Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ

Between 1960 and 2000, agricultural production doubled, mainly because of the increasing industrialisation of agriculture. This growth has promoted soil degradation, the spread of impervious surfaces and the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services. It has also increased greenhouse gas emissions, 20 to 30 percent of which come from land use. How can land use be managed so as to maintain the productivity of the ecosystem over the long term? This question is at the heart of the Sustainable Land Management Programme, which is being funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and provided with scientific support by UFZ researchers. In the affiliated coordination and synthesis project GLUES,  UFZ researchers led by Professor Ralf Seppelt are integrating the findings from twelve different regional projects into a global context and making the results available to potential user groups. “Through this work we are expanding the knowledge base on the effects of various land use concepts and ensuring that decision-makers and planners give greater consideration to the aspect of sustainability,” says Seppelt. For example, yields from rice production in Southeast Asia must be increased in order to feed the growing population. In the regional BMBF project LEGATO,  UFZ researchers under Associate Professor Josef Settele are examining which ecosystem functions and services are provided by irrigated rice production in the Philippines, Vietnam and Malaysia. As part of this process, they are also using data provided by rice farmers and the general population. “For instance, it is well known that dragonflies are good indicators of ecosystem health. We hope to offer a solution that enables the population to easily identify species using cell phones and to support our scientific work,” says Settele. Together with local partners, the UFZ experts are developing and testing new approaches to highly productive ecological rice cultivation. “We have solid evidence that agricultural intensification is not necessarily harmful, that we can achieve high productivity in a sustainable fashion,” says Settele.

UFZ/Red.