmental characteristics affect the strength of these local relationships. Topography exerted the strongest effects at the 10 3 10 m horizontal resolution scale. Elevation exerted the strongest influence on vegetation, followed by slope and wetness. Topography generally affected all vegetation measures and exhibited the strongest local relationships with the main species-compositional gradient, the main functional gradient and the plant's average soil moisture preference. The strength of these relationships was strongly influenced by habitat and site-level average moisture conditions, with the strongest relationships found in wet habitats. Our findings show that finescale topography can strongly influence local vegetation patterns across a wide range of habitat types even in low-relief lowland regions. Notably, topography exhibited a consistently strong relationship with the main local floristic and functional compositional gradients. While a plurality of underlying mechanisms may contribute to the relationship between topography and vegetation patterns, topographically controlled soil moisture exerts primary control on the relationship.

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Agroecology, scaling and interdisciplinarity

Cited by 321 publications

References 38 publications

Agricultural sustainability: concepts, principles and evidence

Agricultural sustainability: concepts, principles and evidence

Addressing the Knowledge Gaps in Agroecology and Identifying Guiding Principles for Transforming Conventional Agri-Food Systems

Topographically controlled soil moisture is the primary driver of local vegetation patterns across a lowland region

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