Soil ecosystem services and intensified cropping systems

Excerpt

Efforts to meet the food and energy needs of an expanding world population have led to a large-scale expansion and intensification of crop production systems. A major challenge of the twenty-first century is ensuring an adequate and reliable flow of essential ecosystem services (Biggs et al. 2012; Hatfield and Walthall 2015) as cropping systems are intensified. Ecosystem services are the provisioning, regulating, supporting, and cultural functions that soil, water, vegetation, and other natural resources provide (MEA 2005). The conversion of natural ecosystems to cultivated cropland has eroded the capacity to efficiently retain and sequester soil organic carbon (SOC) (Olson et al. 2012), an essential ecosystem service of soil, and created a paradox in our attempts to achieve sustainable agricultural intensification, ecosystem resilience, and human food security (Biggs et al. 2012).

SOC stocks are critical to the provisioning and regulating services (figure 1) that underlie the production of food, fresh water, air quality, erosion prevention, nutrient cycling, and support of habitat (Dominati et al. 2010; Adhikari and Hartemink 2016). The health of soil, its properties, formation and distribution, processes, and interactions with water, organisms and plants influence the numerous functions and roles it serves (Adhikari and Hartemink 2016). Further, how humans…