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.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 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.
References
Agnoletti, M. (2014). Rural landscape, nature conservation and culture: Some notes on research trends and management approaches from a (Southern) European perspective. Landscape Urban Plan, 126, 66–73.
Altieri, M. (1999). The ecological role of biodiversity in agroecosystems. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment, 74, 19–31.
Barnes, B., Sidhu, H. S., & Roxburgh, S. H. (2006). A model integrating patch dynamics, competing species and the intermediate disturbance hypothesis. Ecological Modelling, 194, 414–420.
Barthel, S., Crumley, C., & Svedin, U. (2013). Bio-cultural refugia—Safeguarding diversity of practices for food security and biodiversity. Global Environmental Change, 23(5), 1142–1152.
Benton, T. G., Vickery, J. A., & Wilson, J. D. (2003). Farmland biodiversity: Is habitat heterogeneity the key? Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 18, 182–188.
Calow, P. (1987). Evolutionary physiological ecology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cardinale, B. J., Duffy, J. E., Gonzalez, A., et al. (2012). Biodiversity loss and its impact on humanity. Nature, 486, 59–67.
Chesson, P., & Huntly, N. (1997). The roles of disturbance, mortality, and stress in the dynamics of ecological communities. American Naturalist, 150, 519–553.
Fischer, J., Brosi, B., Daily, G. C., et al. (2008). Should agricultural policies encourage land sparing or wildlife-friendly farming? Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 6(7), 380–385.
Fischer, J., & Lindenmayer, D. B. (2006). Beyond fragmentation: The continuum model for fauna research and conservation in human-modified landscapes. Oikos, 112(2), 473–480.
Gabriel, D., Sait, S. M., Kunin, W. E., et al. (2013). Food production versus biodiversity: Comparing organic and conventional agriculture. Journal of Applied Ecology, 50, 355–364.
Gershenson, C., & Fernández, N. (2012). Complexity and information: Measuring emergence, self-organization, and homeostasis on multiple scales. Complexity, 18(2), 29–44.
Giampietro, M., Mayumi, K., & Sorman, A. H. (2013). Energy analysis for sustainable future: Multi-scale integrated analysis of societal and ecosystem metabolism. Oxon: Routledge.
Gladyshev, G. P. (1999). On thermodynamics, entropy and evolution of biological systems: What is life from a physical chemist’s viewpoint. Entropy, 1, 9–20.
Gliessman, S. R. (Ed.). (1990). Agroecology: Researching the ecological basis for sustainable agriculture. New York: Springer.
Godfray, H. C. J., Beddington, J. R., Crute, I. R., et al. (2010). Food security: The challenge of feeding 9 Billion people. Science, 327, 812–818.
Guzmán, G. I., & González de Molina, M. (2009). Preindustrial agriculture versus organic agriculture: The land cost of sustainability. Land Use Policy, 26(2), 502–510.
Guzmán, G. I., & González de Molina, M. (2015). Energy efficiency in agrarian systems from an agro-ecological perspective. Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, 39, 924–952.
Haberl, H. (2001). The energetic metabolism of societies. Part I: Accounting concepts. Journal of Industrial Ecology, 5, 107–136.
Haberl, H., Erb, K. H., Krausmann, F., et al. (2007). Quantifying and mapping the human appropriation of net primary production in earth’s terrestrial ecosystems. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 104(34), 12942–12947.
Haberl, H., Erb, K.-H., & Krausmann, F. (2014). Human appropriation of net primary production: Patterns, trends, and planetary boundaries. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 39, 363–391.
Harper, K. A., MacDonald, S. E., Burton, P. J., et al. (2005). Edge influence on forest structure and composition in fragmented landscapes. Conservation Biology, 19, 768–782.
Ho, M.-W. (2013). Circular thermodynamics of organisms and sustainable systems. Systems, 1(3), 30–49.
Ho, M.-W., & Ulanowicz, R. (2005). Sustainable systems as organisms? BioSystems, 82(1), 39–51.
Jackson, L. E., Pulleman, M. M., Brussaard, L., et al. (2012). Social-ecological and regional adaptation of agrobiodiversity management across a global set of research regions. Global Environmental Change, 22(3), 623–639.
Krausmann, F. (2004). Milk, manure, and muscle power. Livestock and the transformation of preindustrial agriculture in Central Europe. Hum Ecol, 32(6), 735–772.
Lindenmayer, D. B., & Fischer, J. (2007). Tackling the habitat fragmentation panchreston. TREE, 22, 127–132.
Liu, L., Dietz, T., Carpenter, S. R., et al. (2007). Complexity of coupled human and natural systems. Science, 317(5844), 1513–1516.
Loreau, M., Mouquet, N., & Gonzalez, A. (2010). Biodiversity as spatial insurance in heterogeneous landscapes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 100(22), 12765–12770.
Marull, J., & Mallarach, J. M. (2005). A GIS methodology for assessing ecological connectivity: Application to the Barcelona Metropolitan Area. Landscape Urban Plan, 71, 243–262.
Marull, J., Pino, J., Tello, E., et al. (2010). Social metabolism, landscape change and land use planning in the Barcelona Metropolitan region. Land Use Policy, 27(2), 497–510.
Marull, J., Tello, E., Fullana, N., et al. (2015). Long-term bio-cultural heritage: Exploring the intermediate disturbance hypothesis in agro-ecological landscapes (Mallorca, C. 1850–2012). Biodiversity and Conservation, 24(13), 3217–3251.
Marull, J., Font, C., Tello, E., et al. (2016a). Towards an energy-landscape integrated analysis? Exploring the links between socio-metabolic disturbance and landscape ecology performance (Mallorca, Spain, 1956–2011). Landscape Ecology, 31, 317–336.
