[EBOOK] AGROFORESTRY FOR BIODIVERSITY AND ECOSYSTEM SERVICES - SCIENCE AND PRACTICE, Edited by Martin Leckson Kaonga, Published by INTECH

As rates of deforestation and land degradation, and losses of biodiversity and ecosystem services, continue to rise globally, the international community is faced with the challenge of finding land use interventions that can mitigate or reduce the impact of these environmental issues. Agroforestry, the integration of trees in farming systems, has the potential for providing rural livelihoods and habitats for species outside formally protected lands, connecting nature reserves, and alleviating resource-use pressure on conservation areas. In the last three decades, there has been a growing interest in agroforestry because of its biodiversity and ecosystem services it delivers. Therefore, trees are increasingly being planted as part of farming systems. A recent global assessment of tree cover found that 48% of the world's agricultural land had at least 10% of tree cover. However, widespread adoption of agroforestry is still tampered by a myriad of factors including inter alia the design features of candidate agroforestry innovations, perceived needs, institutional constraints, the availability and distribution of factors of production, and perception of risks. Understanding the science, and factors that facilitate the adoption, of agroforestry and how they impact the implementation of agroforestry is vitally important.

This book consists of eight chapters, which are broadly divided into two themes. The first five chapters examine design features and management practices of selected agroforestry practices, and their effects on ecosystem functions and productivity. In the first Chapter, Rodríguez-Estéz et al. provide a synthesis of existing knowledge on the ecology of the dehesa, a Mediterranean agrosilvopastoral system, and how the Iberian pig production system enhances biodiversity and ecosystem services. The synthesis includes empirical data from on-going studies of the dehesa and grazing behavior and performance of Iberian pigs finished on acorns. The authors conclude that farmers conserve, prune and reforest oaks to maintain fruit production to feed and fatten Iberian pigs during the montanera or pannage, which result in conservation of biodiversity and associated ecosystem services.

In Chapter Two, Kaonga and Bayliss-Smith describe a conceptual model that summarises current knowledge on ecological processes, drivers, and stressors responsible for carbon cycling, and further demonstrate how the model could be used to estimate major carbon pools and fluxes in tropical improved fallows using data from eastern Zambia. Chapter Three reports original findings of a study on the effectof environmental drivers on diversity of parasitoid wasp communities in two cacao agroforestry systems in the Bahia state of Brazil. Speber et al. evaluated parasitoid wasps of Hymenoptera of parasitica series and Chrystoidea super family in the cabruca cacao agroforestry system (cacao planted under a thinned natural forest canopy) and in a derruba total (cacao planted under a canopy of trees introduced after clear felling of natural forest). The authors conclude that tree species richness is of uttermost importance in structuring Hymenoptera communities in tropical agroforestry systems, and that seasonality alters this relationship, acting on particular Hymenoptera taxa.

Efhami Sisi et al., in Chapter Four, review the effect of management practices on anatomical, physiological and morphological characteristics of trees in agroforestry systems. They specifically assess the impact of initial spacing between trees and tree-crop inter-planting on tree growth and wood properties in a tree-alfalfa intercropping system in a temperate region. In Chapter five, Chesney reviews the science of shoot pruning of the woody component in agroforestry systems and the impact of this management practice on the functional equilibrium between the shoots and roots of the woody component. These first five chapters collectively suggest that the design and management practices of an agroforestry system determine ecosystem functions, and biodiversity that undergirds the ecosystem services provided.

The second cluster of chapters focuses on factors that facilitate the adoption or nonadoption of agroforestry systems. The authors of the last three chapters argue that increasing the scale of adoption and the impact of agroforestry innovations requires actions that are based on an understanding of the dynamics of adoption and the critical factors that determine whether farmers accept, do not accept, or partially accept, innovations. Place et al., in chapter Six, review factors underpinning recently adopted agroforestry systems and policy-related constraints to widespread adoption of agroforestry. They specifically identify policy issues for facilitating adoption of desirable agroforestry practices and gradual diminution of undesirable policies. In Chapter Seven, Msuya et al. use the Tanzanian agroforestry development context to explore how existing national policy and institutional setups facilitate or constrain development of agroforestry policies and suggest the available options for developing agroforestry policy. In the last chapter, Degrande et al. present original results of a five-year study undertaken by the World Agroforestry Centre in Cameroun to evaluate relay organizations and rural resource centers as a model for participatory domestication of trees.

This book is a collection of field studies and literature review by experienced researchers. It covers different disciplines within agroforestry and provides a balanced description of subject matter, drawing examples from a variety of regions and agroforestry systems.

[EBOOK] AGROFORESTRY FOR BIODIVERSITY AND ECOSYSTEM SERVICES - SCIENCE AND PRACTICE, Edited by Martin Leckson Kaonga, Published by INTECH

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