TY - JOUR
T1 - Towards valuation of biodiversity in agricultural soils
T2 - A case for earthworms
AU - Plaas, Elke
AU - Meyer-Wolfarth, Friederike
AU - Banse, Martin
AU - Bengtsson, Jan
AU - Bergmann, Holger
AU - Faber, Jack
AU - Potthoff, Martin
AU - Runge, Tania
AU - Schrader, Stefan
AU - Taylor, Astrid
PY - 2019/5/1
Y1 - 2019/5/1
N2 - Soil biodiversity is deteriorating in Europe due to an on-going intensification of agriculture, climate change and food production supporting measures of the European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Nevertheless, the CAP tries to take biodiversity into account via proposing a range of agri-environmental measures. These ES contribute to food security, climate change mitigation, water retention and plant biomass growth. Healthy soils also help to prevent erosion, desertification, and landslides and to stabilise crop yields. The provision of ES by soil biota is a result of their impact on soil processes in interaction with soil conditions as well as soil management practices of the farmers such as tillage or crop rotations. Some taxa amongst soil biota play key roles in regulating soil processes. With respect to biocontrol of soil-borne pests, the earthworm species Lumbricus terrestris is known to play an important role in suppressing toxigenic plant pathogens, such as Fusarium culmorum and its mycotoxin deoxynivalenol (DON). We highlight the importance of earthworms for pest control to conceptualise and show how farmers’ management practices influence soil ecosystem services and outline how this can be examined in a socio-ecological context by providing a concrete example of an economical evaluation of ES provided by earthworms.
AB - Soil biodiversity is deteriorating in Europe due to an on-going intensification of agriculture, climate change and food production supporting measures of the European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Nevertheless, the CAP tries to take biodiversity into account via proposing a range of agri-environmental measures. These ES contribute to food security, climate change mitigation, water retention and plant biomass growth. Healthy soils also help to prevent erosion, desertification, and landslides and to stabilise crop yields. The provision of ES by soil biota is a result of their impact on soil processes in interaction with soil conditions as well as soil management practices of the farmers such as tillage or crop rotations. Some taxa amongst soil biota play key roles in regulating soil processes. With respect to biocontrol of soil-borne pests, the earthworm species Lumbricus terrestris is known to play an important role in suppressing toxigenic plant pathogens, such as Fusarium culmorum and its mycotoxin deoxynivalenol (DON). We highlight the importance of earthworms for pest control to conceptualise and show how farmers’ management practices influence soil ecosystem services and outline how this can be examined in a socio-ecological context by providing a concrete example of an economical evaluation of ES provided by earthworms.
KW - Economic value
KW - Ecosystem engineers
KW - Ecosystem services
KW - Soil biodiversity
KW - Soil management practices
KW - Sustainability
U2 - 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2019.02.003
DO - 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2019.02.003
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85061305460
VL - 159
SP - 291
EP - 300
JO - Ecological Economics
JF - Ecological Economics
SN - 0921-8009
ER -