Complementary analyses of soil microbial and chemical properties and human observation on augmented ecosystems in urban environment

Abstract

We realized a high level of biodiversity (200+ plant species) beyond the natural state on a rooftop garden in city area based on the Synecoculture method, which is a densely mixed polyculture of edible plants, and analyzed the diversity and activity of the soil microorganisms and chemical properties during two years. Soil microbes gradually increased in diversity and activity after the installation, and were positively correlated with cation exchange capacity. This may constitute one of the rationales of Synecoculture that could ameliorate soil quality starting from decertified farmland and provide high productivity. We also investigated whether the results of these objective analyses matched the subjective evaluation of the practitioners. As a result, two years after continuous practices, the human subjective evaluations were qualitatively consistent with the objective data, suggesting that future research and surveys could incorporate trained human subjectivity as a part of the assessment proxies in ecosystem management.

Keywords

• Ecosystem management
• Soil microbial diversity and activity
• Cation exchange capacity (CEC)
• Humus
• Synecoculture
• Augmented ecosystem