An energetic approach to assessing nature recovery in soils – a regenerative agriculture case study.Case study
Measuring and comparing energy to and through soil biodiversity under regenerative and chemical farming to understand and assess nature recovery in this traditional ‘black box’.
71% of the UK land area is farmland, which without transformation will mean no realistic chance of solving this nations biodiversity crisis. Regenerative agriculture promises a way to farm with and bolster nature, helping provide the many varied habitats and resources needed for functional and flourishing ecosystems, whilst also helping feed the country. This project aims to assess the ecological impact of arable regenerative agriculture methods on soil biodiversity, helping build an evidence base to reveal how these organisms drive this approach.
Utilising the emerging framework of ecosystem energetics, this project aims to apply this methodology to the soil environment to establish a consistent approach to assessing nature recovery progress in this traditional ‘black box’. By tracking energy flows from the sun to the soil, we can follow its cascade through the below-ground food web to understand where it pools and flows. With energy translating into the ability to ‘do work’, we can use this as a proxy to understand how the activities of these organisms emerge to provide services we take advantage of for farming, such as water infiltration and nutrient cycling, amongst others. In comparison with chemical farming, we aim to show how these organisms support regenerative agriculture without expensive or environmentally damaging additives.
Working at FarmED in the Cotswolds, we are able to take advantage of their 8 year arable chronosequence and conventional control plot to demonstrate the ecological impact of herbal leys and their lingering effects during cropping to reduce our reliance on agrichemicals. Taking the opportunity this novel chronosequence provides in one location, we have built a very large and detailed dataset for each plot, accounting for its diversity of soil life (micro, meso, and macrofauna), soil characteristics (pH, SOM, cations, particle size, temperature, moisture, bulk density), and net primary productivity (vegetation biomass, dung, and respiration). It is with this data that we ultimately aim to build a streamlined and unified framework for assessing nature recovery in soils, and encourage its routine monitoring as apart of restoration initiatives.
We are open to collaboration and are keen to be able to use this wealth of data to understand more about these systems to help accelerate UK nature recovery.
