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Soil retrogression and degradation are two regressive evolution processes associated with the loss of equilibrium of a stable soil. Retrogression is primarily due to soil erosion and corresponds to a phenomenon where succession reverts the land to its natural physical state. Degradation is an evolution, different from natural evolution, related to the local climate and vegetation. It is due to the replacement of primary plant communities by the secondary communities. This replacement modifies the humus composition and amount, and affects the formation of the soil. It is directly related to human activity. Soil degradation may also be viewed as any change or ecological disturbance to the soil perceived to be deleterious or undesirable.
Sustainable agriculture is farming in sustainable ways meeting society's present food and textile needs, without compromising the ability for current or future generations to meet their needs. It can be based on an understanding of ecosystem services. There are many methods to increase the sustainability of agriculture. When developing agriculture within sustainable food systems, it is important to develop flexible business process and farming practices. Agriculture has an enormous environmental footprint, playing a significant role in causing climate change, water scarcity, water pollution, land degradation, deforestation and other processes; it is simultaneously causing environmental changes and being impacted by these changes. Sustainable agriculture consists of environment friendly methods of farming that allow the production of crops or livestock without damage to human or natural systems. It involves preventing adverse effects to soil, water, biodiversity, surrounding or downstream resources—as well as to those working or living on the farm or in neighboring areas. Elements of sustainable agriculture can include permaculture, agroforestry, mixed farming, multiple cropping, and crop rotation.
Slash-and-burn agriculture is a farming method that involves the cutting and burning of plants in a forest or woodland to create a field called a swidden. The method begins by cutting down the trees and woody plants in an area. The downed vegetation, or "slash", is then left to dry, usually right before the rainiest part of the year. Then, the biomass is burned, resulting in a nutrient-rich layer of ash which makes the soil fertile, as well as temporarily eliminating weed and pest species. After about three to five years, the plot's productivity decreases due to depletion of nutrients along with weed and pest invasion, causing the farmers to abandon the field and move to a new area. The time it takes for a swidden to recover depends on the location and can be as little as five years to more than twenty years, after which the plot can be slashed and burned again, repeating the cycle. In Bangladesh and India, the practice is known as jhum or jhoom.
Pioneer species are hardy species that are the first to colonize barren environments or previously biodiverse steady-state ecosystems that have been disrupted, such as by wildfire.
Ecological succession is the process of change in the species structure of an ecological community over time. The time scale can be decades or more or less.
An arbuscular mycorrhiza (AM) is a type of mycorrhiza in which the symbiont fungus penetrates the cortical cells of the roots of a vascular plant forming arbuscules.
Agroforestry is a land use management system in which trees or shrubs are grown around or among crops or pastureland. Trees produce a wide range of useful and marketable products from fruits/nuts, medicines, wood products, etc. This intentional combination of agriculture and forestry has multiple benefits, such as greatly enhanced yields from staple food crops, enhanced farmer livelihoods from income generation, increased biodiversity, improved soil structure and health, reduced erosion, and carbon sequestration. Agroforestry practices are highly beneficial in the tropics, especially in subsistence smallholdings in sub-Saharan Africa and have been found to be beneficial in Europe and the United States.
A secondary forest is a forest or woodland area which has re-grown after a timber harvest or clearing for agriculture, until a long enough period has passed so that the effects of the disturbance are no longer evident. It is distinguished from an old-growth forest, which has not recently undergone such disruption, and complex early seral forest, as well as third-growth forests that result from harvest in second growth forests. Secondary forest regrowing after timber harvest differs from forest regrowing after natural disturbances such as fire, insect infestation, or windthrow because the dead trees remain to provide nutrients, structure, and water retention after natural disturbances. However, often after natural disturbance the timber is harvested and removed from the system, in which case the system more closely resembles secondary forest rather than seral forest.
Primary succession is the beginning step of ecological succession after an extreme disturbance, which usually occurs in an environment devoid of vegetation and other organisms. These environments are typically lacking in soil, as disturbances like lava flow or retreating glaciers shred the environment of nutrients.
