Community reorganization stabilizes freshwater ecosystems in intensively managed agricultural fields

Sustainable intensification may depend on associating precision farming with the harnessing of ecological principles in crop fields and with integrating farms and non-farmed land in productive landscapes. Small wetlands could play an important role in both pursuits for having high per-unit-area rates of element cycling and species richness while deeply penetrating crop fields. However, their potential for ecosystem service provisioning is unlikely to be met if land management intensification promotes ecosystem destabilization in biomass production. 
We tested the consequences of land use intensification on various dimensions of freshwater ecosystem stability by means of a large-scale field experiment converting extensive pastures to intensive pastures and sugarcane plantations in Southeastern Brazil. Nested within experimental plots were 4,000-L mesocosms simulating ponds and puddles commonly found in productive landscapes. Mesocosms were monitored for basic physico-chemical parameters..., ,