Agroecology and Ecological Restoration: Sustainable Agricultural Landscapes with Resilience
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چکیده
Background: Conventional cattle ranching and agricultural practices have severely degraded and fragmented tropical forests in Latin America. This trend has resulted in the loss of a range of ecosystem services upon which humans depend, especially those that support agricultural production, such as biodiversity, the provision of water and soil fertility. Consequently, conventional cattle ranching and agricultural techniques require the addition of outside inputs to maintain yields. Furthermore, climate change continues to challenge these vulnerable conventional systems, disrupting production and undermining food security of small farmers. Establishing agroecological systems is one approach to develop more resilient agricultural landscapes. These systems are characterized by their high plant and animal diversity and interrelationships, which have shown an extraordinary ability to adapt to a changing climate. Agroecology also shares many similarities with ecological restoration practices, such as agroforestry and silvopastoral systems, which reintegrate ecological function into agricultural landscapes through increased diversity of tree cover. Agroecology and ecological
منابع مشابه
Agroecology and Sustainable Development
Source: IAASTD Global Report Figure 3-6, from Altieri, M.A., and C.I. Nicholls, 1999. Biodiversity, ecosystem function, and insect pest management in agricultural systems. p. 6984. In W.W. Collins and C.O.Qualset(ed) Biodiversity in Agroecosystems. CRC Press, NY. Agroecology is the science behind sustainable agriculture. Drawing on the natural and social sciences, agroecology provides a framewo...
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