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Irrigation and Maize Cultivation Erode Plant Diversity Within Crops in Mediterranean Dry Cereal Agro-Ecosystems

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Abstract

The intensification of agriculture has increased production at the cost of environment and biodiversity worldwide. To increase crop yield in dry cereal systems, vast farmland areas of high conservation value are being converted into irrigation, especially in Mediterranean countries. We analyze the effect of irrigation-driven changes on the farm biota by comparing species diversity, community composition, and species traits of arable plants within crop fields from two contrasting farming systems (dry and irrigated) in Spain. We sampled plant species within 80 fields of dry wheat, irrigated wheat, and maize (only cultivated under irrigation). Wheat crops held higher landscape and per field species richness, and beta diversity than maize. Within the same type of crop, irrigated wheat hosted lower plant diversity than dry wheat at both field and landscape scales. Floristic composition differed between crop types, with higher frequencies of perennials, cosmopolitan, exotic, wind-pollinated and C4 species in maize. Our results suggest that irrigation projects, that transform large areas of dry cereal agro-ecosystems into irrigated crop systems dominated by maize, erode plant diversity. An adequate planning on the type and proportion of crops used in the irrigated agro-ecosystems is needed in order to balance agriculture production and biodiversity conservation.

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Acknowledgments

Surveys were carried out under the permit (number EP/LE/281/2007) of the Dirección General del Medio Natural, Consejería de Medio Ambiente, Junta de Castilla y León. We thank Ángel de Frutos for technical assistance and Eduardo García for field assistance. We also thank two anonymous reviewers that commented on the first version of this manuscript. Soil analyses have been performed by Manuel López Nieves and Xabier Pombal at the University of Santiago de Compostela. Elsa Pouillard performed the questionnaires to land owners. This research has been financed by the projects Junta de Castilla y León (SEK02B06), Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia (CGL2006-05047/BOS) and FEDER funds. P.M.T. was supported by a postdoctoral grant funded by Consejería de Educación, Ciencia y Cultura de la Junta de Comunidades de Castilla-La Mancha and Fondo Social Europeo.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Facultade de Ciencias, Universidade da Coruña, Campus da Zapateira, 15071, A Coruña, Spain

    Jaime Fagúndez

  2. Departamento de Ecología, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 28049, Madrid, Spain

    Pedro P. Olea & Pablo Tejedo

  3. Instituto de Investigación en Recursos Cinegéticos (IREC), CSIC-UCLM-JCCM, Ciudad Real, Spain

    Patricia Mateo-Tomás

  4. Centre for Functional Ecology, Department of Life Sciences, University of Coimbra, Calçada Martim de Freitas, 3000-456, Coimbra, Portugal

    Patricia Mateo-Tomás

  5. Estudios y Proyectos Linea S.L., 47005, Valladolid, Spain

    David Gómez

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  1. Jaime Fagúndez
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Correspondence to Jaime Fagúndez.

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Fagúndez, J., Olea, P.P., Tejedo, P. et al. Irrigation and Maize Cultivation Erode Plant Diversity Within Crops in Mediterranean Dry Cereal Agro-Ecosystems. Environmental Management 58, 164–174 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-016-0691-5

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