Tropical agroforestry and ecosystem services: trade-off analysis for better design strategies

Description

A large body of research has documented a wide list of provisioning and regulating services from tropical agroforestry systems (AFS). This chapter offers an overview of ecosystem services delivered by tropical AFS and presents practical approaches for trade-off analysis between ecosystem services and plant biodiversity for better design (or redesign) and management of AFS. It is structured as follows: Section 2 highlights the main provisioning and regulating services provided by tropical AFS (covering pest and disease regulation, nutrient cycling and soil quality, carbon sequestration, and water regulation); Section 3 provides an overview of practical approaches to assess trade-offs; and Section 4 presents a case study of trade-off analysis. This last section uses data from a so-called Sentinel Landscape–El Tuma-La Dalia in Nicaragua, and is useful to derive recommendations to enhance the delivering of ecosystem services from five AFS (cocoa AFS, coffee AFS, pasture-silvopastoral, grain fields, and homegardens).

Table of contents

1 Introduction 2 Overview on ecosystem services provided by tropical agroforestry 3 Practical approaches to assess trade-offs between different ecosystem services, and between ecosystem services and biodiversity 4 Case study: application of trade-off analysis to derive better design strategies for agroforestry systems 5 Acknowledgment 6 Where to look for further information 7 References