The rapid expansion of hybrid maize in the uplands of northern Laos is viewed by the government as meeting policy aims related to green economic development. Yet, growing evidence of negative consequences of maize expansion are emerging.
The present study describes a methodology to quantify the gross soil nitrogen balance (SNB) for agricultural land use in the Tagus Nitrate Vulnerable Zone (TVZ) between 1989 and 2016, including effects of implementation of the EC Nitrates Directive (ND, 91/676/EEC) since 2004. The study uses decadal information from National Agricultural Census at parish level and is supported by a Geographical Information System (GIS). The average SNB of the TVZ decreased significantly (p
The aim of this paper is to analyze the effect of irrigation delivery services and agricultural extension services on crop choice in southern Tajikistan. This analysis is motivated by the government’s recent efforts to address the country’s severe malnutrition problem by supporting changes in irrigation service delivery and agronomy to increase diversity in agricultural production and consumption, in an environment where the cultivation of cotton had, until recently, been mandatory.
Farmland ownership fragmentation is one of the important drivers of land-use changes. It is a process that in its extreme form can essentially limit land management sustainability. Based on a typology of land degradation and its causes, this process is here classified for the first time as an underlying cause which through tenure insecurity causes land degradation in five types (water erosion, wind erosion, soil compaction, reduction of organic matter, and nutrient depletion).
The design of efficient Green Infrastructure —GI— systems is a key issue to achieve sustainable development city planning goals in the twenty-first century. This study’s main contribution is the identification of potential GI elements to better align the environmental, social and economic perspectives in the GI design by including information about the use, activities, preferences and presence of people. To achieve this, user generated content from Location Based Social Network —LBSN— Foursquare is used as a complementary data source.
Blue-green infrastructure (BGI) is becoming a more popular means of dealing with climate change and climate change-related events. However, as the concept of BGI is relatively new, many urban and rural planners are unfamiliar with the barriers they may face during the lifecycle of a BGI project. As a result, some have been hesitant to adopt BGI solutions. The literature has unveiled many of the barriers that inhibit the successful development of BGI, however, this information has yet to be presented in a manner that allows for easy identification.
Biodiversity offsets seek to counterbalance loss of biodiversity due to major developments by generating equivalent biodiversity benefits elsewhere, resulting, at least in theory, in ‘no net loss’ (or even a ‘net positive gain’) in biodiversity. While local costs of major developments themselves receive significant attention, the local costs of associated biodiversity offsets have not.
Enabling knowledge exchange between scientists and decision-makers is becoming increasingly necessary to promote the development of effective decision-support tools (DSTs) for environmental management. Participation of stakeholders in the design process beyond a basic level of consultation is essential for promoting trust in modelled outputs and accelerating eventual uptake of resulting tools and models by end-user communities. This study outlines the development of a DST to visualise and communicate the spatial and temporal patterns of E.
Agriculture around the world is one of the industries most affected by, and faced with responsibility to mitigate, climate change. Through improvements in technology and efficiency as well as changes to land use management, agriculture can make an important contribution to meeting global commitments such as the Paris agreement or the Sustainable Development Goals. Yet international carbon markets have not resulted in sufficiently high financial returns to motivate the full potential of land sector changes in Australia and globally.
Land use and land cover change (LULCC) affects the climate through both biogeochemical (BGC) and biophysical (BPH) mechanisms. While BGC effects are assessed at global scale and are at the heart of climate treaties such as the Paris Agreement, BPH effects are totally absent despite their increasingly recognized impact, especially at local scale. This stems from the complexity in characterizing their climate impacts both at local and global scale, which makes it impractical to offer clear advices for the development of climate policies.
Most studies on the effects of tillage operations documented the effects of tillage on losses through surface runoff. On flat areas, the subsurface runoff is the dominating pathway for water, soil and nutrients. This study presents results from a five-year plot study on a flat area measuring surface and subsurface runoff losses. The treatments compared were (A) autumn ploughing with oats, (B) autumn ploughing with winter wheat and (C) spring ploughing with spring barley (n = 3).
The article sought to understand public perceptions on city landscaping during the outbreak of COVID-19. The research aimed to discuss the theoretical aspects related to restrictions on travel during the pandemic and city landscaping and to conduct an empirical study of experiences of the Vilnius Pop-up Beach, Lithuania. The thematic analysis selected for the empirical study is not limited and flexible, allowing for revealing the experiences and public opinion, including that expressed in the media, relating to the Vilnius Pop-up Beach.