Tag Archive for: Ecosystems

This Forest Has Remained Wild for 5,000 Years-thanks to the Soil

We sometimes think that the Amazon rainforest has not been modified by humans and can peep into the Earth’s past. In the last few years, scientists have learned that many parts of the Amazon are completely untouched. The Amazon has been cultivated by indigenous peoples for thousands of years, and only centuries ago there were cities and farmlands. But that’s not the case everywhere.In a new study at PNASResearchers have found that the rainforests of the Putumayo region of Peru have been home to relatively unaltered forests for 5,000 years, and that the people who lived there have found a long-term way to coexist with nature. .. Silica and charcoal in the soil.

“Even experienced ecologists find it very difficult to tell the difference between a 2,000-year-old forest and a 200-year-old forest,” said Nigel, an ecologist and co-author of the paper at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.・ Pitman says. PNAS paper. “There are more and more studies showing that many of the Amazon forests we consider to be wilderness are actually only 500 years old, because the people who lived there were also by Europeans. He died in a pandemic and the forest grew again. “

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Día Mundial del Medio Ambiente: Si te importa tu salud, te importan los ecosistemas

Este año, el Día Mundial del Medio Ambiente tiene como protagonistas a los ecosistemas y su restauración.

La disponibilidad de agua y alimentos suficientes, la regulación de los vectores de enfermedades, las plagas y los agentes patógenos, la salud y el bienestar humano está supeditados a los servicios y condiciones del medio ambiente natural.

Tanto la OMS como Naciones Unidas explican que disponer de ecosistemas más saludables, con una biodiversidad más rica, aporta mayores beneficios como suelos más fértiles, mayor disponibilidad de recursos como la madera o el pescado.

Y de manera indirecta los cambios en los servicios de los ecosistemas afectan a los medios de ganarse el sustento, los ingresos y la migración local; en ocasiones, pueden incluso ocasionar conflictos políticos.

También repercuten sobre la seguridad económica y física, la libertad, el derecho a elegir y las relaciones sociales, y tienen efectos muy amplios en el bienestar y la salud, así como en la disponibilidad y el acceso a los servicios de salud y los medicamentos.

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How Pesticides Are Harming Soil Ecosystems

The first year after Jason Ward began transitioning his newly purchased conventional farm to organic production, he started seeing more earthworms in the soil beneath his corn, soybeans, and wheat fields. By the third year, he had spotted numerous nightcrawlers—big worms reaching up to eight inches long—on his 700-acre farm in Green County, Ohio.

With conventionally farmed land, “anything synthetic is hurting the natural ecosystem of the soil,” said Ward, whose acreage is now largely certified organic. “As you transition away from that, the life comes back.”

By life, Ward means the rich diversity of insects and other soil invertebrates—earthworms, roundworms, beetles, ants, springtails, and ground-nesting bees—as well as soil bacteria and fungi. Rarely do conversations about the negative impacts of pesticide use in agriculture include these soil invertebrates, yet they play a vital role in soil and plant health and sequestering carbon. Worms eat fallen plant matter, excrete carbon-rich casts and feces, cycle nutrients to plants, and create tunnels that help the soil retain water. Beetles and other soil insects feed on the seeds of weeds, or prey on crop pests such as aphids.

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The Best Way to Restore Forests Is To Let The Trees Plant Themselves

Ecosystems have been growing themselves for hundreds of millions of years, and forests that plant themselves are better and most diverse. That’s why a group of environmental advocates in the UK from a charity called Rewilding Britain say we should let nature do its thing instead of manually mass-planting trees. Natural dispersal of seeds boosts biodiversity, costs a lot less, and may even sequester more carbon.

Rebecca Wrigley, Rewilding Britain’s chief executive, said:

People have this mindset that woodland expansion means planting trees, and that’s across the conservation sector as well. Nature is pretty good at doing this itself. Natural regeneration brings multiple potential benefits – you get the right tree in the right place, you don’t get the potential carbon emissions you get with planting on peaty soils, and you boost the complexity of the ecosystem, which builds resilience. Natural regeneration also helps species to shift and adapt to climate change. There’s growing evidence that it can sequester more carbon, although there isn’t a broad research base yet because natural regeneration is not on people’s radars.

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Blue Carbon: The Climate Change Solution You’ve Probably Never Heard Of

This is the eighth part of Carbon Cache, an ongoing series about nature-based climate solutions.

