Soil biodiversity in action: ecological intensification of soil processes for agrosystem services in the tropics

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Blanchart, Eric | Bernard, Laetitia | Chotte, Jean Luc, L | Cournac, Laurent | Lardy, Lydie | Ratsiatosika, O | Razafimbelo, T | Trap, Jean

Edité par CCSD -

International audience. With the development of agroecology, soil plays a particularlyimportant role in the design of sustainable agricultural practices.The soils are the place of many processes operated by living organismsinteracting with one another. Soil biodiversity performs variousprocesses which determine the main aggregated functions and finallyagrosystem services and sustainability. The understanding of theserelationships is particularly important in a global context wherebiodiversity, including the soil one, is highly threatened. It becomesurgent to promote these ecological processes, to intensify them byappropriate practices considering the socio-economic constraints, andfinally, to be able to measure them. Revisiting the ecologicaltheories of the terrestrial ecosystem functioning is a need to improveour consideration of the soil in the agroecological transition. Thistheoretical approach is illustrated by four studies conducted in thetropics demonstrating the possibility to intensify the soil ecologicalprocesses and to solve agronomic dysfunctions. Finally, we highlightthe need to define soil indicators based on ecological processes foran appropriate measurement of this intensification and we propose amethodological framework to optimize soil ecological functions for asustainable supply of agrosystem services.

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