The impact of conservation farming practices on Mediterranean agro-ecosystem services provisioning—a meta-analysis

Abstract

In the Mediterranean region, the long-term provision of agro-ecosystem services is threatened by accelerating climate change, unsustainable farming practices and other pressures. Alternative management practices such as conservation agriculture could be expected to ensure sustainability of ecosystem services from Mediterranean agro-ecosystems. Conservation agriculture is characterized by minimal soil disturbance, permanent soil cover, and diversification of crop species. We analyzed the impacts of several forms of alternative agricultural management practices (conservation tillage, cover cropping, mulching, manual weed management, organic fertilizer use, no-irrigation system) on multiple ecosystem services based on 155 published case studies (1994-2015). The effect size of various management options on four provisioning and four regulating ecosystem services were quantified. Impacts of conservation management options are not uniform. All regulating services were positively affected by the conservation management options except for the system without irrigation. In contrast, the provisioning services were inconsistently influenced by the conservation management options. For crop yield, environmentally sustainable soil management was beneficial, but organic fertilization (effect size =-0.17), manual weed management (effect size =-0.35) and no-irrigation system (effect size =-0.5) led to lower crop yields. The impact on crop biomass was mainly negative but not significant. Water availability was especially important to enhance both provisioning and regulating services. Overall, alternative agriculture management practices led to more positive than negative effects on ecosystem services in the study region. Stimulating the application of conservation management practices is therefore an important policy option for decision makers given the vulnerability of ecosystem services in the Mediterranean basin.

Operationalising ecosystem services in Europe

“…To operationalise the ES concept and to manage natural capital wisely, decision-makers need to have a full understanding of the trade-offs associated with their decisions. If the increase in one ES happens directly or indirectly at the cost of another, maximising the provision of that service might lead to suboptimal results (Lee et al 2019a). To support decisions, explicit information about trade-offs between ES is required and trade-off methods tested in practice (Walz et al 2019).…”

“…Review and synthesise knowledge gaps, user needs and best practices (Lautenbach et al 2019;Patenaude et al 2019) 2. Increase knowledge and understanding to support policy and decision-making (Lee et al 2019a;Liski et al 2019a) 3. Improve and develop methods, tools and instruments to support ecosystem management (Liski et al 2019a;Smith et al 2019;Walz et al 2019) 4.…”

“…It is important to understand, therefore, what people value in the environment in order to communicate effectively, gain support for potential management schemes and reduce conflict (Liski et al 2019a;Rosário et al 2019). Many ES link to and depend on healthy ecosystem function, so cultural ES communicate the value of the whole ecosystem to people (Lee et al 2019a). SCV is also important in helping stakeholders to engage with their environment and to understand their relationship with it (Walz et al 2019).…”

“…A number of SCV methods are available, can be used in combination and have been tested in practice for different decision purposes (Walz et al 2019). Participatory mapping of ES and associated values helps people to connect their values to the landscape and to see the area as a whole (Lee et al 2019a;Liski et al 2019b;Schmidt et al 2018). Decision-makers can also identify 'value hotspots' or areas where conflicts might arise.…”

“…Choice experiments require people to think about what they value most using weighting or ranking techniques (Liski et al 2019a). Visualisation tools can help people in better understanding the ES and landscapes in question (Lee et al 2019a, Schmidt et al 2016a, b, Schmidt et al 2017. Scenario techniques encourage people to think about the sort of future they would like and what sort of management might help to achieve this (IPBES 2018;Lavorel et al 2017;Burton et al 2019).…”