contribution of tress to the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services in agriculture land scapes summary
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Agriculture is the most prevalent of the human–environment interaction and consumes more natural resources than any other human activity (FAO 2007). This has raised concerns about natural resource management trajectories as they relate to planetary boundaries and land degradation tipping points (Rockström et al. 2009). Conventional agriculture in the last century led to a dramatic increase in crop yields largely as a result of the introduction of new high-yielding crop varieties, the use of mineral fertilizers, chemical pesticides, mechanization and the expansion of irrigation infrastructure (Foley et al. 2005). While agriculture that overcomes production constraints through external inputs has been one way to increase yields per hectare, these agricultural systems have often resulted in negative economic and environmental side effects in part due to their low resource-use efficiency and negative impacts on biodiversity (Matson et al. 1997). Therefore, in recent years, increasing attention on productive agricultural systems that are resource-use efficient has placed biodiversity at the center-stage of discussions on agricultural intensification (Brussaard et al. 2010; Snapp et al. 2010; Barrios et al. 2015; Prabhu et al. 2015).
The valuable contribution of trees to more ecological forms of agricultural intensification has been increasingly highlighted in the literature (Schroth et al. 2004; Pretty et al. 2006; Tscharntke et al. 2012a). Ecological intensification can be defined as generating more output from the same area of land while reducing the negative environmental impacts by decreasing the reliance on anthropogenic inputs through the management of regulating and supporting ecosystem services in agricultural practices (Bommarco et al. 2013). Further, it also recognizes the valuable contribution of farmer’s knowledge to the generation of technologies better adapted to context variation (Tittonell 2014). Agroforestry, broadly defined as the integration of trees and agriculture, has been increasingly recognized as a multifunctional land management option that can simultaneously contribute to income, food security and conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services (Bhagwat et al. 2008; Tscharntke et al. 2011; Kuyah et al. 2016). Trade-offs among these potential benefits to rural communities, however, are common as it is well recognized that agroforestry trees can negatively influence crop production and income if not properly selected and managed due to competitive effects for light, water and nutrients (Beer et al. 1998; Ong et al. 2004; Steffan-Dewenter et al. 2007; Kuyah et al. 2016). Nonetheless, if we consider tree cover on agricultural land greater than 10% as agroforestry, this land use would represent over 1 billion ha of land inhabited by 900 million people (Zomer et al. 2016) and hence of significant importance to the agriculture sector. Recent concern, however, has been raised about the global decline in shade tree cover particularly in coffee agroecosystems and the potential implications for biodiversity, ecosystem services and livelihoods (Jha et al. 2014).