Browsing by Author "Freese, Dirk"

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Access status: Open Access ,
The contribution of agroforestry systems to land reclamation
(Wydawnictwa AGH, 2011) Freese, Dirk; Böhm, Christian; Quinkenstein, Ansgar
Agroforestry systems are traditional land management systems that are recently under development in the temperate zone. These systems are defined as sustainable ways of land use which integrate both agricultural and forestry practices on the same land and at the same time. They are of particular significance to marginal regions and degraded lands where the land use system represents an alternative to land abandonment and afforestation, leads to diversification of land use and offers new socio-economic benefits. Agroforestry systems improve the efficiency of utilisation of natural resources, improve microclimatic conditions within the system, can help mitigate severe soil erosion problems and nutrient losses, enhance landscape biodiversity, lead to an overall high biomass production for material or energetical conversion (fuelwood), and thus matching the increasing demand for a self-supply with bioenergy in rural decentralized areas. For this reason, in the temperate zone, agroforestry systems attract more and more public attention as they offer a promising and comprising way to produce biomass and food, the evaluation of the carbon and nutrient budgets, the assessment of the potential impact of agroforestry on biodiversity at landscape scale and finally the exploration of the sustainability functions and socio-economic cross-cutting issues.