 | Reconciling agricultural production with biodiversity conservation More intensive, monocultural agriculture has been associated with a decline in diversity of habitat and plant species which leads to corresponding declines in diversity of insect, bird and mammal species. There is mounting evidence that a more biodiverse landscape improves ecosystem services which benefits farmers. Reconciling agricultural production with biodiversity conservation provides an authoritative review of current biodiversity conservation practices, including field margins, agroforestry systems, hedgerows and improved pasture and grassland management. The collection additionally summarises the theoretical framework that underpins biodiversity conservation in agriculture, dedicating chapters to key developments in areas such as landscape approaches, mapping and modelling diversity, as well as ways of assessing the economic value of biodiversity conservation practices. Dr Paolo Bàrberi is Professor of Agronomy and Field Crops and Head of the Agroecology Group at the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna (SSSA), an internationally-renowned university in Pisa, Italy (ranked number 4 in the world among small universities, according to the Times Higher Education World University Rankings). Professor Bàrberi is a founding member and Vice-President of Agroecology Europe and has written over 330 publications on topics in sustainable agriculture, agrobiodiversity and agroecology. Dr Anna-Camilla Moonen is an Assistant Professor in Agronomy and Field Crops at the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna (SSSA). She is a member of the editorial board of Weed Research and her research focuses on agroecological co-design of sustainable cropping systems with a special interest in field margin management, the use of cover crops to manage weed communities, and functional agrobiodiversity in arable and horticultural cropping systems for integrated weed and pest management. She has written over 110 publications in this area. |
