Ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes: a spatially explicit approach to support sustainable soil management
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Date
2014
Authors
Forouzangohar, M.
Crossman, N.
MacEwan, R.
Wallace, D.
Bennett, L.
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Journal article
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The Scientific World Journal, 2014; 2014:483298-1-483298-13
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Mohsen Forouzangohar, Neville D. Crossman, Richard J. MacEwan, D. Dugal Wallace, and Lauren T. Bennett
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Abstract
Soil degradation has been associated with a lack of adequate consideration of soil ecosystem services. We demonstrate a broadly applicable method for mapping changes in the supply of two priority soil ecosystem services to support decisions about sustainable land-use configurations. We used a landscape-scale study area of 302 km(2) in northern Victoria, south-eastern Australia, which has been cleared for intensive agriculture. Indicators representing priority soil services (soil carbon sequestration and soil water storage) were quantified and mapped under both a current and a future 25-year land-use scenario (the latter including a greater diversity of land uses and increased perennial crops and irrigation). We combined diverse methods, including soil analysis using mid-infrared spectroscopy, soil biophysical modelling, and geostatistical interpolation. Our analysis suggests that the future land-use scenario would increase the landscape-level supply of both services over 25 years. Soil organic carbon content and water storage to 30 cm depth were predicted to increase by about 11% and 22%, respectively. Our service maps revealed the locations of hotspots, as well as potential trade-offs in service supply under new land-use configurations. The study highlights the need to consider diverse land uses in sustainable management of soil services in changing agricultural landscapes.
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© 2014 Mohsen Forouzangohar et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.