BiodivERsA

Funded via the BiodivERsA EUROPEAN JOINT CALL on
"BIODIVERSITY AND ITS INFLUENCE ON ANIMAL, HUMAN AND PLANT HEALTH”
Meeting hosted & supported by sDiv

Working group meetings:

1. 04-06.05.2021
2. 28.03.-01.04.2022
3. 29.11.-01.12.2022

PI:
Klaus Birkhofer (Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg)

Project summary:
Agricultural intensification contributes to global food security and health by supplying the food demand of a growing human population, but also causes environmental problems. Ecological intensification has been proposed as viable alternative to achieve a balance between negative environmental issues, such as the ongoing loss of biodiversity, and sufficiently high and qualitative food production. Ecological intensification focuses on promoting biodiversity and key natural regulatory processes, such as pest control or pollination, that support crop health and human society (“ecosystem services”) while reducing negative environmental impacts. Organic agriculture and managed permanent grasslands are two popular elements of future ecological intensification strategies with high potential for these benefits. The functional diversity of biotic communities, as the functional traits of species in local communities, is an understudied dimension of biodiversity which may be particularly relevant for links between ecological intensification, diversity, ecosystem services and human food and livestock fodder production. The joint synthesis of existing databases on these aspects in organic agriculture and permanent grasslands in Europe will provide a significant contribution to the evidence base for such links across different climatic regions and a range of landscapes.

Participants:
Peter Batary (Hungarian Academy of Sciences); Julia Baudry (INRAE), Klaus Birkhofer (Brandenburgische Technische Universität Cottbus-Senftenberg); Roman Bucher (Brandenburgische Technische Universität Cottbus-Senftenberg), Andrea Čerevková (Institute of Parasitology, SAS); Tara Dirilgen (University College Dublin), Maria Felipe Lucia (iDiv); Robert Gallé (Hungarian Academy of Sciences); Enrique García de la Riva (León University), Emmanuelle Kesse-Guyot (Institut national de la recherche agronomique (INRA)); Ewa Rembiałkowska (Warsaw University of Life Sciences); Adrien Rusch (Institut national de la recherche agronomique (INRA)); Verena Seufert (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam); Dara Stanley (School of Agriculture and Food Science); Werner Ulrich  (Nicolaus Copernicus University Toruń)