This review reveals that crop residues of common cultivated crops are an important resource not only as a source of significant quantities of nutrients for crop production but also affecting soil physical, chemical, and biological functions and properties and water and soil quality. When crop residues are returned to the soils, their decomposition can have both positive and negative effects on crop production and the environment. Our aim as agricultural scientists is to increase the positive effects. This can only be achieved with the better understanding of residue, soil, and management factors and their interactions, which affect the decomposition and nutrient release processes. Data on nitrogen benefits and nitrogen recoveries from residues show that a considerable potential exists from residues, especially leguminous residues, not only in meeting the N demands of the succeeding crops, but also in increasing the long-term fertility of the soils. In addition, crop residues and their proper management affects the soil quality either directly or indirectly. Intensive cropping systems are very diverse and complex, so no one residue management system is superior under all situations. Ideally, crop residue management practices should be selected to enhance crop yields with a minimum adverse effect on the environment. It is suggested that in each cropping system, the constraints to production and sustainability should be identified and conceptualized to guide toward the best option. Multidisciplinary and integrated efforts by soil scientists, agronomists, ecologists, environmentalists, and economists are needed to design a system approach for the best choice of crop residue management system to enhance both agricultural productivity and sustainability.

Crop Residues and Management Practices: Effects on Soil Quality, Soil Nitrogen Dynamics, Crop Yield, and Nitrogen Recovery

Publisher Summary This chapter illustrates detritus-based food webs responding to various disturbance regimes occurring in conventionally tilled (CT) and non-tilled (NT) systems. The detritus food web is based largely in the soil system, and is important in regulating nutrient cycling and energy flow, it is reasonable to expect that this food web may be a viable and meaningful indicator of disturbance exerted by tillage and alternative weed management strategies. The principal differences in disturbance regimes involve cultivation, herbicide application, residue management and manipulation of weed levels, therefore, emphasis is placed on these factors. The chapter also reviews the results of previous studies, determines how different components of the detritus food web respond to the disturbances relative to each other, and examines the consequences of these disturbances for overall food web structure. Furthermore, while disturbances in CT systems may exert predictable negative effects on most groups of soil organisms, the responses of species assemblages are less predictable. Individual taxonomic species are undoubtedly a more sensitive indicator of ecosystem disturbance than are entire functional groups, and is therefore a more appropriate unit for biomonitoring purposes.

Impacts of Disturbance on Detritus Food Webs in Agro-Ecosystems of Contrasting Tillage and Weed Management Practices

Impacts of agricultural herbicide use on terrestrial wildlife in temperate landscapes: A review with special reference to North America

While most studies focusing on the effects of agricultural intensification on soil biota are inherently short-term in nature, long-term (multiyear) studies are essential in assessing long-term temporal responses of soil biota to agronomic practices. We investigated the effects of three components of agricultural intensification, i.e. cultivation (disturbance), herbicide addition (modification of floristic composition) and mulching (resource addition) on soil-associated arthropods in an annual (maize) and a perennial (asparagus) cropping system over a 7 yr period. An additional treatment (hand-hoeing of weeds during the crop growing season) was used to represent minimal intensification. Many taxa of arthropods responded positively to mulching and to treatments which allowed high weed biomass in the non crop-production period, e.g. the hand-hoeing and cultivation treatments in the perennial crop. Herbicide treatments also facilitated high numbers of many taxa in the annual crop when this coincided with plot invasion by herbicide-tolerant weeds. Generally, arthropod taxa were positively correlated with weed biomass and negatively with crop plant biomass, probably because of the superior resource (litter) quality produced by the former. Ordination analyses indicated that arthropod community structure was often correlated with weed community structure. Mulching and allowing high weed biomass also promoted a high species richness of soil-associated Coleoptera, but coleopteran diversity was not related to weed species diversity. Analyses of temporal variability (inversely related to stability) of arthropod taxa across years revealed few treatment effects in the annual crop, but showed destabilising effects of weed reduction in the perennial crop. In the perennial crop, temporal variability was also positively correlated with crop biomass and negatively with weed biomass across plots. Our study shows that agricultural intensification is not consistently harmful to the soil fauna, that soil-associated arthropods are most responsive to management practices which affect the nature and quality of resource input, and that long-term experiments are essential for answering questions about how agricultural practices affect soil organisms against the natural backdrop of temporal variation.

Effects of agricultural intensification on soil-associated arthropod population dynamics, community structure, diversity and temporal variability over a seven-year period

A review of pesticide effects on microorganisms and microbial processes related to soil fertility

Herbicide combinations of paraquat, glyphosate, alachlor, linuron, fluazifopbutyl, aciflurofen, and bentazon were investigated for their impact on soil arthropod population dynamics and surface wheat straw decomposition (weight loss) within a North Carolina coastal plain agroecosystem. Herbicides were applied twice (preemergence and mid-bloom) at recommended field rates to soybeans no-till planted into wheat residue. Separate measurements were made for surface crop residue and soil-dwelling (0–3 cm depth) arthropods. Decomposition of herbicide (glyphosate) and nonherbicide-treated wheat straw residue was compared using mesh bag techniques. Decay rate constants were estimated for glyphosate and nonherbicide-treated wheat straw residue by fitting a two-component model to the data. Comparison of soil microarthropod numbers from herbicide and nonherbicide treatments showed no consistent trend, suggesting that abiotic factors such as soil temperature and moisture were probably more significant than herbicide effects in regulating soil microarthropod number and activity. Herbicides had no effect on soil macroarthropod number or activity until late in the season when macroarthropods were most abundant under weedy, no-tillage conditions. Moist soil and litter, low soil temperature, floral diversity, and high weed-seed availability probably enhanced macroarthropod numbers in nonherbicide treatments. Decomposition (ash-free weight loss) of nonherbicided, surface crop residues was more rapid than herbicide (glyphosate) treated, indicating that herbicide effects occur at the decomposer as well as producer level of agroecosystems.

Herbicide effects on soil arthropod dynamics and wheat straw decomposition in a North Carolina no-tillage agroecosystem

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Herbicide effects on soil arthropod dynamics and wheat straw decomposition in a North Carolina no-tillage agroecosystem