Management Practices Boosting Ecosystem and Landscape Functions and Services in Spain

Olive oil cultivation shapes the landscape, culture, and way of life of many rural areas of Spain, especially southern. Increased olive oil demand has acted as a catalyst for the intensification of olive groves. The intensification of low-input traditional olive groves and the implementation of new intensive and super-intensive plantations with irrigation and increased tree density have resulted in simplified landscapes with olive groves with low-nature-value, driving greater negative environmental impacts (e.g., soil erosion, run-offs to water bodies, increased rates of soil fertility loss, degradation of habitats and landscapes, and over-exploitation of scarce water resources). The near absence of biological elements other than olive trees in many olive groves across the farm to landscape levels has led to the inefficiency of ecological regulatory mechanisms, which potentially provide ecosystems with resistance and resilience to ever-changing environmental conditions. The reversal of the negative impacts of modern olive farming on the environment is a key concern at the European level and European policies are now in place that promote eco and wildlife-friendly management models. Increasingly, research indicates that the level of internal regulation of ecological functions in agroecosystems is largely dependent on their level of diversity and complexity. Biodiversity delivers a variety of ecosystem services that span beyond the production of food, and that include the recycling and retention of nutrients, regulation of micro-climates and local hydrological processes, and control or mitigation of pests and diseases. This leads to improving benefits such as crop protection and soil fertility even when external inputs are limited, such as is frequently the case in the Mediterranean context. This chapter analyses a relatively wide range of technically and economically feasible synergistic management practices, at both farm and landscape levels, that promote and enhance the biotic interactions, functional traits, creation of biophysical structures and ecological processes, and includes, among others: (i) temporarily wild or seeded cover crops, (ii) tree pruning management, (iii) organic fertilization, and (iv) livestock integration.