Biodiversity and landscape diversity as indicators of sustainable development

Abstract

The main purpose of the article is to substantiate the restrictive content of a sustainable development concept and to show how it is implemented in the theoretical foundations of the agriculture. Today, the initial restrictive content of the concept has changed beyond recognition in a continued large-scale consumption of natural resources. Consequently, the very concept of sustainability requires clarification. It is necessary to look for its signs in natural ecosystems, where the main indicator is life itself, maintained by the biosphere in a state of stable dynamic equilibrium. Introducing monoculture, people deliberately impoverish biodiversity in agroecosystems, by transforming natural into agro-landscapes. Adaptive technologies could be the means to achieve a stable balance. In that case, the mechanisms of matter-energy metabolism in agroecosystems will be closer to the biosphere. The article lays out a set of measures through which the use of nature can be closer to general scientific ideas of sustainability.

Cover Crops for Sustainable Cropping Systems: A Review

“…It is widely recognized that the adoption of monoculture and conventional farming practices causes changes in the biodiversity of agro-ecosystems leading to the reduction of soil fertility due to high inputs of chemical fertilizers and increasing resistance in weeds and phytopathogens associated with overuse of pesticides [90]. This farming approach of modern industrialized agriculture leads farmers to assume that a simple and linear system is more productive and profitable than sustainable agronomic practices into farm planning [91].…”

Geographical foundations of the sustainable development concept: the paradigmatic level

“…At the same time, the highest level of information influence, which leads to an increase in planetary entropy, is characteristic of today's so-called "world cities" [20]. This influence is manifested in the diversification and inversion of the geographical space by world cities, studied in previous publications [10,16]. According to the results of the author's research, the territories that fall into the hinterlands of neighboring "world" or the highest ranked "central" places are forcibly transformed by them into service, or into infrastructure [10].…”

“…At the same time, such consumption either does not reach the body, or completely leaves its physiological limits, confirming the purpose of this exchange in only one direction -the extraction of natural inert substance without its return to food chains. It is at this stage that thanks to the technical-cultural-transformative activity of man with the involvement of the inert substance of the biosphere, "materialized information" is formed in the form of "consumer values" [16].…”

Zoning of highways of the Cherkasy region according to the degree of formation of ecosystem relations

“…The object of our zoning is the ecosystem relations that are formed in the roadside landscapes of the Cherkasy region. The relevance of such research is due to the great attention paid to the preservation and restoration of biodiversity in the countries of the European Union [1].…”