The role of spatial self-organization in the design of agroforestry systems.

Publisher: Public Library of Science Country of Publication: United States NLM ID: 101285081 Publication Model: eCollection Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 1932-6203 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 19326203 NLM ISO Abbreviation: PLoS One Subsets: MEDLINE

Original Publication: San Francisco, CA : Public Library of Science

Agriculture* ; Forestry*; Climate ; Ecosystem ; Models, Theoretical ; Rain

The development of sustainable agricultural systems in drylands is currently a crucial issue in the context of mitigating the outcomes of population growth under the conditions of climatic changes. The need to meet the growing demand for food, fodder, and fuel, together with the hazards due to climate change, requires cross-disciplinary studies of ways to increase livelihood while minimizing the impact on the environment. Practices of agroforestry systems, in which herbaceous species are intercropped between rows of woody species plantations, have been shown to mitigate several of the predicaments of climatic changes. Focusing on agroforestry in drylands, we address the question of how we can improve the performance of agroforestry systems in those areas. As vegetation in drylands tends to self-organize in various patterns, it seems essential to explore the various patterns that agroforestry systems tend to form and their impact on the performance of these systems in terms of biomass production, resilience to droughts, and water use efficiency. We use a two-soil-layers vegetation model to study the relationship between deep-rooted woody vegetation and shallow herbaceous vegetation, and explore how self-organization in different spatial patterns influences the performance of agroforestry systems. We focus on three generic classes of patterns, spots, gaps, and stripes, assess these patterns using common metrics for agroforestry systems, and examine their resilience to droughts. We show that in contrast to the widespread practice of planting the woody and herbaceous species in alternating rows, that is, in a stripe pattern, planting the woody species in hexagonal spot patterns may increase the system's resilience to droughts. Furthermore, hexagonal spot patterns reduce the suppression of herbs growth by the woody vegetation, therefore maintaining higher crop yields. We conclude by discussing some limitations of this study and their significance.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Phys Rev Lett. 2001 Nov 5;87(19):198101. (PMID: 11690457)
Science. 2007 May 11;316(5826):847-51. (PMID: 17495163)
Science. 1999 Jun 11;284(5421):1826-8. (PMID: 10364553)
Theor Popul Biol. 2007 Sep;72(2):214-30. (PMID: 17628624)
Oecologia. 2013 Jul;172(3):617-30. (PMID: 23266712)
PLoS One. 2016 Sep 08;11(9):e0162529. (PMID: 27606619)
Math Biosci. 2016 Jan;271:1-18. (PMID: 26529391)
Am Nat. 2002 Oct;160(4):524-30. (PMID: 18707527)
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2015 Oct 6;112(40):12327-31. (PMID: 26362787)
Nature. 2005 Dec 8;438(7069):846-9. (PMID: 16341012)
Philos Trans A Math Phys Eng Sci. 2013 Nov 04;371(2004):20120358. (PMID: 24191112)
Science. 2004 Sep 24;305(5692):1926-9. (PMID: 15448261)
J Theor Biol. 2007 Feb 21;244(4):680-91. (PMID: 17007886)
Bull Math Biol. 2019 Jul;81(7):2290-2322. (PMID: 31012031)
Phys Rev Lett. 2004 Aug 27;93(9):098105. (PMID: 15447146)

Date Created: 20200722 Date Completed: 20200922 Latest Revision: 20200922

20250114

PMC7373287

10.1371/journal.pone.0236325

32692773