Restauration de la santé des sols agricoles wallons par la promotion de l'activité lombricienne et microbienne

Nowadays, to ensure sustainable production, it is essential to promote two actors essential to the resilience of our soils: earthworms and microorganisms communities (EMC). Through the ecological functions they perform in soils (decomposition/mineralization of organic matter, stability of aggregates, resistance to biotic or abiotic stresses,…), they contribute to the provision of ecosystem services to mankind (permeability/infiltration of water in soils, erosion control, ultimately primary production,…). The relationship between EMC is far from being understood: Positive feedbacks would take place during earthworm activity, as changes in microbial biomass and enzymatic activity would amplified during cohabitation. A detailed study of these interactions and how they evolve with a change in agricultural practices is necessary to better understand how to optimize the provision of ecosystem services. In Wallonia (Belgium), we can see agricultural practices evolving against two intensification gradient : the decrease in the use of synthetic inputs and the decrease in intensive tillage. Therefore, this thesis will focus on 4 agricultural modalities : Organic agriculture, conservation agriculture, organic + conservation agriculture and conventional agriculture. The objective is to really quantify the contribution of EMC in these different modalities, through the innovative combination of two approaches. Firstly, a factorial approach is divided into two parts: Tests and samplings in partner long term trials and an ex-situ experimentation in mesocosms. Secondly, a systemic approach will integrate the study in commercial farms and therefore take into account socio-economic variabilities. Agricultural practices act as filters for the expression of life in soil, resulting in differences in abundance and diversity then translated in the unlike provision of ecosystem services. In 2021, by sampling about 50 agricultural plots, a previous master’s thesis proved this phenomenon for earthworm communities. For the next four years, a PhD will go further, by adding the interaction with microorganisms communities. This poster presents the thesis objectives and the context in which this research takes place. First results from a previous work are also briefly presented.2. Zero hunger12. Responsible consumption and production13. Climate action15. Life on lan

How can integrated valuation of ecosystem services help understanding and steering agroecological transitions?

Agroecology has been proposed as a promising concept to foster the resilience and sustainability of agroecosystems and rural territories. Agroecological practices are based on optimizing ecosystem services (ES) at the landscape, farm, and parcel scales. Recent progress in research on designing agroecological transitions highlights the necessity for coconstructed processes that draw on various sources of knowledge based on shared concepts. But despite the sense of urgency linked to agroecological transitions, feedbacks from real-world implementation remain patchy. The ability of integrated and participatory ES assessments to support this transition remains largely underexplored, although their potential to enhance learning processes and to build a shared territorial perspective is widely recognized. The overarching question that will be asked in this paper is thus: what is the potential of the ES framework to support the understanding and steering of agroecological transitions? We argue that conducting collaborative and integrated assessments of ES bundles can (i) increase our understanding of the ecological and social drivers that support a transition toward agroecological systems, and (ii) help design agroecological systems based on ES delivery and effectively accompany transition management based on shared knowledge, codesigned future objectives, and actual on-the-ground implementation. In this paper, we discuss this question and propose a four-step integrated ES assessment framework specifically targeted at understanding and steering agricultural transitions that is generic enough to be applied in different contexts

Rural landscape design: think local, involve locals

The urge to involve stakeholders from the start of ecosystem service (ES) assessments is increasingly addressed in literature. This is even more the case when studying rural landscape planning for which impacts on ES have proved to be highly context specific. Despite the growing amount of social ES valuations, few studies integrate them to a biophysical ES assessment. To fill in this gap, we developed a methodology where the social ES valuation directly serves the biophysical ES assessment. By combining components of the Delphi and the focus group methods, our approach allows to provide good insights on the preferred ES within the studied locality. Thanks to the deliberative phase, it also provides information on the divergences and convergences among the social values held by local stakeholders. The underpinning aim of the exercise is to reach a consent within the group. Conversely to a consensus where the decision must be unanimous, a consent seeks decisions where nobody has fundamental opposition to it. We believe that applying such approach has the potential to: - guide the biophysical ES assessment towards ES which are relevant to the study area and important in the eyes of local stakeholders; - create opportunity for collective social learning; - identify networks of influences and/or social interdependencies related to ES; - empower local stakeholders while enhancing the democratic process of decision-making. The presentation first introduces the backbone of the methodology. Two case-studies in which we applied the innovative approach will then be presented. The first case study relates to local ES assessment carried out in agroecological and conventional farms in a Western locality in Belgium. The second case-study relates to a land consolidation scheme project. Outcomes of the approach applied in both cases are put forward, and adaptation of the methodology for the distinct purposes and contexts are elucidated

Biodiversity and ecosystem services: think functional!

