|
|
 Soil micro-organisms play a fundamental role in delivering ecosystem goods and services in terrestrial systems. They are crucial in many ecosystem functions, including carbon and other nutrient cycling processes, underwriting soil structural dynamics, and regulating plant and animal communities. The total biomass of organisms below ground is often greater than that above ground, and is characteristically very diverse. Such diversity arises mainly as a result of the very complex physical structure that exists in soils, and the chemical complexity of soil organic matter.
However, the extent of microbial influences on below- and above-ground ecosystems remains poorly understood. Soil tillage and management of crop residue will have a strong influence on soil microbiology by structurally modifying its habitat and providing and re-distributing food resources. SOWAP will look at the effects of soil management on soil microbiology and whether these effects can be linked with the impacts of cultivation on soil erosion. |
 Earthworms are considered as soil bio-indicators because of the pivotal role they play in maintaining a healthy soil. In the presence of an active earthworm population soil structure is enhanced through the incorporation of crop residues, soil nutrients are redistributed and water infiltration improved. Intensive tillage systems involving the use of a mouldboard plough have a negative effect on earthworm populations, when compared with conservation tillage. Litter or surface dwelling earthworms (epigeics), mineral soil dwellers (endogeics) and deep burrowers (anecics) are affected directly and indirectly by soil disturbance to a depth of >25 cm. Earthworm populations decrease directly due to fatalities and injury caused by the mechanical action of machinery and indirectly by changes in soil temperature, soil moisture and decreased availability of food. The soil is less disturbed by conservation tillage because the soil is not inverted and more crop residue is left on the soil surface as a food resource. Earthworms are also an important source of food for farmland birds.
SOWAP will look at the impact of conservation tillage on earthworm populations |
| |
Arthropods |
 Arthropods are important in arable fields as a food source for farmland birds and other wildlife. Surface-active arthropods commonly found in arable fields are beetles (adults and larvae) and spiders. The two families of beetles most often observed inhabiting cereal fields are ground (Coleoptera: Carabidae) and rove (Coleptera: Staphylinidae) beetles, and several families of spiders including wolf and money spiders. Carabid and staphylinid beetles and spiders are important in the diet of adult farmland birds and their chicks, over the breeding season for some species and throughout the year for others. Carabid beetles and their larvae, especially those living at the crop/soil interface also benefit farmers as they are predators of pests like aphids and can help control weeds by eating seeds . |
| Arthropod populations on farmland have decreased, perhaps the result of the intensification of agriculture. Agricultural practices that are known to have detrimental effects on beneficial arthropods include insecticides and herbicides, crop rotations and crop establishment methods such as ploughing. There has been little work in Europe on the impacts of soil management on arthropods, so SOWAP will fill this knowledge gap |
| |
| Seeds |
Seeds are an important food source for birds, mammals and invertebrates. Seeds are eaten by most farmland bird species especially over the winter months when other food resources are scarcer. The weed seeds in the highest proportion of farmland bird diet were those from the genera Polygonum e.g . knotgrass, Stellaria e.g . chickweed, and Chenopodium e.g . fat-hen.
Work has shown that birds scan a greater area of ground for seeds as the amount of vegetation increases. This may be important when considering the availability of seed on conservation tillage fields - residue left from the previous year's crop might hide this valuable food resource. SOWAP will compare the weed seeds on the surface of mouldboard ploughed and conservation tillage fields. |
| |
| Birds |
The widespread decline of European farmland birds is one of the major challenges facing conservation today. A wealth of evidence now links many of these declines to changing farming practices. This continuing pattern of decline, across a range of species, is characteristic only of farmland species and not of species of other habitats. |
 In Britain , most farmland bird declines began in the 1970s, and coincided with the intensification of British agriculture, mainly under the influence of the Common Agricultural Policy. The changes have included earlier sowing and harvesting of cereals, greater mechanisation, increased use of pesticides and fertilisers, and simplification of crop rotations and farm specialisation, leading to a decline in habitat diversity at the farm scale. At the European scale, population declines are correlated with the degree of agricultural intensification in individual countries, raising concerns about the consequence for bird populations in Eastern European countries joining the EU. |
| There is evidence from the USA that spilt grain and weed seed abundance are higher on conservation tillage fields than mouldboard ploughed fields during winter, and that winter bird use of the former is consequently higher. Summer bird use of conservation tillage fields is also higher than ploughed fields, as ground nesters get the advantage of better camouflage. However, some have proposed that conservation tillage can act as an 'ecological trap' when mechanical weeding techniques are used . |
It might be reasonable to predict that, in Europe too, conservation tillage fields would mimic, at least partially, stubble fields in their attractiveness to birds in winter and that in the summer would provide more or better nesting opportunities. However, there has been little work examining responses of birds in winter or summer to conservation tillage fields in Europe . SOWAP will address this knowledge gap. |
| To see some of the birds and animals seen in Hungary , click [HERE] and choose On Site in Hungary - Avian |
| |
|