Gail Chmura, a professor at McGill University, had recently joined the school’s geography department in the late 1990s when some of her colleagues were trying to solve a mystery. They were looking at global carbon budgets, and the numbers weren’t adding up. There was a missing carbon sink, sequestering a whole lot of carbon, and nobody knew what it was. They wondered if Canada’s peatlands were part of the missing sink.

Meanwhile, Chmura was sampling salt marshes in the Bay of Fundy, which spans between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Few people had paid salt marshes any attention as carbon sinks because the data showed pretty low levels of carbon at a first glance. But Chmura had a lightbulb moment.

Researchers had been looking at the percentage of carbon in salt marshes by weight. In peatlands, this makes sense because they are almost entirely made of organic matter, which is where carbon is stored in soil.

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La edad del suelo influye mucho menos en un ecosistema que los cambios ambientales

En un comunicado, este organismo científico ha señalado que en este estudio han participado investigadores del Grupo de Enzimología y Biorremediación de Suelos y Aguas del Centro de Edafología y Biología Aplicada del Segura (CEBAS-CSIC).

Además, la investigación sugiere que este contexto ecológico controla los procesos de fertilidad, acumulación de carbono y producción de plantas a lo largo de millones de años.

Fertilidad del suelo

Manuel Delgado-Baquerizo, coordinador del estudio y director del laboratorio de Biodiversidad y Funcionamiento Ecosistémicos de la Universidad Pablo de Olavide (Sevilla), ha explicado que las zonas áridas siempre tendrán suelos menos fértiles, menor contenido de carbono y menor capacidad para producir alimento que ecosistemas templados o tropicales, independientemente de la edad de los ecosistemas.

De igual manera, los ecosistemas que se forman en suelos arenosos siempre serán menos fértiles que los ecosistemas que se desarrollan sobre suelos volcánicos, independientemente de su edad, ha añadido Delgado-Baquerizo.

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Cover Crop Roots Are An Essential Key To Understanding Ecosystem Services

To judge the overall effectiveness of cover crops and choose those offering the most ecosystem services, agricultural scientists must consider the plants’ roots as well as above-ground biomass, according to Penn State researchers who tested the characteristics of cover crop roots in three monocultures and one mixture.

“Almost everything that we know about the growth of cover crops is from measuring the above-ground parts and yet some of the benefits that we want to get from cover crops come from the roots,” said researcher Jason Kaye, professor of soil biogeochemistry. “This study shows us that what we see above ground is sometimes — but not always — reflective of the benefits below ground.”

Cover crops are widely used to increase the quantity of organic carbon returned to the soil between cash crops such as corn, wheat and soybean, as well as to limit erosion and to fix or add nitrogen to the soil.

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¿Cuál es la relación entre el coronavirus y el manejo de los ecosistemas?

La virtual paralización del mundo por la pandemia del coronavirus muestra mejores índices de calidad de aire, el regreso de algunas especies a aguas tan contaminadas como las del Riachuelo y pronostica una reducción de las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero en el corto plazo. Sin embargo, creer que el ambiente mejora por la presencia de un virus que no puede detenerse es incorrecto. Hay que interpretarlo como la resiliencia de un planeta que ya soportó cinco extinciones masivas y siguió en pie.

Así se comporta la naturaleza de la que dependemos y, según los expertos, lo que hay que pensar para el día que se supere esta coyuntura está íntimamente relacionado con el replanteo de la relación del hombre con la naturaleza.

“La especie amenazada somos nosotros. Lo curioso es que no nos damos cuenta. Si lo hiciéramos tendríamos la misma velocidad y capacidad de reacción que se tuvo para el coronavirus en Argentina.

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Sustainable Agroecosystems: Research to Assess the Benefits of Regenerative Grazing Principles

Carbon rich soil is healthy and beneficial for the entire ecosystem, based on previous and growing research. Ecosystem health is increased as soil carbon increases, resulting in improved water infiltration and retention; soil stability nutrient status, access and retention; diversity of fungi, microbes, plants, and insects; wildlife diversity, nutrition and habitat; livestock health and output; and farmer net profits, resilience and well-being. Healthy ecosystems with high levels of soil carbon and soil microbial biomass, diversity and function provide valuable ecosystem services (benefits humans gain from nature), which increase the sustainability of farming, enhance natural pest control, boost yields, and reduce costs, thereby increasing profitability.

However, many traditional agricultural practices damage the very ecosystems on which they rely to function optimally. Intensive farming methods, such as extensive soil ploughing, inorganic fertiliser and pesticide use, damage fragile ecosystems over time, reducing yields, and thus often prompting even more intensive farming. This ultimately leads to land that is damaged beyond repair and no longer suitable for grazing or cropping farming.

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