TY - CONF A1 - Seserman, Diana-Maria A1 - Veste, Maik A1 - Freese, Dirk A1 - Swieter, Anita A1 - Langhof, Maren T1 - Benefits of agroforestry systems for land equivalent ratio - case studies in Brandenburg and Lower Saxony, Germany T2 - Proceedings of the 4th European Agroforestry Conference Agroforestry as Sustainable Land Use 28-30 May 2018, Nijmegen, The Netherlands N2 - Transitioning towards agroforestry demands systematic productivity assessments of such systems under different climatic and edaphic conditions. In this regard, the Land Equivalent Ratio (LER) serves as a valuable productivity indicator of agroforestry since it evaluates yields from growing trees and crops together in comparison to yields from monocultures over the same period. Consequently, our objective was to evaluate the overall productivity of two agroforestry systems in Forst (Brandenburg) and Wendhausen (Lower Saxony) by means of LER. Our approach followed two assumptions: (i) the yields of trees and crops had equal economic importance and (ii) the economic importance was given solely by the annual crop, the yield of trees representing a supplementary profit. The resulted values for LER were consistently above their specific threshold, corroborating the greater efficiency of agroforestry systems rather than monoculture. Additionally, this study highlighted the importance of choosing the appropriate assumptions when calculating the LER. Y1 - 2018 UR - https://opus4.kobv.de/opus4-UBICO/frontdoor/index/index/docId/22099 UR - https://www.repository.utl.pt/bitstream/10400.5/15589/1/REP-CEF-EURAF-conference_book.pdf SN - 978-84-09-02384-4 SP - 26 EP - 29 PB - University of Santiago de Compostela CY - Santiago de Compostela ER -