From crop diversity to ecosystem services: using indicators to evaluate crop diversification benefits

Problem

Diversified crop rotations can help to support the agroecological transition of cropping systems. However, most crop diversity indicators currently available only consider crop rotation length. Evaluating the ecosystem services provided by diversified rotations requires the consideration of additional criteria, e.g. crop species and sequence.

Solution

We have developed a global crop diversity indicator addressing both temporal and spatial diversity. The temporal diversity consists of an assessment of taxonomic diversity (assessed by an inverted Simpson index) and of the functional diversity through an indicator linked to 12 ecosystem services (ES). The spatial diversity depends only on strip width.