A review of concepts and criteria for assessing agroecosystem health including a preliminary case study of southern Ontario

The model of agroecosystem health has been advocated as an appealing guideline for agricultural research. Yet, some ambiguity remains in how the concept can be defined and how the general criteria for assessing the health of an agroecosystem at a particular scale can be selected. This paper reviews the literature from various disciplines pertinent to the concept of agroecosystem health, It focuses on assessing the applicability of assorted concepts. norms, and criteria to agroecosystem health assessment, and develops a general definition of agroecosystem health. A classification scheme is proposed which scattered while potentially useful concepts in the literature are discussed, using southern Ontario as a case study to further illustrate the usefulness of the conceptual framework in studying agroecosystem health. Agroecosystem health can be characterized from four different perspectives that are related to agroecosystem structure, function, organization, and dynamics. Given the complexity of agroecosystems. the health of the systems at different scales cannot be fully captured from one perspective only. Criteria, such as resource availability, diversity, and accessibility, are some of the existing concepts capable of depicting the structural state of agroecosystem health. Concepts including productivity, efficiency. and effectiveness appear very useful for assessing the functional performance of agroecosystems. As any agroecosystem interacts actively with its external environments and changes over timer such characteristics are not necessarily captured by structural or functional criteria. Organizational criteria, such as autonomy and self-dependence, are useful to characterize the organizational nature inherent to agroecosystem health. Stability and resilience on the other hand are two appealing concepts capable of revealing the temporal dimension of agroecosystem health. Numerous empirical studies that are used to illustrate how these concepts developed in different disciplines of agricultural research can be potentially employed to facilitate the assessment of agroecosystem health. It is argued that any holistic investigation of the health of an agroecosystem needs to examine biophysical. economic, and human conditions of the system and to evaluate these conditions from perspectives pertinent to system structure. function, organization. and dynamics. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.