‘subtle impacts of climate change mitigation strategies on malfunctioning of prey–predator dynamics across ecosystems’

OR
>rice farming agro-ecosystems seek to save water
>which results in fewer wetland-ecosystem semi-aquatic inverts
>so jumping spiders jump less ofter

#farmland #ecology 🧪

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This article results from the collaboration and effort of an amazing group of people, and incredibly led by Sebastian Echeverría-Progulakis. Thanks you all!

We call for integrative water management policies that look beyond emissions alone. CC-mitigation should also consider biodiversity. Otherwise, we risk solving one problem by creating others.

#CarbonTunnelVision #RiceFarming #Agroecology #GHG #Biodiversity #SustainableAg

Our results highlight that a carbon-only lens overlooks ecological complexity. Thus long-term sustainability requires approaches that account for multiple goals simultaneously (i.e., climate, biodiversity, and food security must be addressed together)

Stay tunned if you want to know how these changes in freshwater biological communities translate in terms of multifuncionality provisioning (carbon sequestration potential, nutrient cycling, weed an pest control, food provisioning, etc). Next chapter of Seba's thesis.

Our results show a marked trade-off between climate and biodiversity outcomes associated to water-saving strategies in rice farming. In other words: AWD maximizes climate gains but worsens biodiversity. MSD offers a more balanced path, helping at minimizing the tradeoffs.

BUT.... Abundance of larvae of aquatic bugs, dragonflies and damselflies, and specially tadpoles was remarkably reduced in AWD managed plots when compared to permanent flooded plots. Intermediate values were found for MSD-managed plots. Species diversity also declined at both AWD and MSD plots.

As expected methane emissions dropped sharply under water-saving irrigation.
– AWD reduced methane by 92.5%
– MSD by 67.3%
when compared to continuous flooding. This confirms strong mitigation potential associated to the drainage periods, which inhibits methanogenesis.

Specifically, we evaluated 3 irrigation practices that represents a gradient of water use:
* Traditional continuous flooding (CONV) – no drying periods during the growing season
* Mid-Season Drainage (MSD) – 1 drying period
* Alternate Wetting and Drying (AWD) – Multiple drying periods

In this study we performed a field-scale experiment in the Ebro Delta Experimental Research Station to evaluate potential trade-offs of mitigation strategies in terms of methane emissions and biodiversity outcomes (diversity/abundance of tadpoles, fishes & aquatic macroinvertebrates)

However, the potential negative impacts of these mitigation strategies on freshwater biodiversity associated to rice fields (e.g., amphibians, fishes, or aquatic macroinvertebrates) have been completely ignored until now. Foto: Antonio Camacho Lorenzo