Engineering a plant community to deliver multiple ecosystem services

A - Papers appearing in refereed journals

Storkey, J., Doring, T., Baddeley, J., Collins, R., Roderick, S., Jones, H. and Watson, C. 2015. Engineering a plant community to deliver multiple ecosystem services. Ecological Applications. 25 (4), pp. 1034-1043. https://doi.org/10.1890/14-1605.1

AuthorsStorkey, J., Doring, T., Baddeley, J., Collins, R., Roderick, S., Jones, H. and Watson, C.
Abstract

The sustainable delivery of multiple ecosystem services requires the management of functionally diverse biological communities. In an agricultural context, an emphasis on food production has often led to a loss of biodiversity to the detriment of other ecosystem services such as the maintenance of soil health and pest regulation. In scenarios where multiple species can be grown together, it may be possible to better balance environmental and agronomic services through the targeted selection of companion species. We used the case study of legume-based cover crops to engineer a plant community that delivered the optimal balance of six ecosystem services: early productivity, regrowth following mowing, weed suppression, support of invertebrates, soil fertility building (measured as yield of following crop), and conservation of nutrients in the soil. An experimental species pool of 12 cultivated legume species was screened for a range of functional traits and ecosystem services at five sites across a geographical gradient in the United Kingdom. All possible species combinations were then analyzed, using a process-based model of plant competition, to identify the community that delivered the best balance of services at each site. In our system, low to intermediate levels of species richness (one to four species) that exploited functional contrasts in growth habit and phenology were identified as being optimal. The optimal solution was determined largely by the number of species and functional diversity represented by the starting species pool, emphasizing the importance of the initial selection of species for the screening experiments. The approach of using relationships between functional traits and ecosystem services to design multifunctional biological communities has the potential to inform the design of agricultural systems that better balance agronomic and environmental services and meet the current objective of European agricultural policy to maintain viable food production in the context of the sustainable management of natural resources.

KeywordsEcology; Environmental Sciences
Year of Publication2015
JournalEcological Applications
Journal citation25 (4), pp. 1034-1043
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.1890/14-1605.1
PubMed ID26465040
Open accessPublished as green open access
FunderDEFRA - Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs UK
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council
Funder project or codeDelivering Sustainable Systems (SS) [ISPG]
Project: 5036
LegumeLINK project LK09106
Output statusPublished
Publication dates
Online01 Jun 2015
Publication process dates
Accepted14 Oct 2014
PublisherWiley
Copyright licensePublisher copyright
ISSN1051-0761

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