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. Introducing landscape heterogeneity, including woody features (such as single trees, groups of trees, and shrubs), will improve the local microclimate and increase the resilience of agroecosystems to disturbances caused by climatic extremes (e.g., drought periods and heavy precipitation). The integration of spatial and structural diversity, encompassing both aboveground and belowground diversity at field and landscape scales, provides multiple habitats for species and taxonomic groups at different trophic levels, ultimately impacting the biochemical cycling of elements. Soil carbon pools would be more resilient to extreme climatic variabilities in diverse systems that include trees and shrubs. Besides new knowledge and techniques, the transfer of principles and measures used in traditional farming systems would help improve the resilience of modern agricultural systems. For example, sites with lower fertility for crops have become suitable for extensive management, and the habitats that develop (such as silvopastoral systems, floodplain grasslands, and coastal grasslands) support local biodiversity in more intensively managed areas within 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 and animal taxonomy, ecosystem ecology, productivity of ecosystems, anthropogenic influence on ecosystems, fine root dynamics of trees, soil carbon stability.