Incorporating ecological feedbacks into scenarios of agricultural futures

Project: PhD

Project Details

Description

Expansion and intensification of agricultural production systems can degrade biodiversity. Biodiversity loss may impact functional groups of species or other biodiversity features that underpin ecosystem services, which many crops, especially commodity crops, are highly dependent on. This gives rise to the danger that commodity production could be undermined by unsustainable expansion and intensification practices. I will undertake a suite of research targeted at understanding this potential “biodiversity feedback” in commodity crop production systems. I will begin by reviewing the evidence for feedbacks in six key commodity crops across their production range, assessing their respective potentials for a deeper investigation into specific ecosystem services and production system patterns. I will follow this review by modelling global biodiversity impacts of cocoa production under different production systems using synthesis data in Paper 2. I will perform an analysis of West African cocoa in Paper 3, using field data from a controlled trial of 340-480 plots on 80-120 farms in West Africa, to address the question: what are the relative contributions of land-use history, management practices, and landcape features for plant biodiversity in cocoa plantations? In Paper 4 I will assess a potential biodiversity-production mutualism in West African cocoa using agronomic data collected at the surveyed sites. Finally, in Paper 5 I will combine the lessons learned from these studies with a scenario analysis using land-use models to examine possible futures for cocoa production in West Africa, explicitly accounting for the biodiversity-production mutualism, and the synergies and trade-offs that may imply.
StatusActive
Effective start/end date1/11/21 → …

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