Sustainable Agro-Ecosystem Management: Mechanisms, Measurements and Modelling Strategies with Special Emphasis to the Soil Properties

Dear Colleagues,

The study of the functioning of the agro-ecosystems at the landscape or regional level and of the relationships among their components can provide crucial information for agro-ecosystem management at both the landscape/regional level and the plot level.

In particular, agro-ecosystem unities and components interact each other in both the time and space and may provide important ecosystem services and affect ecosystems resilience.

However, the relationship among agro-ecosystems at the microscopic, plot, landscape, and regional level are often disjointed, and this hampers both the policy maker and users in establishing efficient management strategies and policies that increase the agro-ecosystem benefits while preserving its activity and relationship with both human needs and natural ecosystems.

In particular, soil is undergoing a rapid degradation due to a number of factors that include human management, and especially soil tillage and other means of soil loss, and climate change. Notably, soil is the largest carbon (C) reservoir in terrestrial ecosystems with twice the amount of atmospheric C and three times the amount in terrestrial vegetation. Carbon-related ecosystem services include retention of water and nutrients, promotion of soil fertility and productivity, and soil resistance to erosion. In addition, changes in the soil C can have strong implications for greenhouse gas emissions from soil, with implications in environmental health.

Thus, investigation of the drivers of soil fertility, and especially C dynamics, should be addressed with regard to climate change and climatic extreme events to provide a better understanding of carbon stabilization processes and thus support decision making in soil management and climate adaptation strategies.

In the present Special Issue, we aim at collecting contributions focused on highlighting mechanisms, measurements, and modeling strategies of the agro-ecosystem, with special emphasis on soil fertility, soil organic and inorganic carbon stocks and their dynamics (AgroEco4M), as well as other soil physical and chemical properties to better understand soil dynamics. Studies on the modeling of plant yield, with special emphasis on root growth and root biomass, are also welcome, along with their relationship with soil microbial populations.

In particular, submitted studies can aim toward a wealth of topics, including soil fertility assessment in laboratory and field experiments, provision of ecosystem services, and their changes, and the implication for economy, policy, and decision making.

Discussion about the proxies to measure and model these variables, with special emphasis on cropping systems and natural/semi-natural areas, is encouraged. These proxies should be approached with varying soil and environment data, including, e.g., soil texture, rainfall, temperature, bulk density, land use and land management, or proximal and remote sensing properties.

Types of contribution appreciated include but are not limited to definitive and intermediate results; project outcomes; proposal of methods or sampling and modeling strategies, and the assessment of their effectiveness; projection of previous results at the light of climate change and climatic extremes; and literature surveys, reviews, and meta-analysis.

I believe this Special Issue may help to fill the gap in studies on changing the extent and resolution in the topic of agro-ecosystem management.

Thank you for your contributions.

Dr. Sergio Saia
Dr. Calogero Schillaci
Dr. Laura Quijano Gaudes
Dr. Viktoria Hetmanenko
Dr. Jorge Álvaro-Fuentes
Guest Editors

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• fertility
• microbes
• modeling
• conservation
• biodiversity
• ecosystem services
• agro-environmental
• Soil carbon