Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD Springer International Publishing
Résumé : The intensive farming practices that have been developed over the past 60 years are based mainly on the use of chemical inputs such as fertilisers and pesticides, mechanical tillage and monoculture. The limitations of these methods are now clear: long-term degradation of soil fertility, impacts on the environment and human health, high consumption of fossil fuels, low efficiency of inputs and threats to food security in a context of climate change. Would farming practices that rely on the activation of ecological processes be an alternative to achieve a balance between high productivity and environmental preservation? While many studies suggest a positive relationship between soil biodiversity and ecosystem services, there is considerable debate on the form such agricultural systems should take. This study reviewed the state of current knowledge and identified aspects requiring further research to achieve the aim of sustainable intensification of agriculture. The following major points emerged: 1) Most studies focused on the evaluation of individual practices. However, changes in farmers’ cropping practices to take advantage of soil biodiversity services would need to manage not only the interactions between various practices but also the trade-off between the technical and socio economic constraints of cropping systems. Advances in agricultural system design approaches may help to ensure appropriate trade-offs. 2) More attention should be given to drawing on knowledge from different sources: laboratory studies focusing on the ecological functions of soil biodiversity, experimental surveys on farmers’ fields to rank the farming practices and processes to be included in site-specific models, and on- station experiments to test hypotheses and acquire additional reference material. 3) Whereas advances in technical and scientific knowledge provide an increasing number of relevant indicators for characterizing biodiversity and ecological functions, studies are rarely targeted at the development of indicators that are accessible to farmers or their technical advisors. The lack of indicators accessible to grassroots players for evaluating the impacts of their decisions on soil biodiversity remains a serious obstacle to the development of innovative agro-ecological systems.
Sustainable Agriculture Reviews 14

ISBN : 978-3-319-06015-6
hal-01268743
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01268743
DOI : 10.1007/978-3-319-06016-3_5
PRODINRA : 270786

Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD
Résumé : International audience
Semantic web standards, tools, ontologies and related technologies have considerably matured in the recent years. Nowadays, accessing a wide catalogue of biological, social, environmental, and ecological data sources helps stakeholders working on biodiversity to answer their complex questions. Will the real time access to web resources effectively support the definition of strategies to conserve and manage biodiversity? How might semantic web technologies help us to handle the complex and heterogeneous big data related to biodiversity? The workshop aims to identify the key challenges faced by the bioinformatics community, discuss potential solutions and identify the opportunities emerging from the trans-disciplinary interactions between Plant Science and Informatics experts. Therefore, we expect the bioinformatics experts to explain how they apply semantic web standards and tools to their scientific topic, from biology, agriculture, agro-ecology, genomics, environmental studies, to social sciences, citizen sciences. Research papers presenting various aspects of semantic web technologies applied to biodiversity data, ranging from position papers to implemented systems descriptions and their evaluation, will be selected. We are particularly interested in the use of the semantic technologies to design and develop systems that supports research on agricultural and wild biodiversity conservation and management for food security. Examples may include strategies for resilience to climate change pressures, sustainability of productive ecosystems, ecosystems services monitoring or territories management, rather than systems supporting only research on climate patterns or soil erosion.
http://hal-lirmm.ccsd.cnrs.fr/lirmm-00831757

lirmm-00831757
http://hal-lirmm.ccsd.cnrs.fr/lirmm-00831757
http://hal-lirmm.ccsd.cnrs.fr/lirmm-00831757/document