Читать книгу North American Agroforestry - Группа авторов - Страница 45

Four key criteria characterize agroforestry practices in the United States and Canada and distinguish them from other practices (Merwin, 1997). To be called agroforestry, a land use practice must satisfy all of the following four criteria:

Intentional

Combinations of trees, crops, and/or livestock are intentionally designed, established and/or managed to work together and yield multiple products and benefits, rather than as individual elements which may occur together but are managed separately.

Intensive

Agroforestry practices are created and intensively managed to maintain their productive and protective functions, and often involve cultural operations such as cultivation, fertilization, irrigation, pruning and thinning.

Integrated

Components are structurally and functionally combined into a single, integrated management unit tailored to meet the objectives of the landowner. Integration may be horizontal or vertical, and above‐ or below‐ground. Integration of multiple crops utilizes more of the productive capacity of the land and helps balance economic production with resource conservation.

Interactive

Agroforestry actively manipulates and utilizes the biophysical interactions among components to yield multiple harvestable products, while concurrently providing numerous conservation and ecological benefits.