Soil conservation is the prevention of loss of the topmost layer of the soil from erosion or prevention of reduced fertility caused by over usage, acidification, salinization or other chemical soil contamination.
Restoration ecology is the scientific study supporting the practice of ecological restoration, which is the practice of renewing and restoring degraded, damaged, or destroyed ecosystems and habitats in the environment by active human interruption and action. Effective restoration requires an explicit goal or policy, preferably an unambiguous one that is articulated, accepted, and codified. Restoration goals reflect societal choices from among competing policy priorities, but extracting such goals is typically contentious and politically challenging.
Fire ecology is a scientific discipline concerned with natural processes involving fire in an ecosystem and the ecological effects, the interactions between fire and the abiotic and biotic components of an ecosystem, and the role as an ecosystem process. Many ecosystems, particularly prairie, savanna, chaparral and coniferous forests, have evolved with fire as an essential contributor to habitat vitality and renewal. Many plant species in fire-affected environments use fire to germinate, establish, or to reproduce. Wildfire suppression not only endangers these species, but also the animals that depend upon them.
Climax species, also called late seral, late-successional, K-selected or equilibrium species, are plant species that can germinate and grow with limited resources; e.g., they need heat exposure or low water availability. They are the species within forest succession that are more adapted to stable and predictable environments, and will remain essentially unchanged in terms of species composition for as long as a site remains undisturbed.
In ecology, a priority effect refers to the impact that a particular species can have on community development as a result of its prior arrival at a site. There are two basic types of priority effects: inhibitory and facilitative. An inhibitory priority effect occurs when a species that arrives first at a site negatively affects a species that arrives later by reducing the availability of space or resources. In contrast, a facilitative priority effect occurs when a species that arrives first at a site alters abiotic or biotic conditions in ways that positively affect a species that arrives later. Priority effects are a central and pervasive element of ecological community development that have significant implications for natural systems and ecological restoration efforts.
A perennial grain is a grain crop that lives and remains productive for two or more years, rather than growing for only one season before harvest, like most grains and annual crops. While many fruit, nut and forage crops are long-lived perennial plants, all major grain crops presently used in large-scale agriculture are annuals or short-lived perennials grown as annuals. Scientists from several nations have argued that perennial versions of today's grain crops could be developed and that these perennial grains could make grain agriculture more sustainable.
Forest restoration is defined as “actions to re-instate ecological processes, which accelerate recovery of forest structure, ecological functioning and biodiversity levels towards those typical of climax forest” i.e. the end-stage of natural forest succession. Climax forests are relatively stable ecosystems that have developed the maximum biomass, structural complexity and species diversity that are possible within the limits imposed by climate and soil and without continued disturbance from humans. Climax forest is therefore the target ecosystem, which defines the ultimate aim of forest restoration. Since climate is a major factor that determines climax forest composition, global climate change may result in changing restoration aims.
Regeneration is the ability for a cell, tissue, or organism to recover from damage. It can also be used to describe the ability of an ecosystem – specifically, the environment and its living population – to renew and recover from damage.
Carbon farming is a name for a variety of agricultural methods aimed at sequestering atmospheric carbon into the soil and in crop roots, wood and leaves. The aim of carbon farming is to increase the rate at which carbon is sequestered into soil and plant material with the goal of creating a net loss of carbon from the atmosphere. Increasing a soil's organic matter content can aid plant growth, increase total carbon content, improve soil water retention capacity and reduce fertilizer use. As of 2016, variants of carbon farming reached hundreds of millions of hectares globally, of the nearly 5 billion hectares (1.2×1010 acres) of world farmland. In addition to agricultural activities, forests management is also a tool that is used in carbon farming. The practice of carbon farming is often done by individual land owners who are given incentive to use and to integrate methods that will sequester carbon through policies created by governments. Carbon farming methods will typically have a cost, meaning farmers and land-owners need a way to profit from the use of carbon farming, thus requiring government programs.
