Agriculture is influenced by an array of biotic and abiotic stresses; a strategic technique is required to address plant health and issues that affect productivity. The integrity and conservation of the agro‐atmosphere is critical for sustainable agriculture. Extensive exploitation of ecosystems to enhance productivity can affect agro‐ecosystems via erosion of soil, contamination of water, loss of biodiversity, pest issues, and disruption in the usual flow of the surrounding ecology in order to allow safe food manufacturing. The role of ecological engineering is to assimilate soil and pest management schemes with conventional agricultural practices that benefit both the ecosystem and productivity. It is a combination of agricultural knowledge, crop economics, and ecology applied to development and restoration to retain an overall sustainable agricultural ecosystem that has been disturbed by human activities.
The prime focus of management schemes is to reduce the use of chemical pesticides and overuse of fertilizers and agricultural chemicals that cause environmental pollution that further can enter the food chain; and also to minimize drug resistance and resurgence in pests and bugs over time. Replacing these detrimental chemicals with biofertilizers such as mycorrhiza improves the soil health, helps plants to uptake micro/macro nutrients from the soil, and supplies these nutrients at an optimum level that inhibits the growth of pests. Thus ecological engineering uses traditional vegetation management practices to control the pests without damaging soil health. A collective eco‐friendly approach adopted by the farming community can successfully implement this technology to manage the pest population and build up the biota by enriching the organic matter content in the soil.
To support a good agricultural system, the soil ecosystem must support the growth and sustainability of the land. However, soil erosion interrupts agriculture in many parts of the world. Although soil erosion is a naturally occurring process, it is accelerated by anthropogenic interventions into Nature and landscapes. Improper management of agricultural land also contributes to soil erosion.
Land consolidation is a tool for creating sustainable rural agriculture and improving the efficiency of cultivation, which ultimately helps develop the rural cultivation culture in countries like the Czech Republic (CR) [43]. Land consolidation is a process of systematically reallocating or redistributing fragmented agricultural land and properly arranging the shape and size of these lands in rural areas [23]. At the same time, land consolidation contributes to the improvement of environmental status, protects soil, provides ecological stability, helps with water management, and controls flooding and erosion. Soil degradation and the urgent need to conserve soil have been the most‐discussed topics in the last few decades. Land consolidation can improve soil stability when proper management policies are implemented. However, soil management practices (in terms of agricultural soil) such as till age9 may have negative consequences on the soil biota since they can lead to soil decomposition and the mineralization of organically bound nutrients. Therefore, these practices must be devised wisely to minimize the adverse impact on soil quality while providing agricultural benefits. In this context, tillage is often combined with other practices like mulches and cover crops, whereas enrichment with organic wastes, compost, and biochar favors soil fertility and biota. In addition, conservation of soil's natural and biological efficiency improves and maintains the soil's organic matter content, thus facilitating soil preservation.
At this point, ecological engineering can play a pivotal role that combines management practices with soil biota enhancement designs to achieve maximum crop yield, improve overall service, and maintain sustainable biodiversity with maximum yield (Figure 3.4). A compromise between agricultural yield and sustainability can be achieved by appropriate manipulation of ecosystem processes. Figure 3.4 depicts a direct correlation between land‐use intensity and yield. It suggests that yield is directly proportional to the magnitude of land‐use intensity. The yield is maximum under intensive management when the external source inputs are highest. Soil ecological engineering in harmony with naturally occurring biological processes is known to replace external inputs by either maintaining yields with fewer external inputs or increasing yields without simultaneous increment in external inputs.
Several other fields have developed ecological engineering practices, such as desert forest restoration, ocean and aquatic life restoration, forest restoration, urban reconciliation of living roofs and walls, all kinds of riparian ecosystem restoration, arctic megafaunal restoration, etc. With the aim of mitigating past adverse impacts and creating novel projects to benefit sustainable ecological growth in the near future, improved environmental policies using ecological engineering approaches can create awareness at the local, regional, and international level regardless of the field where these policies have been adopted.
Figure 3.4 Conceptual model showing the contribution of external resource inputs and natural biological processes to an ecosystem function (yield), depending on land‐use intensity.
Source: Bender, S.F., Wagg, C., and van der Heijden, M.G.A. (2016). “An underground revolution: biodiversity and soil ecological engineering for agricultural sustainability.” Trends in Ecology & Evolution 31 (6): 440–452. © 2016, Elsevier.
3.5 Conclusion
The contribution of ecological engineering in designing, building, and operating a new ecosystem is noteworthy. The approach of ecological engineering designs is not as simple as it appears since such designs are proposed to apply to species that are known to evolve within a newly created ecosystem. Although new ecosystems are called by various names such as domestic ecosystems, interface ecosystems, and living machines, they are ultimately the outcome of creative designs incorporated with self‐organized properties of the systems themselves. This approach brings about the selection of species naturally within the framework of ecological engineering designs reflecting the manmade designs through the response of natural choices. This feature makes this field a unique and intellectually motivating branch of applied engineering.
With the aim of solving environmental problems, ecological engineering addresses a subset of issues that have been created anthropogenically and then must be resolved by ecological designs. Among these designs, pollution control or treatment is the most frequent in all environmental areas, where polluted materials are considered resources. The designs are formulated in such a way that pollutants are either stabilized or broken down into useful by‐products with the natural development of the ecosystem, thereby converting the problems into solutions for the successful implementation of ecological engineering principles.
In this chapter, we have discussed hard, soft, and hybrid approaches for improving new or existing infrastructure with modern, complex building models. The primary principles of ecological engineering proposed by Ma [28] were designed to formulate species symbiosis, cycling, and regeneration and harmonize the ecological structure with its function. Later, 12 commandants or guidelines were formulated as principles of ecological engineering. Based on these basic principles, rules of ecotechnology can be derived for proper management of the environment and ecosystem.
The terms ecological engineering and ecotechnology are used interchangeably, although the former defines the creation and restoration of ecosystem while the later describes ecosystem management. Nature represents a self‐organizing, self‐sustaining system up to an exploitation threshold. Thus, any new approach must include a scheme to minimize external influence and also fulfill societal demands. A balance between the natural ecosystem and ecosystem engineering services must be achieved for the vitality of mankind. However, it is vital to identify key conservation