Agricultural systems are increasingly challenged to maintain soil health and ecosystem functioning while reducing external inputs, nutrient losses and environmental impacts. Integrated crop–livestock systems offer opportunities to reconnect nutrient and carbon flows between crops, plants, animals and soils, with livestock manures and other organic resources playing a central role in closing biogeochemical cycles. However, these systems also involve complex interactions and trade-offs affecting soil processes, nutrient availability, carbon dynamics, greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity and the resilience of agroecosystems under global change.
This session invites contributions exploring the interactions between soils, plants and livestock across integrated and circular agroecosystems. We welcome studies addressing soil physical, chemical and biological processes; carbon and nutrient cycling; soil organic matter and soil health; manure and organic amendment dynamics; greenhouse gas emissions; microbial and soil biodiversity; and the effects of management on ecosystem functions and resilience.
We particularly encourage contributions that investigate how plant–livestock integration and circular management can support agroecological transitions, including approaches that reconnect livestock-derived nutrients with plant production and soil functioning across croplands, grasslands, pastures and mixed farming systems. Experimental, modelling and long-term observational studies are welcome, as well as research examining trade-offs, synergies and system-level outcomes under changing climate and management conditions.