The Health Assessment of Agro-ecosystem in the Typical Agro-pastoral Ecotone:A Case Study in Chifeng City
As a new objective for global management as well as a new method of analyzing ecosystem, ecosystem health is embraced by many researchers with great concerns in the modern ecology. Agricultural ecosystem is an open artificial system and has many output and in put of energy and material. Agricultural ecosystem is different from natural ecosystem. Agricultural ecosystem is an ecosystem controlled and managed by human to satisfy the expectations with regulated system structures and altered industrial scales. The system structure exerts significant influence on the system function. A healthy agricultural ecosystem not only has good ecological environment, reasonable proportions of primary production and secondary production in the agricultural eco-economic system, but also has endurable and stable economic benefit. Agricultural ecosystem health is defined as the capability to avoid "disorder syndrome", withstand stress and meet the requirements of sustainable agricultural production. A healthy agricultural ecosystem can meet human needs without threatening natural resources or even can benefit the natural resources. The aim of healthy agricultural ecosystem is to realize high-yielding, low-input, reasonable farming methods, good stability, resilience and persistence. In this paper, based on the characteristic of agricultural ecosystem in the agricultural and pastoral zone, an index system of agricultural ecosystem assessment is formulated according to the definition of healthy agricultural ecosystem, including the factors of vigor, structure and resilience of agricultural ecosystem. The assessment model is applied to twelve counties in Chifeng region. The evaluation results indicate that the agricultural ecosystem in Hongshan County and Balinyou County is healthy, while that in Keshi-keteng County, Yuanbaoshan County, Aohan County and Songshan County can only be described as critically healthy and the agricultural ecosystems in the other six counties are not healthy. The results generated from the assessment model are basically in accordance with the actual status. Therefore, the index system and model of evaluation are proved to be credible. At last, the suggestions for the sustainable utilization of agricultural ecosystem in the agricultural and pastoral zone are put forward. Adopting the ecosystem health as assessing measure for the agricultural ecosystem can improve the management of agricultural ecosystem.
Agricultural ecosystemEcosystem health assessmentSustainable useAgricultural and pastoral zone