Although not apparent to the naked eye, soil is actually one of the most diverse habitats on earth! It contains one of the most diverse assemblages of living organisms known to us, and the issues relating to belowground biodiversity (BGBD) are the same as those related to its more visible counterpart above ground. Its lower visibility, however, has led to less attention being paid to it in the past, especially as there is an absence of 'charismatic' species that attract attention. Yet, belowground biodiversity may be of direct relevance to thehealth of crops, trees and other plants that are desirable to man. So, special attention to the belowground parts of biodiversity may be justified. Giller et al. (1997) reported that a single gram of soil is estimated to contain several thousand species of bacteria alone. Of the 1 500 000 species of fungi estimated to exist worldwide remarkably little is known about soil fungi, apart from the common fungal pathogens and the useful mycorrhizal species which improve crops�?? efficiency in taking up nutrients. Among the soil fauna some 100 000 species of protozoa (Box 1, Table 1) 500 000 species of nematodes and 3 000 species of earthworms are estimated to exist, not to mention the other invertebrate groups. These other groups include animals classified as mesofauna (�??middle-sized�?? ones between 0.1 and 2 mm in length) like springtails and mites and macrofauna (�??larger-sized�?? ones between 2 and 20 mm) like ants, termites, beetles and spiders | D.K Hairiah, 'Effects of land use change on belowground biodiversity', Towards integrated natural resource management in forest margins of the humid tropics: local action and global concerns, p.32, 2001

Noordwijk.M van, 'Analysis of trade-offs between local, regional and global benefits of land use', Towards integrated natural resource management in forest margins of the humid tropics: local action and global concerns, p.24, 2001 | In the series of lecture notes so far (Figure 1), we have defined problems of tropical land use that involve forest conversion (#1) and set up a scheme to evaluate categories of land use (#2) on the basis of a range of criteria derived from local (Profitability #8,Sustainability #3), regional (Watershed functions #7) and global (C stocks #4, Biodiversity #5, #6) benefits

The key hypotheses underlying ASB research in Indonesia has been intensifying land use as an alternative to slash and burn can simultaneously reduce deforestation and reduce poverty. The intensification hypothesis hinges on the existence of opportunities to raise the productivity of smallholder systems at the forest margins without degrading forest function. Estimates of returns to land and labor presented in this chapter indicate that from a purely private perspective, returns to forest conversion are high in Sumatra's peneplains. Because all derived land uses are inferior to natural forest, based on global environmental concerns, ASB research in Indonesia has shown that land use changes involve tradeoffs between these environmental concerns and the objectives of poverty alleviation and national development. If there is no action on these tradeoffs, by identifying workable options either to change incentives for conversion or to restrict access to the remaining natural forests, thus rain forests will continue to disappear. This research also provides evidence that land-use alternatives differ significantly in their ability to substitute for the global environmental services provided by natural forests. So, although forest conversion has the largest negative effect on these environmental services, the alternative land uses matter too. Carbon stocks are similar for long rotation tree-based systems, which are superior to all other land uses by this criterion except for natural forest themselves. Similarly, alternative land uses also differ significantly in their potential for biodiversity conservation, ranging between the extremes of smallholder ’complex, multistrata agroforestry systems and large-scale plantation monoculture. While there may be a tradeoff between potential profitability and biodiversity in tree-based production systems, this requires further verification. There may be little or no tradeoff between policy makers' objectives and those of smallholder households appears to be comparable to that of large-scale estates, however, this also requires further verification. There are also important institutional questions that must be addressed to enable widespread adoption of profitable alternatives by smallholders. To obtain estimates of regional or global impacts directly from measures, it is necessary to assume independence and hence addivity across space. This assumption is reasonable for some measure, but it is only a rough approximation for others. Among these measures biodiversity is the most sensitive to scaling issues. While the agronomic sustainability measure used here concerns only on-site, field level effects, the extent and spatial arrangement of land-use alternatives also produce environmental externalities. One of the key challenges of future research is to be able to asses these phenomena at the landscape level. Ultimately, instead of single land-use system or technology, the most attractive way to achieve the multiple objectives is likely to come from combinations of complementary land-use practices within a varied landscape.

