Evidence for the impacts of agroforestry on agricultural productivity, ecosystem services, and human well-being in high-income countries: a systematic map protocol

Abstract

Background: Agroforestry bridges the gap that often separates agriculture and forestry by building integrated systems that address both environmental and socioeconomic objectives. Agroforestry can improve the resiliency of agricultural systems and mitigate the impacts of climate change. Existing research suggests that integrating trees on farms can prevent environmental degradation, improve agricultural productivity, increase carbon sequestration, generate cleaner water, and support healthy soil and healthy ecosystems while providing stable incomes and other benefits to human welfare. Although these claims are becoming more widely accepted as the body of agroforestry research increases, systematic understanding of the evidence supporting them remains lacking for high-income countries. This systematic map will address this research need by providing a tool for identifying and visualizing the existing evidence demonstrating the impacts of agroforestry practices and interventions on agricultural productivity, ecosystem services, and human well-being. The results will be useful for informing policy decisions and future research by making the evidence easily accessible and highlighting the gaps in knowledge as well as areas with enough evidence to conduct systematic reviews. Methods: This systematic map will identify, collect, display, and describe available evidence on the impacts of agroforestry on agricultural productivity, ecosystem services, and human well-being in high-income countries. The search strategy will cover 5 primary databases and 24 organizational websites using a pre-defined search string designed to capture studies relating agroforestry practices and interventions to outcomes in high-income countries. The searches will all be conducted in English. We will screen the identified studies for inclusion or exclusion in stages, first on title and abstract and then on full-text. We will collect data from studies included at the full-text stage to form the map and associated database. For inclusion, the study in question must assess the impacts of the deliberate promotion and/or actual integration of woody perennials (trees, shrubs, palms, bamboos, etc.) on the same land management unit as agricultural crops and/or animals.

Land use management and carrying capacity of Bangsri Micro Watershed, East Java, Indonesia: a baseline study

“…Indeed, every crop has speci c environmental requirements in order to achieve optimum yield, which in this case is the minimum light requirement. However, several studies have shown that crops can grow well and productive in the agroforestry system, as long as some basic requirements met [39]. For instance, cacao can achieve the productivity of 50% and higher when planted together with 100 shade trees per hectare in a spatially organized manner [40].…”

“…There are numerous proven advantages from agroforestry which did not directly calculate as income, instead, it offers services that can be calculated as a nancial loss when such services did not exist anymore. Several crucial ecosystem services identi ed from agroforestry systems, i.e., help to mitigate the effects of climate change, increase the water and air quality, improve the soil structure and nutrient cycling, increase carbon sequestration, increase the water in ltration from surface runoff, control of pest and diseases, and helps to conserve related biodiversity [39,42,43]. Such knowledge was not readily accessible for the local farmers in BW.…”

A Systematic Map of Agroforestry Research Focusing on Ecosystem Services in the Asia-Pacific Region

“…International organizations and governments have been investing in agroforestry research and projects in lower-middle-income countries since the 1960s and 1970s [5,21,22], exploring the interactions between agroforestry and ecosystem oriented services in the world, as well as specifically in the Asia-Pacific region [18]. For instance, Chang et al [19] analyzed bird biodiversity in a coffee agroforestry system in India, Yang et al [23] described the impact of riparian buffers on biomass in China, and Tiwari et al [24] calculated the ecosystem services of maize from hillside agroforestry systems in Nepal, but each of these studies focused on only one type of agroforestry.…”

“…One of the solutions for synthesizing the information, when there is disparate evidence, is a systematic map, providing a robust method to identify and present research evidence extracted from peer-reviewed papers and grey literature [22,[32][33][34]. The rigorous methodology describes the characteristics and trends of research on a broad scale, and, in part, fills the knowledge gaps by bringing together repeatable and quantitative evidence [33,34].…”

“…Previous works to synthesize the knowledge of agroforestry and ecosystem services have been conducted in some regions, including Europe [35], high-income countries [22], and low-and middle-income countries [36], but no study has systematically identified and described the nature, volume, and characteristics of the research in the field of agroforestry and ecosystem services in the Asia-Pacific region. To make up for the limits of the systematic maps, several previous papers have reported meta-analysis investigations [17,31,37].…”