dc.contributor.author | Trickett, Toni | |
dc.contributor.author | Warner, Douglas | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2022-08-22T10:45:03Z | |
dc.date.available | 2022-08-22T10:45:03Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2022-08-18 | |
dc.identifier.citation | Trickett , T & Warner , D 2022 , ' Earthworm Abundance Increased by Mob-Grazing Zero-Tilled Arable Land in South-East England ' , Earth , vol. 3 , no. 3 , pp. 895–906 . https://doi.org/10.3390/earth3030052 | |
dc.identifier.other | ORCID: /0000-0002-9136-9713/work/117949566 | |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/2299/25720 | |
dc.description | © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creative commons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). | |
dc.description.abstract | Regenerative agriculture is a potential alternative to conventional agricultural systems. It integrates the components of zero-tillage, permanent soil cover, diverse crop rotations and rotational or mob-grazing by ruminant livestock. Earthworms are beneficial soil macrofauna and function as indicators of soil health. A need exists to identify how earthworm populations are affected when all four regenerative agriculture components are implemented simultaneously. This study investigates earthworm abundance in three split-plot treatments located on adjacent land within the same farm: (1) ungrazed permanent grassland, (2) a three-year grass-clover ley within an arable zero tillage system without grazing and (3) identical to treatment 2 but with mob-grazing. Earthworms were sampled using soil pits and classified into four functional groups: epigeic (surface dwellers), endogeic (sub-surface), anecic (deep soil) and juveniles. The total earthworm count, epigeic and juvenile functional groups were significantly (p 0.05) higher in treatment (3), the arable zero tillage system with mob-grazing. Mob-grazing increases the diversity of carbon sources available to earthworms and has a positive impact on earthworm abundance and functional group diversity within the arable rotation under evaluation. | en |
dc.format.extent | 12 | |
dc.format.extent | 1853519 | |
dc.language.iso | eng | |
dc.relation.ispartof | Earth | |
dc.subject | adaptive paddock grazing | |
dc.subject | anecic | |
dc.subject | earthworm | |
dc.subject | endogeic | |
dc.subject | epigeic | |
dc.subject | mob-grazing | |
dc.subject | regenerative agriculture | |
dc.subject | zero-tillage | |
dc.subject | General Agricultural and Biological Sciences | |
dc.title | Earthworm Abundance Increased by Mob-Grazing Zero-Tilled Arable Land in South-East England | en |
dc.contributor.institution | Agriculture and Environment Research Unit | |
dc.contributor.institution | School of Life and Medical Sciences | |
dc.description.status | Peer reviewed | |
rioxxterms.versionofrecord | 10.3390/earth3030052 | |
rioxxterms.type | Journal Article/Review | |
herts.preservation.rarelyaccessed | true | |