Details new report 'Common Ground, Common Future' aiming to promote 'ecoagriculture'; the unity of farming and conservation. The recommendations of the report are simple: if farmers can double or even treble food production on land they already use, they will have less need to encroach on pristine areas. That is a drastic break with traditional conservation policies which believes that biodiversity can be preserved simply by fencing it off, and common agriculture techniques. This report states that agriculture and biodiversity are inextricably linked, and as such we must integrate biodiversity preservation into all landscapes.

The key hypotheses underlying ASB research in Indonesia has been intensifying land use as an alternative to slash and burn can simultaneously reduce deforestation and reduce poverty. The intensification hypothesis hinges on the existence of opportunities to raise the productivity of smallholder systems at the forest margins without degrading forest function. Estimates of returns to land and labor presented in this chapter indicate that from a purely private perspective, returns to forest conversion are high in Sumatraâ??s peneplains. Because all derived land uses are inferior to natural forest, based on global environmental concerns, ASB research in Indonesia has shown that land use changes involve tradeoffs between these environmental concerns and the objectives of poverty alleviation and national development. If there is no action on these tradeoffs, by identifying workable options either to change incentives for conversion or to restrict access to the remaining natural forests, thus rain forests will continue to disappear. This research also provides evidence that land-use alternatives differ significantly in their ability to substitute for the global environmental services provided by natural forests. So, although forest conversion has the largest negative effect on these environmental services, the alternative land uses matter too. Carbon stocks are similar for long rotation tree-based systems, which are superior to all other land uses by this criterion except for natural forest themselves. Similarly, alternative land uses also differ significantly in their potential for biodiversity conservation, ranging between the extremes of smallholder Â?complex, multistrata agroforestry systems and large-scale plantation monoculture. While there may be a tradeoff between potential profitability and biodiversity in tree-based production systems, this requires further verification. There may be little or no tradeoff between policy makersâ?? objectives and those of smallholder households appears to be comparable to that of large-scale estates, however, this also requires further verification. There are also important institutional questions that must be addressed to enable widespread adoption of profitable alternatives by smallholders. To obtain estimates of regional or global impacts directly from measures, it is necessary to assume independence and hence addivity across space. This assumption is reasonable for some measure, but it is only a rough approximation for others. Among these measures biodiversity is the most sensitive to scaling issues. While the agronomic sustainability measure used here concerns only on-site, field level effects, the extent and spatial arrangement of land-use alternatives also produce environmental externalities. One of the key challenges of future research is to be able to asses these phenomena at the landscape level. Ultimately, instead of single land-use system or technology, the most attractive way to achieve the multiple objectives is likely to come from combinations of complementary land-use practices within a varied landscape | .T.P Tomich, 'Agricultural intensification, deforestation and the environment: assessing tradeoffs in Sumatra, Indonesia', Lee, D.R. and Barrett, C.B. (eds.) Tradeoffs or synergies?: agricultural intensification, economic development, and the environment, pp.221-244, 2001

