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 Springer Verlag
Résumé : International audience
In a study of a 15-year-old pasture in Martinique (French West Indies), abundance and organization of microarthropod communities were correlated with the spatial distribution of the earthworm Polypheretima elongata (Megascolecidae). In patches of high earthworm density (133 individuals m-2), microarthropod density was significantly higher (80 000 individuals m-2) than in patches with few earthworms (31 worms m-2 and 49 000 microarthropods m-2). The diversity of microarthropod communities followed a similar pattern, the Shannon index for Collembola communities being, respectively, 3.12 and 1.82 in and outside earthworm patches. These results suggest that mesofauna abundance and diversity might be at least partly determined by the activity of larger invertebrates, as a result of the dramatic effects that the latter group exerts upon soil structure, pore distribution and food resources.
ISSN: 0178-2762

hal-00505427
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00505427
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00505427/document
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00505427/file/Loranger_et_al._1998b.pdf
DOI : 10.1007/s003740050394