3 research outputs found
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The influence of landscape composition and configuration on crop yield resilience
1. Sustainable agriculture aims to produce sufficient food while minimizing environmental damage. To achieve this, we need to understand the role of agricultural landscapes in providing diverse ecosystem services and how these affect crop production and resilience, that is, maintaining yields despite environmental perturbation.
We used 10 years of English wheat yield data to derive three metrics of resilience (relative yield across the time series, yield stability around a moving average and resistance to an extreme weather event) at 10 km Ă 10 km resolution. We used remotely sensed maps to calculate measures of landscape structure, including composition (proportions of different land cover types) and configuration (metrics of connectivity and proximity), known to affect ecosystem service delivery (e.g. control of pests by beneficial invertebrates). We then used an informationâtheoretic approach to identify the bestâfitting combination of landscape structure predictors for each resilience metric, using a potential yield model to account for the effects of climate and soils.
Relative yield showed a strongly positive relationship with the area of arable land. For yield stability, this relationship was evident but alongside other landscape structure variables in the bestâfitting model. No relationship with arable land was evident for resistance.
Yield stability showed a strongly positive effect of proximity to semiânatural habitats. For resistance, the bestâfitting model included positive relationships with the cover of semiânatural habitats and proximity to semiânatural grasslands.
Synthesis and applications. Landscapes with the highest relative wheat yields did not show the highest yield stability or resistance to extreme events. As resilience metrics were derived from shorter portions of the time series, the importance of semiânatural habitats compared to arable land increased. This is probably driven by the complex interplay between landscape structure, agricultural management and ecosystem services. These results demonstrate that measuring relative yield over time may be insufficient to capture the full effect that nonâarable components of the landscape, and the ecosystem services they deliver, have on other aspects of resilience, and that there are clear tradeâoffs in managing agricultural landscapes to maximize different aspects of crop yield resilience
Adaptation and sustainability of water management for rice agriculture in temperate regions: The Italian caseâstudy
Phosphorus plant removal from European agricultural land
Phosphorus (P) is an important nutrient for all plant growth and it has become a critical and often imbalanced element in modern agriculture. A proper crop fertilization is crucial for production, farmer profits, and also for ensuring sustainable agriculture. The European Commission has published the Farm to Fork (F2F) Strategy in May 2020, in which the reduction of the use of fertilizers by at least 20% is among one of the main objectives. Therefore, it is important to look for the optimal use of P in order to reduce its pollution effects but also ensure future agricultural production and food security. It is essential to estimate the P budget with the best available data at the highest possible spatial resolution. In this study, we focused on estimating the P removal from soils by crop harvest and removal of crop residues. Specifically, we attempted to estimate the P removal by taking into account the production area and productivity rates of 37 crops for 220 regions in the European Union (EU) and the UK. To estimate the P removal by crops, we included the P concentrations in plant tissues (%), the crop humidity rates, the crop residues production, and the removal rates of the crop residues. The total P removal was about 2.55 million tonnes (Mt) (± 0.23 Mt), with crop harvesting having the larger contribution (ca. 94%) compared to the crop residues removal. A Monte-Carlo analysis estimated a ± 9% uncertainty. In addition, we performed a projection of P removal from agricultural fields in 2030. By providing this picture, we aim to improve the current P balances in the EU and explore the feasibility of F2F objectives