Marull, J., Font, C., Padró, R. et al. (2016b). Energy-landscape integrated analysis: A proposal for measuring complexity in internal agroecosystem processes (Barcelona Metropolitan Region, 1860–2000). Ecological Indicators, 66, 30–46.
Marull, J., Delgadillo, O., La Rota, M. J., et al. (2017). Socioecological transition in the Cauca river valley, Colombia (1943–2010): Towards an energy–landscape integrated analysis. Regional Environmental Change (in press).
Matthews, R., Selman, P. (2006). Landscape as a focus for integrating human and environmental processes. Journal of Agricultural Economics, 57, 199–212.
Matson, P. A., Parton, W. J., Power, A. G., et al. (1997). Agricultural intensification and ecosystem properties. Science, 277, 504–509.
Mayer, A., Schaffartzik, A., Haas, W. et al. (2015). Patterns of global biomass trade and the implications for food sovereignty and socio-environmental conflict. EJOLT Report No. 20, p. 106.
McMichael, Ph. (2011). Food system sustainability: Questions of environmental governance in the new world (dis)order. Global Environmental Change, 21(3), 804–812.
Morowitz, H. J. (2002). The emergence of everything: How the world became complex. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Odum, E. P. (1993). Ecology and our endangered life-support systems. Massachusetts: Sinauer Associates.
Parrotta, J. A., & Trosper, R. L. (2012). Traditional forest-related knowledge: Sustaining communities, ecosystems and biocultural diversity. World Forests, 12, 1–621.
Perfecto, I., & Vandermeer, J. (2010). The agroecological matrix as alternative to the land-sparing/agriculture intensification model. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(13), 5786–5791.
Peterseil, J., Wrbka, T., Plutzar, C., et al. (2004). Evaluating the ecological sustainability of Austrian agricultural landscapes—The SINUS approach. Land Use Policy, 21(3), 307–320.
Phalan, B., Onial, M., Balmford, A., et al. (2011). Reconciling food production and biodiversity conservation: Land sharing and land sparing compared. Science, 333, 1289–1291.
Pierce, S. (2014). Implications for biodiversity conservation of the lack of consensus regarding the humped-back model of species richness and biomass production. Functional Ecology, 28, 253–257.
Pino, J., & Marull, J. (2012). Ecological networks: Are they enough for connectivity conservation? A case study in the Barcelona Metropolitan Region (NE Spain). Land Use Policy, 29, 684–690.
Prigogine, I. (1996). The end of certainty. Time, chaos and the new laws of nature. New York: The Free Press.
Schaffartzik, A., Mayer, A., Gingrich, S., et al. (2014). The global metabolic transition: Regional patterns and trends of global material flows, 1950–2010. Global Environmental Change, 26, 87–97.
Schrödinger, E. (1944). What is life?. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Shreeve, T. G., Dennis, R. L. H., & Van Dick, H. (2004). Resources, habitats and metapopulations—Whither reality? Oikos, 106, 404–408.
Swift, M. J., Izac, A. M. N., & van Noordwijk, M. (2004). Biodiversity and ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes—Are we asking the right questions? Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment, 104(1), 113–134.
Tainter, J. (1990). The collapse of complex societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tello, E., Galán, E., Sacristán, V., et al. (2016). Opening the black box of energy throughputs in agroecosystems: A decomposition analysis of final EROI into its internal and external returns (The Vallès County, Catalonia, c. 1860 and 1999). Ecological Economics, 121, 160–174.
Tilman, D., Cassman, K. G., Matson, P. A., et al. (2002). Agricultural sustainability and intensive production practices. Nature, 418, 671–677.
Tscharntke, T., Klein, A. M., Kruess, A., et al. (2005). Landscape perspectives on agricultural intensification and biodiversity-ecosystem service management. Ecology Letters, 8, 857–874.
Tscharntke, T., Clough, Y., Wanger, T. C., et al. (2012). Global food security, biodiversity conservation and the future of agricultural intensification. Biological Conservation, 151, 53–59.
Ulanowicz, R. E. (2001). Information theory in ecology. Computers & Chemistry, 25, 393–399.
Ulanowicz, R. E. (2003). Some steps toward a central theory of ecosystem dynamics. Computational Biology and Chemistry, 27(6), 523–530.
Van der Maarel, E. (1993). Some remarks on disturbance and its relations to diversity and stability. Journal of Vegetation Science, 4, 733–736.
Vitousek, P. M., Ehrlich, P. R., Ehrlich, A. H., et al. (1986). Human appropriation of the products of photosynthesis. BioScience, 36(6), 363–373.
Vranken, I., Baudry, J., Aubinet, M., et al. (2015). A review on the use of entropy in landscape ecology: Heterogeneity, unpredictability, scale dependence and their links with thermodynamics. Landscape Ecology, 30, 51–65.
Wilson, J. B. (1990). Mechanisms of species coexistence: Twelve explanations for Hutchinson’s ‘paradox of the plankton’: Evidence from New Zealand plant communities. New Zealand Journal of Ecology, 13, 17–42.
Wilson, J. B. (1994). The ‘intermediate disturbance hypothesis’ of species coexistence is based in on patch dynamics. New Zealand Journal of Ecology, 18, 176–181.
Wrbka, T., Erb, K.-H., Schulz, N. B., et al. (2004). Linking pattern and process in cultural landscapes. An empirical study based on spatially explicit indicators. Land Use Policy, 21(3), 289–306.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
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
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69236-4_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-69235-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-69236-4
eBook Packages: Biomedical and Life SciencesBiomedical and Life Sciences (R0)