Enhancing ecological functionality in agricultural systems would reduce reliability from external chemical inputs. Our interest is to understand mechanisms that improve ecosystem services in agroecosystems in relation to various management practices. By introducing landscape heterogeneity, including woody features (single individuals or groups of trees and shrubs), will improve local microclimate and increase resilience of agroecosystems to disturbances from climatic extremes (e. g. drought periods, heavy precipitation). Integration of spatial structural diversity, encompassing both aboveground and belowground diversities in field and landscape scales provides multiple habitats for species, taxonomic groups of different trophic levels, ultimately impacting biochemical cycling of elements. Soil carbon pools would be more resilient to extreme climatic variabilities in diverse systems that include trees and shrubs. Besides knew knowledge and techniques, transfer of principles and measures used in traditional farming systems would help to improve the resilience of modern agricultural systems. For example, sites of less fertility for crops, have turned suitable for extensive management and the habitats developed (silvopastoral systems, floodplain and coastal grasslands) support local biodiversity for more intensively managed areas in their region.

Our team at the Chair of Biodiversity and Nature Tourism of Estonian University of Life Sciences has expertise in studies related to plant, animal and ecosystem ecology, productivity of ecosystems, anthropogenic influence on ecosystems, fine root dynamics of trees, soil carbon stability. We are currently taking part in H2020 projects working on resilience of farming systems to climate change (https://agromixproject.eu/) and on synergies between agriculture, biodiversity and ecosystem services (https://showcase-project.eu/).