niedziela, 28 styczeń 2018 00:35

Role of trees in agriculture

Belts windbreak of trees like woodlots meet a lot of great features from the agricultural point of view.
Unfortunately, they are systematically destroyed by the farmers themselves.
Windbreak belts reduce wind speed by approx. 25-30% at ground level.

They also contribute to increased crop yields in the range 5-10%, depending on growing conditions and soil type climates. Positive impact is felt belt from windbreaker is about 15-20 times the height of the trees and bushes on the lee side, which means that the belt with a height of 5 meters protects the field at a distance of 75-100 m.
Reduces the damage caused by the wind plants (lodging of cereals, disruption of pollination, precipitation fruits and leaves, growth inhibition) which increases the yields of farmers!
In the zone of influence of the belt wind speed drops by 60%, 40% evaporation, and the soil temperature and air is 1 ° C higher during the day.
The zone closest to the belt - to approx. 1 times the height of trees and shrubs - shows a decrease in yield due to the competition of trees and shrubs for light, water and nutrients. Above this zone up to 5 times the height of the trees and shrubs positive impact of the belt is the greatest.
After that, the wind erosion inhibit the more significant, the soil is more sandy and the climate is drier, easier to perform some spraying plantation, field irrigation with rain.

Plantings also indirectly increase the moisture content of soils, because they have a tendency to stop water.
trees maintain the humidity of air masses, reducing the speed of the wind through the leaves and evaporating water drawn from the deeper soil layers. Thus enhancing the amount of dew forming. Rosy night become more abundant, and the drying effect of the air maleje.Forestation also affect the increase in the amount of rainfall. Woodlots also have the ability to retain water. Spring tree to some extent will dry land too wet, absorbing large amounts of water at the beginning of the growing season.
Thanks to the existence of trees followed by a more even distribution of snow in the landscape. Slowered is the process of melting, so that in the spring there are violent and abundant surface runoff contribute to increasing the effects of erosion. As a result of the slow melting of snow also increases the amount of water percolates into the soil, which increases the groundwater resources.
Trees and shrubs also have the ability to inhibit erosion. Plantings along the banks of streams and rivers causing keeping the soil by the roots of trees and shrubs and prevent erosion, stabilizing margins.
In addition to shielding and protection, provide habitat to birds or insects.
Many species of birds making nests in plantings due to the large amount of food - insects that are on the fields (birds inhabiting woodlands, during the breeding season insects consume about 100 kg for each 1 km long woodlots).
Plantings are also a place of many benefits of bee, because the socket established fields (a majority of ok.450 species of wild bees in Poland nest in the ground) are often destroyed during the agronomic work.
As a great pioneer in the field of reforestation is considered general Dezydery Chłapowski (1788-1879), who from 1820 in Wielkopolska made a mid-field afforestation of approx. 10 thousand. ha. Farmlands divided on the quadrangle, which on three sides - east, west and north he cast belts of trees. According to his predictions, "forestation arable land," as he called afforestation, it proved to be beneficial for economic, environmental and aesthetic. Belts of trees protect arable land from winds and erosion.

However, this system of trees appeared much earlier in the valley of the Lower Vistula, initiated by who arrived in the sixteenth century immigrants Dutch (Olęders) and was continued until the twentieth century. Olęders and then their successors planted rows of willows, with drainage ditches or in the form of belts windbreaks.
Trees and woodlots.
Single shrubs and trees that occur outside the forest and agricultural land is a reforestation . They appear as clumps of trees among the fields and along the roads, watercourses, around the ponds.

These supposedly unproductive landscape elements play an important ecological function, are an "oasis" among the fields for a living, they are concentration of biodiversity in the increasingly monocultural landscape. They are rich habitats for plants, animals - occurs in one or several dozen times more species of birds than in similar areas of the forest.

Many pollinators shelter is precisely in these green islands. Often at first glance the old rotten, anybody unnecessary tree is home to many beneficial organisms.

Unfortunately, it becomes fashionable stretch of such plantings, especially in the areas of orchard. Alarming is the myopia of people who fear that for 20 or 50 m2 will have a slightly lower yield remove such reforestation and with it the beneficial creatures that lived there and that could lead to improved pollination, pest population limit on a much larger area. This is very important on the blueberry plantation, because without pollinating bees there will be no good quality blueberries


source: "Zadrzewienia śródpolne" - Praca pod redakcją Jadwigi Oleszkiewicz - Fundacja Green Park, Warszawa 1994 

          "Rola zadrzewień w ochronie środowiska i jakości wody" - Zajączkowski Kazimierz - Instytut Badawczy Leśnictwa w Warszawie.
Czytany 1908 razy
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