Roger R.B. Leakey, Zac Tchoundjeu, Kate Schreckenberg, Sheona E. Shackleton and Charlie M. Shackleton Agroforestry and Novel Crops Unit, School of Tropical Biology, James Cook University, PO Box 6811, Cairns, Queensland 4870, Australia; 2World Agroforestry Centre, BP 2067, Yaoundé, Cameroon; Overseas Development Institute, 111 Westminster Bridge Road, London SE1 7JD, England; Department of Envi...

Rubber-based (Hevea brasiliensis) agroforestry systems are regarded as the best way to improve the sustainability of rubber monocultures, but few reports have examined water use in such systems. Accordingly, we tested whether interplanting facilitates water utilization of rubber trees using stable isotope (δD, δ(18)O, and δ(13)C) methods and by measuring soil water content (SWC), shoot potentia...

Tropical forest conversion to pasture, which drives greenhouse gas emissions, soil degradation, and biodiversity loss, remains a pressing socio-ecological challenge. This problem has spurred increased interest in the potential of small-scale agroforestry systems to couple sustainable agriculture with biodiversity conservation, particularly in rapidly developing areas of the tropics. In addition...

agroforestry is one the aspects of sustainable agriculture in which multiple cropping of perennial trees in mixture with crops guarantees the environmental, economical and social sustainability in rural communities. high demands for forage in northern provinces of iran lead to agroforestry in citrus orchards as a potential mean for forage production through agroforestry systems. this research w...

Shoot pruning of the woody components in simultaneous agroforestry systems with annuals and perennials enhances the services they provide to the ecosystem functions and to human livelihoods. These services include organic inputs, such as biomass and plant nutrients. Shoot pruning of the woody components is now an essential management practice in simultaneous agroforestry systems to avoid compet...

Statistical topics that related to agroforestry studies are discussed. These included study objectives, populations of interest, sampling schemes, sample sizes, estimation vs. hypothesis testing, and P-values. In addition, a relatively new and very much improved histogram display is described. As the title implies, I would like to discuss various statistical topics that relate to agroforestry s...

This paper presents results from a survey aimed at analyzing farmers willingness to invest in agroforestry near the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve in the state of Campeche in Southeastern Mexico. One hundred seventy-five farmers were interviewed from January through March of 1998. The survey included questions pertaining to levels of human capital investment made by individual farmers. The objectiv...

Forests represent more than just a livelihood to many people in developing countries. In Bangladesh, for example, overwhelming poverty and socio-economic pressures have resulted in an unstable situation where intensive pressure on forest resources is having increasingly negative consequences for the population. Some studies have evaluated the benefits of people-oriented forestry activities from...

Soil erosion poses economic and environmental concerns in many tropical uplands. Agroforestry has been proposed as a sustainable land use that can mitigate soil erosion and promote the economic welfare of small farmers. To evaluate such claims, we must (a) develop a composite measure of effectiveness, such as a soil conservation index, and (b) define it in terms understood by the farmers who ul...

Competing interests in land for agriculture and commodity production in tropical human-dominated landscapes make forests and biodiversity conservation particularly challenging. Establishment of protected areas in this regard is not functioning as expected due to exclusive ecological focus and poor recognition of local people’s traditional forest use and dependence. In recent years, multifunctio...