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Socio-Metabolic Perspectives on the Sustainability of Local Food Systems pp 103–129Cite as

The Energy–Landscape Integrated Analysis (ELIA) of Agroecosystems

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Part of the book series: Human-Environment Interactions ((HUEN,volume 7))

Abstract

Over the last century, we have seen an unprecedented growth in both global food production and associated socio-environmental conflicts, connected to increasingly industrialized farm systems and a decline in biodiversity. The objective of this chapter is to bring together an integrated methodology, applicable to different spatial scales (from regional to local), to deal with the long-term socio-metabolic balances and changes in the ecological functionality of farm systems. We propose an Intermediate Disturbance-Complexity model of agroecosystems to assess how different levels of human appropriation of photosynthetic production affect the functional landscape structure that hosts biodiversity on a regional scale . We have developed an Energy-Landscape Integrated Analysis that allows us to measure both the energy storage represented by the complexity of internal energy loops, and the energy information held in the whole network of socio-metabolic energy flows , in order to correlate both with the energy imprint in the landscape patterns and processes that sustain biodiversity on a local scale . Further research could help to reveal how and why different management strategies of agroecosystems lead to key turning-points in the relationship between energy flows, landscape functioning and biodiversity. There is no doubt that this research will be very useful in the future to help design more worldwide sustainable food systems.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Fischer and Lindenmayer (2006) argued that land matrix and landscape heterogeneity are fundamentally important, and deserve equal attention as habitat or protection patches, especially in human modified landscapes.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Barcelona Institute of Regional and Metropolitan Studies, Autonomous University of Barcelona, 08193, Bellaterra, Spain

    Joan Marull

  2. Department of Mathematics, Autonomous University of Barcelona, 08193, Bellaterra, Spain

    Carme Font

Authors
  1. Joan Marull
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  2. Carme Font
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Correspondence to Joan Marull .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Studies, Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic

    Eva Fraňková

  2. Institute of Social Ecology, Faculty for Interdisciplinary Studies, Klagenfurt University, Vienna, Austria

    Willi Haas

  3. School of Environment Enterprise and Development (SEED), University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

    Simron J. Singh

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Marull, J., Font, C. (2017). The Energy–Landscape Integrated Analysis (ELIA) of Agroecosystems. In: Fraňková, E., Haas, W., Singh, S. (eds) Socio-Metabolic Perspectives on the Sustainability of Local Food Systems. Human-Environment Interactions, vol 7. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69236-4_4

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