Agroecological restoration: A new paradigm for sustainability of managed landscapes

Ecological restoration in agricultural landscapes often involves a single-minded focus on restoring natural habitats, but a more holistic agroecological approach to restoration is to develop management systems that sustain multiple ecological functions.  Academic ecologists often focus on particular aspects of the landscape, such as populations, communities, or nutrient fluxes, but farmers and ranchers have been managing whole, complex human and natural systems for millennia.  Agricultural systems in many regions of the world are being degraded, but in other areas are being renewed.  Improved strategies for restoring agricultural landscapes may benefit from principles that draw from both agroecology and restoration ecology.  In this talk, I will use the history of a Florida cattle ranch to illustrate how principles of agroecological restoration can be used to sustain desirable ecological functions within agricultural landscapes.  Buck Island Ranch was developed from a pristine ecological state within the past 100 years.  The ranch was managed with increasing intensity starting in the 1940s and peaking in the late 1970s, and is currently managed in a mixed state that includes a mosaic of high production areas and low intensity natural habitat.  Sustaining and enhancing this current ecological state requires restoring not only natural habitats such as wetlands, but also the infrastructure that allows for more efficient and environmentally sound hydrologic management.  Agroecological restoration thus involves managing the landscape to maintain states of equilibrium that may be far from natural or pristine states but produce a mixture of desired ecological outcomes. These outcomes include food production, wildlife habitat, reduced environmental impacts, and maintenance of the landscape mosaic itself.  Developing principles of agroecological restoration that emphasize the maintenance of contexts for sustaining multiple ecological functions could enhance ecological management of agroecosystems worldwide.