Assessing the impacts of plantation agriculture to below ground biodiversity :

Abstract

The increased demand of fuel, fodder, charcoal, settlement, infrastructure and agricultural products among others has caused a great threat to forests leading to their depletion hence affecting the below ground biodiversity by reducing their abundance. The conservation of BGB has the potential to enhance soil fertility, reduce erosion, improve water availability, enhance biodiversity, increase aesthetics, and sequesters carbon (Garrity, 2010). Hence soil ecosystem services are improved. The study brings out the abundance and availability of BGB as the objectives states since the ecosystem services within the soil rely on them. The study was done in- Kaweri coffee plantation ltd in Mubende district. Purposive sampling was considered to determine the Sampling population. Only the blocks within the coffee plantation that have coffee trees with agrarian trees and natural belts were investigated. The BGB sample points were of 30cmx30cm stretch and 20cm deep for studying the availability and abundance of the BGB. The study considered only two land use that is coffee plantation and natural belt. Under coffee plantation, three positions were considered that is under coffee trees, under natural trees within the plantation and under bare land. The dominant soil organisms in Kaweri coffee plantation include; termites, black ants, millipedes, earthworms, snails, caterpillar and spiders and the abundance of these species is 642, 494, 230, 221, 149, 42 and 36 respectively. It was discovered that most of the soil organisms ate found under the natural trees left in the coffee plantation or planted (482) followed by soil organisms under coffee trees (east under bate land (388) within the coffee plantation. It was also discovered that under land use, coffee plantation is having mote soil organisms (1340) due to the favourable conditions compared with the bio-corridors natural belt (471) therefore recommend that for the soil organisms to be conserved in the agricultural systems, agro forestry should be practiced more since most of the soil organisms are found under agrarian trees, within the farm. And bare grounds should be avoided in the plantation since they support few soil organisms. Covering plants like indigofera should be emphasized in the plantation as well as organic farming.