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La agricultura ha progresado ininterrumpidamente, pasando de la utilización de recursos naturales gratuitos al uso creciente de recursos fósiles como fuentes energéticas. Si bien la agricultura depende fundamentalmente de los recursos y servicios del ecosistema, su desarrollo se ha centrado sólo en la producción, sin tomar en cuenta el valor ecológico de las externalidades negativas ni la descapitalización de los recursos que inciden en la sustentabilidad, por lo que la información sobre la evaluación de la sustentabilidad de los diferentes estilos de agricultura es poca o casi nula. En la presente investigación se evaluó la sustentabilidad de los estilos de agricultura (horticultor intensivo, tradicional campesino y horticultor auto sostenible) establecidos en la comuna de Hualqui (Región del Biobío, Chile), mediante los flujos de energía presentes en cada estilo, para medir el impacto que generan sobre el paisaje. Los resultados muestran que el estilo de agricultura horticultor auto sostenible presenta una mayor sustentabilidad en comparación con los estilos tradicional campesino y horticultor intensivo y pueden contribuir a nivel de políticas públicas para reorientar la estrategia de acción y fomentar la sustentabilidad en los distintos estilos de agricultura. ¬¬¬¬ Agriculture has been progressing continuously, from the use of free natural resources to the fossil fuels as energy sources. Even though agriculture depends mainly on ecosystem resources and services, its development has been apparently centered only on yield, not considering neither the ecological value of the negative externalities nor the decapitalization of the resources that influence sustainability. Thus, the information on the evaluation of the sustainability on different agriculture styles is scarce or almost null. This investigation evaluates the sustainability in different agriculture styles (intensive horticulture, traditional farm and self-sustaining horticulture) established in Hualqui (Region of Biobío, Chile), through the energy flows present on each style to measure the impact generated on the land. The results revealed that the self-sustaining horticulture style showed a higher sustainability compared to the traditional farm and intensive horticulture style. These results can contribute to the public, policies to reorient the action strategy to encourage the sustainability in the different agriculture styles.

https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-84935512899&partnerID=40&md5=bcbc9c84ecbc145c0f0e4f1076020baf Tropical forests store large amounts of carbon in tree biomass, although the environmental controls on forest carbon stocks remain poorly resolved. Emerging airborne remote sensing techniques offer a powerful approach to understand how aboveground carbon density (ACD) varies across tropical landscapes. In this study, we evaluate the accuracy of the Carnegie Airborne Observatory (CAO) Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) system to detect top-of-canopy tree height (TCH) and ACD across the Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica. LiDAR and field-estimated TCH and ACD were highly correlated across a wide range of forest ages and types. Top-of-canopy height (TCH) reached 67 m, and ACD surpassed 225 Mg C ha-1 , indicating both that airborne CAO LiDAR-based estimates of ACD are accurate in tall, high-biomass forests and that the Osa Peninsula harbors some of the most carbon-rich forests in the Neotropics. We also examined the relative influence of lithologic, topoedaphic and climatic factors on regional patterns in ACD, which are known to influence ACD by regulating forest productivity and turnover. Analyses revealed a spatially nested set of factors controlling ACD patterns, with geologic variation explaining up to 16% of the mapped ACD variation at the regional scale, while local variation in topographic slope explained an additional 18%. Lithologic and topoedaphic factors also explained more ACD variation at 30-m than at 100- m spatial resolution, suggesting that environmental filtering depends on the spatial scale of terrain variation. Our result indicate that patterns in ACD are partially controlled by spatial variation in geologic history and geomorphic processes underpinning topographic diversity across landscapes. ACD also exhibited spatial autocorrelation, which may reflect biological processes that influence ACD, such as the assembly of species or phenotypes across the landscape, but additional research is needed to resolve how abiotic and biotic factors contribute to ACD variation across high biomass, high diversity tropical landscapes.