Sustainable Agriculture Literature Review - Boulder County

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8.2 Impact of Reduced Biodiversity
Agriculture and climate change pose risks to terrestrial biodiversity. In agricultural
ecosystems, biodiversity performs a variety of ecological services beyond the production
of food, including recycling of nutrients, regulation of microclimate and local hydrological
processes, suppression of undesirable organisms, and detoxification of noxious
chemicals. 650, 651 Increasingly, there is consensus about the importance of incorporating
ecosystem services into resource management, but quantifying the economic value of
these services is difficult. For example, forest cover provides a service of water
catchment to recharge reservoirs and aquifers that are used for irrigating agriculture,
which can be just as much a service to agriculture as the funding of irrigation equipment
and infrastructure. 652
Without quantitative assessments, and some incentives for landowners to provide them,
the recognition of these ecological services has been slow. 653 As more effective methods
for valuing ecosystem services become available, it will become easier to realize the
benefits of ecosystem services and identify cost effective means of improving
agricultural ecosystems. 654
Certain agricultural practices have the potential to enhance biodiversity, while others
negatively affect it. Farming practices that create a more diverse farming system, like
polycultures and rotating crops, can decrease pest infestation, while practices, like
monocultures and conventional tilling, can increase pest infestation (Figure 31). 655
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