Global agricultural feeds over 7 billion people, but is also a leading cause of environmental degradation. Understanding how alternative agricultural production systems, agricultural input ...efficiency, and food choice drive environmental degradation is necessary for reducing agriculture's environmental impacts. A meta-analysis of life cycle assessments that includes 742 agricultural systems and over 90 unique foods produced primarily in high-input systems shows that, per unit of food, organic systems require more land, cause more eutrophication, use less energy, but emit similar greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) as conventional systems; that grass-fed beef requires more land and emits similar GHG emissions as grain-feed beef; and that low-input aquaculture and non-trawling fisheries have much lower GHG emissions than trawling fisheries. In addition, our analyses show that increasing agricultural input efficiency (the amount of food produced per input of fertilizer or feed) would have environmental benefits for both crop and livestock systems. Further, for all environmental indicators and nutritional units examined, plant-based foods have the lowest environmental impacts; eggs, dairy, pork, poultry, non-trawling fisheries, and non-recirculating aquaculture have intermediate impacts; and ruminant meat has impacts ∼100 times those of plant-based foods. Our analyses show that dietary shifts towards low-impact foods and increases in agricultural input use efficiency would offer larger environmental benefits than would switches from conventional agricultural systems to alternatives such as organic agriculture or grass-fed beef.
Agriculturally degraded and abandoned lands can remove atmospheric CO
and sequester it as soil organic matter during natural succession. However, this process may be slow, requiring a century or ...longer to re-attain pre-agricultural soil carbon levels. Here, we find that restoration of late-successional grassland plant diversity leads to accelerating annual carbon storage rates that, by the second period (years 13-22), are 200% greater in our highest diversity treatment than during succession at this site, and 70% greater than in monocultures. The higher soil carbon storage rates of the second period (years 13-22) are associated with the greater aboveground production and root biomass of this period, and with the presence of multiple species, especially C4 grasses and legumes. Our results suggest that restoration of high plant diversity may greatly increase carbon capture and storage rates on degraded and abandoned agricultural lands.
Stochastic niche theory resolves many of the differences between neutral theory and classical tradeoff-based niche theories of resource competition and community structure. In stochastic niche ...theory, invading species become established only if propagules can survive stochastic mortality while growing to maturity on the resources left unconsumed by established species. The theory makes three predictions about community structure. First, stochastic niche assembly creates communities in which species dominate approximately equally wide "slices" of the habitat's spatial heterogeneity. These niche widths generate realistic distributions of species relative abundances for which, contrary to neutral theory but consistent with numerous observations, there are strong correlations among species traits, species abundances, and environmental conditions. Second, slight decreases in resource levels are predicted to cause large decreases in the probability that a propagule would survive to be an adult. These decreases cause local diversity to be limited by the inhibitory effects of resource use by established species on the establishment (recruitment) of potential invaders. If resource pulses or disturbance allowed invaders to overcome this recruitment limitation, many more species could indefinitely coexist. Third, the low invasibility of high diversity communities is predicted to result not from diversity per se, but from the uniformly low levels of resources that occur in high-diversity communities created by stochastic competitive assembly. This prediction provides a potential solution to the invasion paradox, which is the tendency for highly diverse regions to be more heavily invaded.
Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning Tilman, David; Isbell, Forest; Cowles, Jane M
Annual review of ecology, evolution, and systematics,
11/2014, Volume:
45, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Species diversity is a major determinant of ecosystem productivity, stability, invasibility, and nutrient dynamics. Hundreds of studies spanning terrestrial, aquatic, and marine ecosystems show that ...high-diversity mixtures are approximately twice as productive as monocultures of the same species and that this difference increases through time. These impacts of higher diversity have multiple causes, including interspecific complementarity, greater use of limiting resources, decreased herbivory and disease, and nutrient-cycling feedbacks that increase nutrient stores and supply rates over the long term. These experimentally observed effects of diversity are consistent with predictions based on a variety of theories that share a common feature: All have trade-off-based mechanisms that allow long-term coexistence of many different competing species. Diversity loss has an effect as great as, or greater than, the effects of herbivory, fire, drought, nitrogen addition, elevated CO
2
, and other drivers of environmental change. The preservation, conservation, and restoration of biodiversity should be a high global priority.
