Agroecosystem stability: environmental indexes for sustainable land-use planning in Azul, Argentina

Lack of land use planning has led to large-scale land degradation processes. Understanding and assessing their environmental impacts and costs becomes essential for sustainable development. Fragility is the maximum risk to land degradation. It is an inherited characteristic and can be fully expressed by land use. Agroecosystems are complex and their stability is an emerging property which indicates the resilience of agroecosystems in relation to land use intensity. The main objective of this work was to characterise land fragility in the Azul district, Buenos Aires province, Argentina, and to evaluate its stability. Physical, chemical, and biological degradation fragility indicators were applied and mapped. Based on these indicators, the fragility to degradation index (IFDE) was developed, applied, and mapped. The instability index (II) was developed and applied based on soil mesofauna to determine stability. The vulnerability index (IV) was developed and applied to determine current degradation. Physical fragility to degradation was the most important and significantly different between the north and the south of the Azul district. Similar results were observed for the IFDE between north and south. For the land use scenarios proposed, high intensity expressed 83% of the IV, whereas low intensity expressed 8% of the IV. Index IV allows a current analysis of the expression of degradation due to land use by the combination of IFDE and II. The environmental indicators and indices used in this work made it possible to identify the areas to which land use planning actions and policies should be directed.