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Ecological Engineering For Irrigated Lowland Rice Ecosystem

This document discusses ecological engineering for irrigated lowland rice ecosystems. Ecological engineering involves manipulating ecosystems using small amounts of supplemental energy while relying primarily on natural energy sources. It aims to reduce pollution and resource problems, restore disturbed areas, improve stability, and enhance human benefit. Characteristics include low dependence on external inputs and high reliance on natural processes based on ecological principles. Goals are restoring disturbed ecosystems and developing sustainable ecosystems with human and ecological value. For pest management in rice, ecological engineering focuses on increasing natural enemies through food and habitat provision like trap crops, polycultures, and vegetation strips.

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EA Abulencia
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113 views8 pages

Ecological Engineering For Irrigated Lowland Rice Ecosystem

This document discusses ecological engineering for irrigated lowland rice ecosystems. Ecological engineering involves manipulating ecosystems using small amounts of supplemental energy while relying primarily on natural energy sources. It aims to reduce pollution and resource problems, restore disturbed areas, improve stability, and enhance human benefit. Characteristics include low dependence on external inputs and high reliance on natural processes based on ecological principles. Goals are restoring disturbed ecosystems and developing sustainable ecosystems with human and ecological value. For pest management in rice, ecological engineering focuses on increasing natural enemies through food and habitat provision like trap crops, polycultures, and vegetation strips.

Uploaded by

EA Abulencia
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Ecological Engineering

for Irrigated Lowland


Rice Ecosystem
“ecological engineering”

referred to the “environmental


manipulation by man using small
amounts of supplementary energy to
control systems in which the main
energy drives are still coming from
natural sources”. (Odum, 1962)
Ecological engineering functions include
designing an ecosystem to:

 reduce a pollution problem


 reduce a resource problem
 restore an area after a significant disturbance
 bring stability to an area in an ecologically sound
way
 improve the functionally of the system for human
benefit
Gurr (2009) stressed that the characteristics of
ecological engineering are:

• to have low dependence on external and


synthetic inputs and high a reliance on
natural processes
• to be based on ecological principles; and to
have scope for refinement by ecological
experimentation
The goals of ecological engineering

are the restoration of ecosystems that have been


substantially disturbed by human activities, and the
development of new sustainable ecosystems that
have both human and ecological values.
The application of ecological engineering for pest management
includes:

• use of cultural practices, usually based on vegetation


management,
• to enhance biological control or the ‘bottom-up’ effects that
act directly on pests

Methods:
Such as trap crops that divert pests away from crops
and changing monocultures to polycultures to reduce
pest immigration or residency.
Ecological engineering for rice ecosystem health

Ecological engineering for pest management mainly focuses on


increasing the abundance, diversity and function of natural enemies
in agricultural habitats by providing refuges and alternate or
supplementary food resources. Ecological engineering is a
component of agroecology that stresses precision (a feature of
engineering) in the outcome of some intervention. Whereas the
concept has been applied with some certainty of effect in ecosystem
restoration and landscape productivity, using plants of function that
often act as biofilters or to supply nutrients to the system the
concept is still in its infancy as regards pest management,
particularly in rice.
Floral and vegetation strips

Early literature on ecological engineering for rice pest management


largely focused on integrating flower or vegetable strips into rice
landscapes. Rice bunds normally function to direct and maintain
water in the rice paddies, but are also used by farmers as walkways
between rice fields. Farmers manage their bunds in several different
ways, including maintaining the bunds free of weeds and generally
bare, encouraging grasses or weeds on the bunds as forage for
animals or growing some crop along the bund to optimize farm
space and supplement farm

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