Biogeoclimatic ecosystem classification (BEC) is an ecological classification framework used in British Columbia to define, describe, and map ecosystem-based units at various scales, from broad, ecologically-based climatic regions down to local ecosystems or sites. BEC is termed an ecosystem classification as the approach integrates site, soil, and vegetation characteristics to develop and characterize all units. BEC has a strong application focus and guides to classification and management of forests, grasslands and wetlands are available for much of the province to aid in identification of the ecosystem units.
A wildflower strip is a section of land set aside to grow wildflowers. These may be at the edge of a crop field to mitigate agricultural intensification and monoculture; along road medians and verges; or in parkland or other open spaces such as the Coronation Meadows. Such strips are an attractive amenity and may also improve biodiversity, conserving birds, insects and other wildlife.
References
- ↑ "Implications of Modern Successional Theory for Habitat Typing: A Review (PDF Download Available)". ResearchGate. Retrieved 2017-05-09.
- ↑ Kelemen, András; Tóthmérész, Béla; Valkó, Orsolya; Miglécz, Tamás; Deák, Balázs; Török, Péter (2017-04-01). "New aspects of grassland recovery in old-fields revealed by trait-based analyses of perennial-crop-mediated succession". Ecology and Evolution. 7 (7): 2432–2440. doi:10.1002/ece3.2869. PMC 5383495 . PMID 28405306.
- ↑ Gill, David S.; Marks, P. L. (1991-01-01). "Tree and Shrub Seedling Colonization of Old Fields in Central New York". Ecological Monographs. 61 (2): 183–205. doi:10.2307/1943007. JSTOR 1943007.
- 1 2 Cramer, Viki A.; Hobbs, Richard J.; Standish, Rachel J. (2008-02-01). "What's new about old fields? Land abandonment and ecosystem assembly". Trends in Ecology & Evolution. 23 (2): 104–112. doi:10.1016/j.tree.2007.10.005. ISSN 0169-5347. PMID 18191278.
- 1 2 Bonet, Andreu (2004-01-01). "Secondary succession of semi-arid Mediterranean old-fields in south-eastern Spain: insights for conservation and restoration of degraded lands". Journal of Arid Environments. 56 (2): 213–233. doi:10.1016/S0140-1963(03)00048-X. ISSN 0140-1963.
- ↑ Pe'er, Guy; Bonn, Aletta; Bruelheide, Helge; Dieker, Petra; Eisenhauer, Nico; Feindt, Peter H.; Hagedorn, Gregor; Hansjürgens, Bernd; Herzon, Irina; Lomba, Ângela; Marquard, Elisabeth (2020). "Action needed for the EU Common Agricultural Policy to address sustainability challenges". People and Nature. 2 (2): 305–316. doi:10.1002/pan3.10080. ISSN 2575-8314. PMC 7334041 . PMID 32626843.
- ↑ Benincà, Elisa; Ballantine, Bill; Ellner, Stephen P.; Huisman, Jef (2015-05-19). "Species fluctuations sustained by a cyclic succession at the edge of chaos". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 112 (20): 6389–6394. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1421968112 . ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 4443354 . PMID 25902520.
- ↑ Lee, Kyu Song; Kim, Joon-Ho (1995). "Seral Changes in Floristic Composition during Abandoned Field Succession after Shifting Cultivation". The Korean Journal of Ecology. 18 (2): 275–283. ISSN 1225-0317.
- ↑ Inouye, Richard S.; Huntly, Nancy J.; Tilman, David; Tester, John R.; Stillwell, Mark; Zinnel, Kathlean C. (1987). "Old-Field Succession on a Minnesota Sand Plain". Ecology. 68 (1): 12–26. doi:10.2307/1938801. ISSN 1939-9170. JSTOR 1938801.
- Core, Earl L. (1949), "Original Treeless Areas in West Virginia", J. Elisha Mitchell Sci. Soc. , 65:306–310.