Ecological intensification for managing biodiversity in agricultural systems: a systematic review

• Autor(a) principal: Brandis, Ida Schou
• Data de Publicação: 2017
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/15634
• topic: Ecological intensification; Ecosystem services; Biodiversity; Agri-environmental schemes; Organic farming; Integrated farm management; Agricultura biológica; Sustentabilidade ambiental; Biodiversidade; Gestão de recursos naturais

The intensive farming has been linked to biodiversity loss. However, food production is required to increase to meet the growing demand of the world population. For long-time security, ecological intensification, based on the intensive and smart use of ecosystem services is proposed as a solution. This systematic review investigated the inclusion of ecological intensification in research studies, the motivation (mitigation of impacts on biodiversity or production concerns) behind its adoption by different agricultural interventions (organic farming, integrating farm management or agri-environmental schemes) and identified the associated ecosystem services. A total of 258 articles were included in the final list for review. Most studies were motivated by the mitigation of agricultural impacts on biodiversity, organic and integrated farm management were the most represented, and most studies focused on regulating ecosystem services. No association between motivation and agricultural intervention was found. Examples of ecological intensification were identified in 65 studies (25%); among these, the ones only motivated by biodiversity conservation restricted their analysis to regulating services, while the studies motivated by both production and biodiversity conservation also addressed other types of ecosystem services, namely provisioning services. Moreover, studies assessing agri-environmental schemes often did not include ecological intensification, these studies were mainly motivated by the mitigation of agriculture impacts, in particular, on biodiversity values related to cultural services. Overall, review findings suggest that studies focusing both on biodiversity and agriculture tend to be more motivated by the mitigation of impacts of agriculture, and address less the contribution of biodiversity to agricultural production. This suggests a window of opportunity for agricultural management to strengthen the synergies between biodiversity and production.