Human activities frequently cause a degradation of soil environmental conditions which
leads to a reduction in the abundance and to a simplification of animal and plant
communities, where species able to bear stress predominate and rare taxa decrease in
abundance or disappear. The result of this biodiversity reduction is an artificial ecosystem
that requires constant human intervention and extra running costs, whereas natural
ecosystems are regulated by plant and animal communities through flows of energy and
nutrients, a form of control progressively being lost with agricultural intensification.
For these reasons the identification of agricultural systems which allow the combination of
production targets and environmentally friendly management practices, protecting both soil
and biodiversity, is essential in order to prevent the decline of soil fauna communities in
agricultural landscapes.