Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services in Agroecosystems

Ecological intensification is a new concept in agriculture that addresses the double challenge of maintaining a level of production sufficient to support needs of human populations and respecting the environment in order to conserve the natural world and human quality of life. This article adapts this concept to fish farming using agroecological principles and the ecosystem services framework. The method was developed from the study of published literature and applications at four study sites chosen for their differences in production intensity: polyculture ponds in France, integrated pig and pond polyculture in Brazil, the culture of striped catfish in Indonesia and a recirculating salmon aquaculture system in France. The study of stakeholders' perceptions of ecosystem services combined with environmental assessment through Life Cycle Assessment and Emergy accounting allowed development of an assessment tool that was used as a basis for co-building evolution scenarios. From this experience, ecological intensification of aquaculture was defined as the use of ecological processes and functions to increase productivity, strengthen ecosystem services and decrease disservices. It is based on aquaecosystem and biodiversity management and the use of local and traditional knowledge. Expected consequences for farming systems consist of greater autonomy, efficiency and better integration into their surrounding territories. Ecological intensification requires territorial governance and helps improve it from a sustainable development perspective.

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“…This concept is complex due to the interaction between socioeconomic and ecological processes (Conway ; Garbach et al . ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Implementing ecological intensification in fish farming: definition and principles from contrasting experiences

Aubin

Callier

Rey‐Valette

et al. 2017

Reviews in Aquaculture

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“…Research at the interface of ecology and economics to characterize, value, and manage ecosystem services (henceforth ES) has supported a paradigm shift in how society thinks about biodiversity, ecosystems and human relationships to them (MEA 2005;TEEB 2010;Garbach et al 2014). This awareness of the ES started with classical papers of Daily (1997) and Constanza et al (1997); and in 2005, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA) promoted and defined the concept of ES as "the benefits that humans recognize as obtained from ecosystems that support, directly or indirectly, their survival and quality of life".…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pollination services mapping and economic valuation from insect communities: a case study in the Azores (Terceira Island)

Picanço¹,

Gil²,

Rigal³

et al. 2017

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Insect pollinators provide vital ecosystem services through its maintenance of plant biological diversity and its role in food production. Indeed, adequate pollination services can increase the production and quality of fruit and vegetable crops. This service is currently challenged by land use intensification and expanding human population growth. Hence, this study aims: (1) to assess the pollination services in different land uses with different levels of disturbance through GIS mapping technique using insect pollinators abundance and richness as indicators, and (2) estimate the economic value of pollination by insects in agricultural crops. Our study takes place in a small oceanic island, Terceira (Azores, Portugal). Our results showed, remarkably, that not only the pristine vegetation areas, but also the orchards and agricultural areas have relatively high values of pollination services, even though both land uses have opposite disturbance levels. For the economic valuation, we analyzed 24 crops in the island and found that 18 depend on pollinators with one-third of these crops having 65% or 95% dependence on pollinators. The economic contribution of pollinators totals 36.2% of the total mean annual agricultural income of the dependent crops, highlighting the importance of insect pollinators in agricultural production and consequent economic gain productions. RESEARCH ARTICLE Launched to accelerate biodiversity conservation A peer-reviewed open-access journalAna Picanço et al. / Nature Conservation 18: 1-25 (2017) 2

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“…The relationships between ecosystem services, biological functions and density, biomass and interactions of species within a community are actively being researched, and the field is rapidly evolving (Chapin et al, 2000;Loreau et al, 2002;Cardinale et al, 2006Cardinale et al, , 2011Cardinale et al, , 2012Naeem et al, 2009;Garbach et al, 2014;Gilioli et al, 2014;Harrison et al, 2014).…”

Section: Relationship Between Biodiversity and Ecosystem Servicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Certain components of biodiversity, either structural (genetic diversity, crop diversity, species richness, local abundance of species) or functional (range and value of species and organismal traits that influence ecosystem functioning; Tilman, ) can be considered as the main foundation for each ecosystem service (Mace et al., ; Garbach et al., ). In principle, the broad scope of biodiversity as a protection goal determines that each of the four categories of ecosystem services has elements that are either dependent on or influenced by certain components of biodiversity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Guidance to develop specific protection goals options for environmental risk assessment at EFSA, in relation to biodiversity and ecosystem services

Ockleford¹

2016

EFS2

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Maintaining a healthy environment and conserving biodiversity are major goals of environmental protection. A challenge is that protection goals outlined in legislation are often too general and broad to be directly applicable for environmental risk assessment (ERA) performed by EFSA. Therefore, they need to be translated into specific protection goals (SPGs). This Guidance presents a framework, which accounts for biodiversity and ecosystem services, to make general protection goals operational for use in all areas of EFSA's ERAs. The approach to follow has three sequential steps: (1) the identification of relevant ecosystem services; (2) the identification of service providing units (SPUs) for these ecosystem services; and (3) the specification of options for the level/parameters of protection of the SPUs using five interrelated dimensions. This last step involves the specification of options for the ecological entity and attribute to protect and the magnitude, temporal scale and spatial scale of the biologically relevant and, in the case of regulated products, tolerable effects, the latter defined in dialogue with risk managers. In order to promote transparency and consistency when developing options for the level/parameters of protection, this guidance provides considerations to justify the selected options.

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Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services in Agroecosystems

Cited by 96 publications

References 98 publications

Implementing ecological intensification in fish farming: definition and principles from contrasting experiences

Implementing ecological intensification in fish farming: definition and principles from contrasting experiences

Pollination services mapping and economic valuation from insect communities: a case study in the Azores (Terceira Island)

Guidance to develop specific protection goals options for environmental risk assessment at EFSA, in relation to biodiversity and ecosystem services

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