Competition theory predicts that multispecies coexistence requires that species have traits that fall on the same interspecific trade-off surface. Fossil records for mollusks, mammals, trees, and ...other taxa show that with rare exception, ecologically similar species have coexisted for a million years or more after interchange between formerly isolated realms. This coexistence suggests the possibility, termed the universal trade-off hypothesis, that ecologically similar species of different realms have been bound to the same interspecific trade-off surface despite millions of years of independent evolution. Such persistence fails to support the biogeographic superiority hypothesis, which posits that genetic drift, recombination, mutation, and selection would cause taxa of one realm to gain superiority over those of another realm during long periods of isolation. Analysis of the lengths of time that species have persisted once in contact suggests that the trade-off surfaces of realms differed by <0.1% at the time of interchange. This implies that macroevolutionary patterns of differentiation and speciation within and between realms were more likely the movement of traits on a common trade-off surface rather than directional selection achieved without compensatory trade-offs and costs. The existence of transrealm trade-offs, should further work support this possibility, has deep implications for ecology and evolution.
Multiple health and environmental impacts of foods Clark, Michael A; Springmann, Marco; Hill, Jason ...
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
11/2019, Volume:
116, Issue:
46
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Food choices are shifting globally in ways that are negatively affecting both human health and the environment. Here we consider how consuming an additional serving per day of each of 15 foods is ...associated with 5 health outcomes in adults and 5 aspects of agriculturally driven environmental degradation. We find that while there is substantial variation in the health outcomes of different foods, foods associated with a larger reduction in disease risk for one health outcome are often associated with larger reductions in disease risk for other health outcomes. Likewise, foods with lower impacts on one metric of environmental harm tend to have lower impacts on others. Additionally, of the foods associated with improved health (whole grain cereals, fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, olive oil, and fish), all except fish have among the lowest environmental impacts, and fish has markedly lower impacts than red meats and processed meats. Foods associated with the largest negative environmental impacts—unprocessed and processed red meat—are consistently associated with the largest increases in disease risk. Thus, dietary transitions toward greater consumption of healthier foods would generally improve environmental sustainability, although processed foods high in sugars harm health but can have relatively low environmental impacts. These findings could help consumers, policy makers, and food companies to better understand the multiple health and environmental implications of food choices.
Global food demand is increasing rapidly, as are the environmental impacts of agricultural expansion. Here, we project global demand for crop production in 2050 and evaluate the environmental impacts ...of alternative ways that this demand might be met. We find that per capita demand for crops, when measured as caloric or protein content of all crops combined, has been a similarly increasing function of per capita real income since 1960. This relationship forecasts a 100–110% increase in global crop demand from 2005 to 2050. Quantitative assessments show that the environmental impacts of meeting this demand depend on how global agriculture expands. If current trends of greater agricultural intensification in richer nations and greater land clearing (extensification) in poorer nations were to continue, ∼1 billion ha of land would be cleared globally by 2050, with CO2-C equivalent greenhouse gas emissions reaching ∼3 Gt y–1 and N use ∼250 Mt y–1 by then. In contrast, if 2050 crop demand was met by moderate intensification focused on existing croplands of underyielding nations, adaptation and transfer of high-yielding technologies to these croplands, and global technological improvements, our analyses forecast land clearing of only ∼0.2 billion ha, greenhouse gas emissions of ∼1 Gt y–1, and global N use of ∼225 Mt y–1. Efficient management practices could substantially lower nitrogen use. Attainment of high yields on existing croplands of underyielding nations is of great importance if global crop demand is to be met with minimal environmental impacts.
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