Multifunctionality in agricultural ecosystems
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Short summary
To keep agriculture within planetary boundaries, cropping systems must be redesigned for multifunctionality—managing ecosystem functions for productivity, environmental protection, soil fertility, climate mitigation and adaptation, and farm economy while minimizing trade-offs.
We assess multifunctionality at the field scale along two main ecological gradients managed by the farmer: crop diversity and successional stage (defined by disturbance, e.g., tillage, annual and/or perennial cropping). Drawing from ecosystem and community ecology, we establish a multifunctional framework on how dynamic ecosystem functions are coupled above and below ground in the agroecosystem.
We compile ecosystem functions metrics and analyse complementary samples and existing data from three agricultural Long Term Experiments and in which diversity and succession are manipulated. Long Term Experiments provide an excellent empirical platform as biophysical processes can react slowly to management change.
To better grasp how multiple ecosystem functions interlink below- and aboveground and together determine crop yield in response to crop diversity and succession, we perform measurements of multiple functions within Long Term Experiments plots. We build theory on the roles of crop diversity and succession in ecosystem functions driving stocks and flows of carbon, nutrients, water, energy, to predict and monitor multifunctionality outcomes, trade-offs among ecosystem functions, and to identify principles for design of sustainable cropping systems.