Assessment of the relationships between agroecosystem condition and soil erosion regulating ecosystem service in Northern Germany

Abstract

24Ecosystems provide multiple services that are necessary to maintain human life and 25 activities. Agroecosystems are very productive suppliers of biomass-related provisioning 26 ecosystem services, e.g. food, fibre and energy. At the same time, they are highly dependent 27 on respective ecosystem condition and regulating ecosystem services such as soil fertility, 28 water supply or soil erosion regulation. Assessments of this interplay of ecosystem conditions 29 and services are very important to understand the relationships in highly managed systems.30 Therefore, the aim of this study is twofold: First, to test the concept and indicators proposed 31 by the European Union Working Group on Mapping and Assessment of Ecosystems and their 32 Services (MAES) for the assessment of agroecosystem condition at a regional level. Second, 33 to identify the relationships between ecosystem condition and the delivery of ecosystem 34 services. For this purpose, we applied an operational framework for integrated mapping and 35 assessment of ecosystems and their services. We used the proposed indicators to assess the 36 condition of agroecosystems in Northern Germany and the provision of the regulating 37 ecosystem service control of erosion rates. We used existing data that are available from 38 official databases for the calculation of the different indicators. We show maps of 39 environmental pressures, ecosystem condition and ecosystem service indicators for the 40 Federal State of Lower Saxony. Furthermore, we identified areas within the state where 3 41 pressures are high, conditions are limited, and more sustainable management practices are 42 needed. 43 Despite the limitations of the indicators and data availability, our results show positive, 44 negative and no significant correlations between the different pressures and condition 45 indicators, and the control of erosion rates. Although the idea behind the MAES framework is 46 to show the general condition of an ecosystem, when looking at the relationships between 47 condition and ecosystem services, we identified that not all the indicators -as they are 48 proposed-are suitable to explain to what extent ecosystems are able to provide certain 49 ecosystem services. Further research on other ecosystem services provided by agroecosystems 50 would facilitate the identification of synergies and trade-offs. Moreover, the definition of a 51 reference condition, although complicated for anthropogenically highly modified 52 agroecosystems, would provide a benchmark to compare information on the condition of the 53 ecosystems, leading to better land use policy and management decisions 54

Robotic Fertilisation Using Localisation Systems Based on Point Clouds in Strip-Cropping Fields

“…In recent years, there has been a global increase in food consumption [1][2][3]. Due to the use of fertilisers and herbicides in conventional agricultural practices [4], however, agricultural production has been progressively damaged, generating: soil erosion [5], river and land pollution [6][7][8], loss of soil nutrients, [9], and increasing CO 2 emissions to the atmosphere [10]. Precision agriculture allows for the production of higher quality products, through sustainable development [11], technological tools, sensory systems [12,13], and modern actuation systems; robotic systems within precision agriculture has allowed optimising the fertilisation process, to develop specialised treatments based on the specific needs of each plant [14][15][16][17].…”