Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:
http://hdl.handle.net/10174/19599
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Title: | Soil quality assessment in conservation agriculture systems |
Authors: | Basch, G. |
Issue Date: | 2-Jun-2016 |
Publisher: | Geographical Institute, Research Centre for Astronomy and Earth Sciences, Hungarian Academy of Sciences |
Citation: | Basch, G. 2016. Soil quality assessment in conservation agriculture systems. Book of Abstracts of International Conference on
Conservation Agriculture and Sustainable Land Use. Budapest 31 May - 2 June, p14. |
Abstract: | Soil is a key resource that provides the basis of food production and sustains and
delivers several ecosystems services including regulating and supporting services such as
water and climate regulation, soil formation and the cycling of nutrients carbon and water.
During the last decades, population growth, dietary changes and the subsequent pressure on
food production, have caused severe damages on soil quality as a consequence of intensive,
high input-based agriculture. While agriculture is supposed to maintain and steward its most
important resource base, it compromises soil quality and fertility through its impact on
erosion, soil organic matter and biodiversity decline, compaction, etc., and thus the necessary
yield increases for the next decades. New or improved cropping systems and agricultural
practices are needed to ensure a sustainable use of this resource and to fully take the
advantages of its associated ecosystem services. Also, new and better soil quality indicators
are crucial for fast and in-field soil diagnosis to help farmers decide on the best management
practices to adopt under specific pedo-climatic conditions. Conservation Agriculture and its
fundamental principles: minimum (or no) soil disturbance, permanent organic soil cover and
crop rotation /intercropping certainly figure among the possibilities capable to guarantee
sustainable soil management.
The iSQAPER project – Interactive Soil Quality Assessment in Europe and China for
Agricultural Productivity and Environmental Resilience – is tackling this problem with the
development of a Soil Quality application (SQAPP) that links soil and agricultural
management practices to soil quality indicators and will provide an easy-to-use tool for
farmers and land managers to judge their soil status. The University of Évora is the leader of
WP6 - Evaluating and demonstrating measures to improve Soil Quality. In this work package,
several promising soil and agricultural management practices will be tested at selected sites
and evaluated using the set of soil quality indicators defined for the SQAPP tool. The project
as a whole and WP6 in specific can contribute to proof and demonstrate under different pedoclimatic
conditions the impact of Conservation Agriculture practices on soil quality and
function as was named the call under which this project was submitted. |
URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/10174/19599 |
Type: | article |
Appears in Collections: | FIT - Artigos em Livros de Actas/Proceedings MED - Artigos em Livros de Actas/Proceedings
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