Weeds and field margins: the other side of the coin

Summary

The main objective of my poster is to highlight and quantify the crucial role of herbaceous spontaneous species considered as weeds or at the field margin in providing ecosystem services.
Ecosystem services potentially provided by these species have been evaluated and then calculated through the following steps:
1. Selection of ecosystem functions: which role can play these species in providing ecosystem services such as erosion control, flooding prevention, supporting pollinators or biocontrol, cultural value, etc.
2. Identification of plant functional traits which might be responsible for ecosystem services provision: plants can provide a wide range of services evaluable through their functional traits.
3. Assigning a numerical value to each functional trait: in this way it is possible to quantify the role of species in providing selected ecosystem functions (1); For instance, for plants with fibrous root architecture will be assigned a higher score then tap root plants since they play a more important role in controlling soil erosion.
4. Calculating a resulting value for each plant species (Functional Diversity Index) taking into consideration all the ecosystem functions that it might provides: more suitable functional traits will result in higher functional diversity traits of each species;
5. Creation of a model that might be applicable to different agroecosystems
The resulting model is applied to a plant database which is the result of 25 years of data collection from a long term experiment (MoLTE) including two organic systems and one conventional system. Therefore, by summing up the Functional Diversity Index of each species composing the organic/conventional system, it is possible to compare the value of ecosystem functions provided by the two systems.