Effects of agricultural practices on biodiversity in a land-sharing-oriented heterogeneous agroecosystem

Relator: 

Prof. Yaron Ziv, Spatial Ecology Lab, Dept. of Life Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Land sharing strategies in agricultural landscapes need to allow for organisms to move between habitats and to enhance biodiversity along gradients and in relation to different crops In the last 15 years we study the Southern Judea Lowlands agroecosystem to understand whether the land sharing approach indeed contributes to biodiversity conservation and how different agricultural practices, such as grazing and crop rotation, affect populations and communities We show that the SJL agroecosystem supports a very high biodiversity within its diverse habitat patches surrounded by agricultural fields, which does not fall from the biodiversity in the nearby natural reserve We suggest that the environmental context, e.g. climatic gradient, and ecological scaling should be taken into account when agroecological strategies are proposed.