Irrigation is a widely used water management practice that is often poorly parameterized in land surface and climate models. Previous studies have addressed this issue via use of irrigation area, applied water inventory data, or soil moisture content. These approaches have a variety of drawbacks including data latency, accurately prescribing irrigation intensity, and a lack of conservation of water volume for models using a prescribed soil moisture approach.

Agricultural land use and the management of agricultural lands in Ghana as evidenced fromfarmer practices have been analysed using descriptive and regression analysis. The analysisshows that different land management practices affect crop yields differently in the differentecological zones. Also, the types of land management practices farmers use differ across thedifferent ecological zones. The policy implication is that agricultural interventions should bedeveloped on the basis of agro-ecological zones, and blanket crop improvement packagesshould be avoided.

Preventing the establishment of saltcedar in new areas requires early detection and rapid response. However, it is unclear when saltcedar develops perennating tissue and which treatments are most efficacious for young plants. The effectiveness of mowing, herbicide, and fire treatments, alone and in combination, was evaluated on saltcedar plants grown from seed to 4, 8, and 12 wk age in 2011 and 6 and 12 wk age in 2012. Plants were clipped to 2 cm height or remained intact.

The government of Uganda is currently decentralizing many of its services including those directly related to agriculture and the environment. Non-government organizations (NGOs) and community-based organizations (CBOs) are being asked to take the lead in the provision of government services such as agricultural extension during the transition to demand driven fee-for-service. This paper explores the role of government programs, NGOs and CBOs in the adoption of land management technologies.

Human-induced soil degradation is a serious and complex environmental challenge in Iran. For a long time, human activities, namely the overuse of land, have been influencing the natural processes on and in soils; therefore, various types of soil degradation can be observed in many parts of the country. The understanding and the consideration of direct and indirect effects of human activities on soils are indispensable for the prediction of the human impact on soil degradation processes.

Soil enzymes are widely used as indicators of soil quality because they are sensitive to various land management practices. In particular, enzyme kinetic behaviour and the derived kinetic parameters (Vₘₐₓ and Kₘ) can be indirectly influenced by changes of soil structure, organic matter quantity and quality due to the addition of organic amendments to the soil. When measuring enzyme kinetics, the calculation of the specificity constant (Kₐ), i.e.: the ratio Vₘₐₓ to Kₘ, is advisable to obtain additional information on the whole catalytic process.

Among Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) participants, there is a distinction between farm households using the program to ease out of farming and those using the program to augment production receipts. We find evidence that factors other than crop or livestock revenue and environmental factors are associated with program participation and acreage enrollment among farmers who continue agricultural production.

The article presents ecological and economic zoning of the territory of the Republic of Belarus for the purposes of land use planning by the method of average differences, taking into account the factors which influence the efficiency of agricultural lands usage.

A primary objective of agri-environment schemes is the conservation of biodiversity; in addition to increasing the value of farmland for wildlife, these schemes also aim to restore natural ecosystem functioning. The management of scheme options can influence their value for delivering ecosystem services by modifying the composition of floral and faunal communities. This study examines the impact of an agri-environment scheme prescription on ecosystem functioning by testing the hypothesis that vegetation management influences decomposition rates in grassy arable field margins.