During the last years, several studies and reviews have considered the relation between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning or the provision of ecosystem services. Many studies found that plant functional traits and plant functional diversity (FD) are key drivers in this relation in terrestrial ecosystems. Researchers used different methods to obtain a gradient in plant FD to examine the effect on ecosystem services, going from observational studies of natural communities to synthetic assemblages. Furthermore, different methods exist to quantify plant FD going from simple functional trait richness to indices, distance-based frameworks and the division into FD components. In the AgricultureIsLife project, we set up a field experiment aiming to examine the biodiversity – ecosystem service relation in agricultural context. The experiment consists of perennial wildflower strips with different plant functional diversities in an arable field with conventional crop production. The wildflower strips were sown as synthetic assemblages but are subject to natural succession during the following years. We monitor the evolution of FD from the sowing to the establishment of a typical wildflower strip using Rhao’s quadratic entropy index to quantify FD. In addition, the flower strips will be monitored for four ecosystem services they are expected to provide: pollination, pest control, biodiversity support and provision of valuable compounds.AgricultureIsLif

Native forest conversion alters soil macroinvertebrate diversity and soil quality in tropical mountain landscapes of northern Ecuador

peer reviewedLand use changes cause soil degradation and loss of biodiversity, thereby affecting ecological processes and soil-associated ecosystem services. However, land use change impacts on soil health have received little attention in the highland landscapes of the tropics. In this research, using the soil health framework, we assessed the impact of native forest conversion to anthropic systems (planted forests, pastures, and monocultures) on two ecosystem services: biodiversity conservation and soil fertility in the highlands of northern Ecuador. The biological dimension of our assessment focused on the diversity, abundance, and biomass of soil macroinvertebrate communities as proxies to soil functions, whereas soil chemical parameters were used to describe the soil fertility. The soil invertebrate communities and soil chemical parameters were studied in topsoil samples using 25 × 25 × 10 cm monoliths, obtained from 10 sampling sites randomly selected in each land use category. We hypothesized that native forests would present more diverse and even soil macroinvertebrate communities, and together with their soil chemical properties would indicate better soil quality than anthropic environments. Our results showed that the structure and composition of the edaphic macroinvertebrate communities significantly differed among the studied land use categories. As predicted, native forests presented greater values for richness, evenness and diversity of soil biota than did the other categories, demonstrating a significant loss of taxonomic biodiversity at order and genus levels. We also found a significant reduction of trophic diversity in native forests converted to anthropic environments. More trophic groups with greater abundances were found in native forests, where predators and detritivores stood out as dominant groups, indicating the good quality of the soil. The results from the soil chemical parameters also confirmed the distinction in soil health between native forests and anthropic environments. Our results highlight the risk associated with current trends of native forest loss and conversion to anthropic systems in high mountain ecosystems in the tropics, illustrating how these alterations could cause biodiversity loss and degradation of the chemical attributes of soil health. The findings of this research could contribute to the conservation and sustainable management of mountain agricultural landscapes in the study regionAdriana Paulina Guarderas15. Life on lan

Chapter 1 Setting the Scene

peer reviewe

Agroécologie:utopie ou vision d'avenir?

l’heure où l’agroécologie devient un concept incontournable dans la sphère publique, elle reste encore une notion nébuleuse aux interprétations multiples. Incontour-nable, au point que nombres d’acteurs s’en emparent, empreint d’idéalisme pour certains, d’opportunité politique ou d’avidité mercantile pour d’autres. Nébuleuse, car certains aspects restent encore peu étudiés comme son rôle réel dans l’atténuation du changement climatique, sa contribution, difficile à caractériser, en terme de services à la société, comme les services écosysté-miques, le bien-être et la qualité de vie pour les citoyen·ne·s et les paysan·ne·s en particulier ou enfin son lien intrinsèque avec la lutte pour l’égalité de genre. Ce numéro nous amène ainsi à une compréhension plus profonde et une vision plus systémique de ce que recèle l’agroécologie