The key hypotheses underlying ASB research in Indonesia has been intensifying land use as an alternative to slash and burn can simultaneously reduce deforestation and reduce poverty. The intensification hypothesis hinges on the existence of opportunities to raise the productivity of smallholder systems at the forest margins without degrading forest function. Estimates of returns to land and labor presented in this chapter indicate that from a purely private perspective, returns to forest conversion are high in Sumatra’s peneplains. Because all derived land uses are inferior to natural forest, based on global environmental concerns, ASB research in Indonesia has shown that land use changes involve tradeoffs between these environmental concerns and the objectives of poverty alleviation and national development. If there is no action on these tradeoffs, by identifying workable options either to change incentives for conversion or to restrict access to the remaining natural forests, thus rain forests will continue to disappear. This research also provides evidence that land-use alternatives differ significantly in their ability to substitute for the global environmental services provided by natural forests. So, although forest conversion has the largest negative effect on these environmental services, the alternative land uses matter too. Carbon stocks are similar for long rotation tree-based systems, which are superior to all other land uses by this criterion except for natural forest themselves. Similarly, alternative land uses also differ significantly in their potential for biodiversity conservation, ranging between the extremes of smallholder complex, multistrata agroforestry systems and large-scale plantation monoculture. While there may be a tradeoff between potential profitability and biodiversity in tree-based production systems, this requires further verification. There may be little or no tradeoff between policy makers’ objectives and those of smallholder households appears to be comparable to that of large-scale estates, however, this also requires further verification. There are also important institutional questions that must be addressed to enable widespread adoption of profitable alternatives by smallholders. To obtain estimates of regional or global impacts directly from measures, it is necessary to assume independence and hence addivity across space. This assumption is reasonable for some measure, but it is only a rough approximation for others. Among these measures biodiversity is the most sensitive to scaling issues. While the agronomic sustainability measure used here concerns only on-site, field level effects, the extent and spatial arrangement of land-use alternatives also produce environmental externalities. One of the key challenges of future research is to be able to asses these phenomena at the landscape level. Ultimately, instead of single land-use system or technology, the most attractive way to achieve the multiple objectives is likely to come from combinations of complementary land-use practices within a varied landscape | T.P. Tomich et al., 'Agricultural intensification, deforestation, and the environment: assessing tradeoffs in Sumatra, Indonesia', CAB International, Wallingford, Oxon, UK, 2001

International audience | Influence of land use intensification and green veining reduction on biodiversity (birds, small mammals, carabid beetles) was investigated in three agricultural landscapes of Western France. Land use intensification induced a fragmentation of green veining but it was not associated to a loss of habitat heterogeneity. There was no simple response of species to such modifications. Passerine birds and small mammals were mainly sensitive to the total amount of green veining, that a shift from forest specialist to open habitats species for birds and a growing disequilibria of small mammal communities. Carabid beetles seemed to respond to the decrease of green veining heterogeneity, which induced a replacement of woody species by more common open field species. Our results show that both amount and diversity of green veining should be considered in management plans for the conservation of biodiversity in agricultural landscapes.

A major feature of global change in the tropics is that of land use associated with agricultural intensification (Lavelle et al. 1997). In addition to plants, soil is the habitat of a diverse array of organisms: Archean, bacteria, fungi, protozoans, algae and invertebrate animals, the activities of which contribute to the maintenance and productivity of ecosystems by their influence on soil fertility (Hole 1981, Lavelle 1996, Brussaard et al. 1997) | J.M Swift, 'Standard methods for assessment of soil biodiversity and land use practice', p.40, 2001

The study of wildlife communities to assess the landscape value is crucial in Landscape Ecology in order to develop bidiversity management strategies in rural landscapes and to assist land managers with their decision making processes. This poster reports the results achieved assessing biodiversity using landscape structural indicators. The main objective was to identify the landscape measures having a greater influence on the presence of avian communities in agrosystems located around Évora (South of Portugal). Birds were sampled along transects representing the different land use patterns occurring within the study area. Land use types/vegetation cover were mapped within buffers around those transects. The landscape indicators applied to each buffer are Shannon & Weaver’s Diversity Index (H’) (1962) for habitats biodiversity, Modified Simpson’s Index (E) (Romme & Knigth, 1982) for habitats heterogeneity, and organization pattern (D1) (O’Neill et al. 1988). Avian diversity was also measured using the Simpson’s index. ArcView software was used to map the land cover features and to calculate the values for the selected indices. The relation between the avian communities present and its attributes with the different landscape measures was analysed with multivariate statistics tools.

The scope of forest planning is rapidly extending beyond traditional timber production to sustainable management of biodiversity. Biodiversity in forestry usually refers to variety of species but also includes genetic variations and spatial variations of landscape. The usual approaches in forest biodiversity quantification, however, face fundamental problems in measurement and analysis, because diversity is a particularly complex and difficult subject at the landscape-level. In this study, we evaluate forest compartments of the Miya River Watershed, Mie Prefecture in Japan with a newly proposed index of landscape biodiversity called the Land Use Diversity Index (LUDI). The results of this study indicated that the LUDI was an effective method both for calculating forest landscape biodiversity and for planning tactical forest management. In particular, by using empirical information on forest vegetation, we were able to detect areas of forest that were most and least important for maintenance of biodiversity in forest planning.