Dear All,
Happy New Year! The Agricultural Ecology SIG have three meetings arranged for this year (one date has yet to be finalised). Please find brief outlines below - details to follow.
MAY
The role and potential of organic farming in delivering functional biodiversity and ecosystem services
The Organic Research Centre, Elm Farm, Hamstead Marshall, Newbury, Berkshire
Tuesday 17th May
Agroecological systems, including organic agriculture and agroforestry, are designed and managed to integrate biodiversity into the production system. This is based on the assumption that increasing the level of planned biodiversity within
the farming system is also likely to increase the associated ‘wild’ biodiversity, with positive impacts on the ecosystem services they deliver such as pollination, pest control and soil fertility. Diversity can be introduced at every level of the system; at
the species level by moving away from pure-bred lines towards composite cross populations, to the field-scale where intercropping builds on synergies between two or more species (and weeds are regulated rather than controlled), to the farm- and landscape-scale
where temporal and spatial heterogeneity can be increased through rotations, mixed farming and agroforestry. This meeting will consider the value of this functional biodiversity approach to protecting and enhancing farmland biodiversity and associated ecosystem
services.
JUNE
Joint meeting with AAB. Agricultural Ecology Research in Scotland: its role in delivering sustainable farms systems
The meeting will run over two days (Wednesday 15th- Thursday 16th June 2011) and will be hosted by the Scottish Crop Research Institute in Dundee.
This meeting will communicate the research findings that marks the end of the Scottish Government
funded research programme entitled ‘Sustainable Crop Systems’. Four key perspectives will be presented and discussed:
1) How did we get here? - The evolution of farm systems; 2)
Traits for co-existence - Understanding the functional attributes of crops and weeds to maximise diversity, coexistence and support the sustained delivery of production ecosystem services;
3) Terra nova - New and novel perspectives on soil and its management; and
4) “Well begun is half done” (Aristotle) - identifying those changes that
will efficiently integrate research insight with educational strategies and government policies.
OCTOBER
The state of farmland in 2011: the consensus of long-term monitoring
Joint meeting with the Royal Entomological Society
In 2010, ‘the year of biodiversity’, the value of long-term monitoring in prioritising global biodiversity targets was flagged up both in the academic literature and the wider press. Long-term monitoring is a well establish feature of
agro-ecology and there are a number of meticulously maintained data-sets which focus on a wide-range taxa, revealing much about the state of farmland today. This meeting aims to bring together key people in the organisations which carry out this monitoring
to explore:
1)
What long-term monitoring tells us about the state of farmland in 2011.
2)
How we can use the data to address issues of declining biodiversity.
3)
The future of long-term monitoring in a challenging economic climate.
Dr Barbara Smith
Farmland Ecology Unit
Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust
Burgate Manor,Fordingbridge, Hampshire, SP6 1EF
Office: +44 (0) 1425 651057
Email: [log in to unmask]
Web: www.gwct.org.uk