Earthrise 

by Amanda Gorman

Drivers and consequences of archetypical shifting cultivation transitions 

Martin et al., 2023.

1. Shifting cultivation remains an important land system in many tropical landscapes, but transitions away from shifting cultivation are increasingly common. So far, our knowledge on the social–economic and environmental drivers and consequences of such shifting cultivation transitions is incomplete, focusing on certain transitions, drivers, consequences or regions.
2. Here, we use an archetype approach, validated through systematically identified literature, to describe eight archetypes encompassing the transitions from shifting cultivation to (1) perennial plantation crops, (2) permanent agroforestry, (3) regrown secondary forest, (4) permanent non-perennial crops, (5) pasture, (6) wood plantation, (7) non-cultivated non-forested land and (8) restored secondary forest (ordered in decreasing prevalence).
3. We then discuss social–economic and environmental factors favouring and disfavouring each archetype. This reveals that higher expected land rents, resulting from increased market access, crop price surges, secure land tenure and state interventions, are the main drivers of archetypical transitions to perennial plantation crops, permanent agroforestry, permanent non-perennial crops and wood plantation. The prioritisation of other activities, both on- and off-farm, favours transitions to regrown secondary forest and non-cultivated non-forested land, depending on plot-level environmental conditions. Active forest restoration is typically implemented through state or NGO interventions.
4. Turning to the consequences of archetypical transitions for biodiversity, the environment and livelihoods, we find that positive environmental outcomes prevail for transitions to permanent agroforestry, regrown secondary forest and restored secondary forest. Negative environmental outcomes dominate for four typically economically profitable transitions to perennial plantation crops, permanent non-perennial crops, pasture and wood plantation. Non-income-related social–economic outcomes are heterogeneous within all archetypes and highly context-dependent.
5. Our archetype analysis shows that shifting cultivation transitions are diverse in themselves, in their drivers and their consequences. This calls for a critical and contextualised appraisal of the continuation of shifting cultivation, as well as the transition away from it, when designing land system policies that work for people and nature.

https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/pan3.10435

 RIVERCIDE 

 George Monbiot

 

https://bit.ly/3PXGthf

Trophic resources of the edaphic microarthropods: a worldwide review of the empirical evidence   

Velazco et al. preprint.

Ecosystem sustainable use requires reliable information about its biotic and abiotic structure and functioning. Accurate knowledge of trophic relations is central for the understanding of ecosystem dynamics, which in turn, is essential for food web stability analyzes and the development of sustainable practices. There is a rapid growth in the knowledge on how belowground biodiversity regulates the structure and functioning of terrestrial ecosystems. Although, the available information about trophic relationships is hard to find and fragmented. This gathering the information available worldwide about the food resources of soil mesofauna. From the 3105 hits of the initial search on food resources of soil microarthropods, only a total of 196 published works related particular species, genera, and families to particular trophic resources, the majority of them dealing with soils of the Palearctic region. From the 196 publications we extracted 3009 records relating specific taxonomic groups to their trophic resources, 20% mention saprophytic fungi as a food resource, 16% cite microfauna, 11% mention bacteria, 10% litter and 5% cite Mycorrhizal fungi. The available information was highly skewed, the 73.71% comes from Acari, and within these, 50.62% correspond just to Sarcoptiformes. For Collembola, the literature is scarce, the majority coming from Arthropleona. This review highlights the general lack of information relating species, genera, and families of the soil mesofauna to specific trophic resources. It also highlights that available research mostly comes from European sites, with the use of trophic resources by the mesofauna of the majority of the soils in other parts of the world still largely unknown.

https://bit.ly/3zs2YoV

 

Saturnia pyri

@sagaOptics

 A Natural History of the Future

Why are biodiversity—ecosystem functioning relationships so elusive? Trophic interactions may amplify ecosystem function variability 

Wu et al., 2022.

1. The relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functions (BEFs) has attracted great interest. Studies on BEF have so far focused on the average trend of ecosystem function as species diversity increases. A tantalizing but rarely addressed question is why large variations in ecosystem functions are often observed across systems with similar species diversity, likely obscuring observed BEFs.
2. Here we use a multi-trophic food web model in combination with empirical data to examine the relationships between species richness and the variation in ecosystem functions (VEFs) including biomass, metabolism, decomposition, and primary and secondary production. We then probe the mechanisms underlying these relationships, focusing on the role of trophic interactions.
3. While our results reinforce the previously documented positive BEF relationships, we found that ecosystem functions exhibit significant variation within each level of species richness and the magnitude of this variation displays a hump-shaped relationship with species richness. Our analyses demonstrate that VEFs is reduced when consumer diversity increases through elevated nonlinearity in trophic interactions, and/or when the diversity of basal species such as producers and decomposers decreases. This explanation is supported by a 34-year empirical food web time series from the Gulf of Riga ecosystem.
4. Our work suggests that biodiversity loss may not only result in ecosystem function decline, but also reduce the predictability of functions by generating greater function variability among ecosystems. It thus helps to reconcile the debate on the generality of positive BEF relationships and to disentangle the drivers of ecosystem stability. The role of trophic interactions and the variation in their strengths mediated by functional responses in shaping ecosystem function variation warrants further investigations and better incorporation into biodiversity—ecosystem functioning research.

https://bit.ly/3BQ6WJq

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Living systems are cognitive systems, and living as a process is a process of cognition. This statement is valid for all organisms, with or without a nervous system.

Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela

(Santiago theory of cognition)

 

“I don’t like either the word or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains - not hike! Do you know the origin of that word ‘saunter?’ It’s a beautiful word. Away back in the Middle Ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going, they would reply, ‘A la sainte terre,’ ‘To the Holy Land.’ And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers. Now these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not ‘hike’ through them.”

John Muir