Environmental Evidence最新文献

Background: The intensification of the agricultural practices in Europe over the last decades has drastically transformed the agroecosystems. The simplification of the landscape, the loss of semi-natural habitats and the application of chemicals on crops led to biodiversity decline in agricultural landscapes, raising substantial concerns about the loss of essential ecosystem services, such as pollination or pest control. Depending on the location, the scale and the regional context, different indicator species groups (ISGs) are regularly surveyed to assess the state and trend of biodiversity changes in agroecosystems. Although the high diversity of these ISGs allows assessing different biodiversity aspects (e.g., trophic levels, bio-physical compartments, scale of indication), it complicates the interpretation of the results and thus their practical application. In addition, species diversity metrics are various, from simple species counts to more complex measurements of diversity indices, sometimes with antagonistic responses. Here, to meet the pressing need for synthesis in this complex topic, we follow a standardized systematic map protocol to collect and summarize the literature reporting field evidence of the effects of the main agricultural management practices (AMPs) in arable crops, grasslands and ecological infrastructures on a set of ISGs in European lowland farming areas.

Methods: Searches of literature were made using online publication databases, search engine and specialist websites in English. Gathered publications were screened for relevance following inclusion/exclusion criteria published in a prior protocol. We extracted and mapped information about experimental design, monitoring methods, ISGs and AMPs studied and the diversity measures presented in each included publication. These parameters are structured in available data coding sheets.

Results: The search gathered 20,162 references from which 1208 remained after full text eligibility screening. Main areas studied are in Western Europe, and the number of studies increased exponentially from 1984 to 2022. Most publications are experimental and on-farm studies which assess AMPs effects at the field scale. Main studied AMPs are fertilization, grazing, organic farming, tillage, mowing and herbicide application. Most ISGs used to study their impacts are flora, carabids, spiders, birds, bees and annelids, often combined with other ISGs. The combinations between AMPs and ISGs studied are detailed as well as monitoring methods. The most used diversity measures are abundance, species richness, Shannon index, evenness, and community composition.

Conclusions: We identified several knowledge clusters: (1) organic farming, fertilization, tillage, grazing and mowing impact on a wide range of ISGs, (2) flora response to agricultural practices, (3) annelids response to agronomic interventions that impac

Background: Grasslands are essential for providing vital resources in the livestock sector and delivering invaluable ecosystem services such as biodiversity and soil carbon (C) sequestration. Despite their critical importance, these ecosystems face escalating threats from human disturbances, human degradation, and climate change, compromising their ability to effectively stock C. Restoring degraded grasslands emerges as a pragmatic and cost-effective approach to tackling climate change. However, the successful implementation of grassland management toward this goal, faces significant challenges. A systematic mapping approach will help to compile a comprehensive global inventory of studies investigating the impact of differing grassland management practices on soil carbon. In addition, the potential for trade-offs with other greenhouse gas emissions further underlines the value of a systematic assessment. This approach aims to identify knowledge clusters (i.e., well-represented subtopics that are amenable to full synthesis) for potential systematic reviews and pinpoint knowledge gaps requiring further primary research efforts, all contributing to a better understanding of the evidence surrounding this topic.

Methods: Following systematic evidence synthesis standards, we developed the question to address in the systematic map protocol using the PICO framework. We established a preliminary search string by combining search terms for the Population (Grasslands), Intervention (management) and Outcome (soil carbon) categories, as well as with one additional group (Study types-to focus on farm and field experiments). We will conduct a comprehensive literature search of relevant peer-reviewed and grey literature using Web of Science, Scopus, CABI platforms, Google Scholar, and specialised websites (e.g., Agrotrop). Searches will be conducted in the English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, and Mongolian languages, as per the linguistic capabilities of the research team. The comprehensiveness of the search will be assessed by comparing the literature collected to a test-list of forty relevant articles. The repeatability of the literature screening process will be ensured by a list of inclusion/exclusion criteria and inter-reviewer consistency statistical tests. Data extraction will be organised into four complementary sections (article information, PICO categories, study characteristics, measurable parameters), on which we will perform queries to produce the tables, figures and evidence maps that will compose the systematic map. The results will identify and describe knowledge gaps and clusters.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13750-024-00345-2.