43 CFR 3400.3-3 - Department of Agriculture lands.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-10-01

... 43 Public Lands: Interior 2 2013-10-01 2013-10-01 false Department of Agriculture lands. 3400.3-3 Section 3400.3-3 Public Lands: Interior Regulations Relating to Public Lands (Continued) BUREAU OF LAND...: General § 3400.3-3 Department of Agriculture lands. Subject to the provisions of § 3400.3-1, the Secretary...

Tracking Agricultural Land Degradation with Landsat

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lam, K.; Jimenez, U.; Mclean, A.

2013-12-01

Land preservation and in particular, soil preservation, is key to maintaining the stability of wildlife on earth. The necessity to maintain land quality isn't unique to any specific area, it is a global issue. Land degradation can be witnessed across the globe, from the Heihe River Basin, China to the San Joaquin River in Central Valley, California. Large-scale 'traditional' agricultural practices such as widespread monoculture, overuse of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and over-farming, have been found to cause significant land degradation in many regions. Once the causes of land degradation have been established, it is important to research preventative and rehabilitative measures. This is where the popularization of agricultural sustainability has proven wildly important, manifesting in a world-wide phenomenon. This research used Landsat and ENVI to: (1) identify changes in vegetation, over time, along the Heihe River, in an effort to measure the effectiveness of a new mandate focused on rehabilitating this desertification-prone area; and (2) show changes in the San Joaquin River through three droughts (1986 to present). The sudden spur of interest in agricultural sustainability and land preservation has led to changes in legislation, such as the Heihe River Basin Mandate, increased concern over the use of land degrading techniques, tools, chemicals, and more research on extreme weather events.

Measuring land-use and land-cover change using the U.S. department of agriculture's cropland data layer: Cautions and recommendations

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lark, Tyler J.; Mueller, Richard M.; Johnson, David M.; Gibbs, Holly K.

2017-10-01

Monitoring agricultural land is important for understanding and managing food production, environmental conservation efforts, and climate change. The United States Department of Agriculture's Cropland Data Layer (CDL), an annual satellite imagery-derived land cover map, has been increasingly used for this application since complete coverage of the conterminous United States became available in 2008. However, the CDL is designed and produced with the intent of mapping annual land cover rather than tracking changes over time, and as a result certain precautions are needed in multi-year change analyses to minimize error and misapplication. We highlight scenarios that require special considerations, suggest solutions to key challenges, and propose a set of recommended good practices and general guidelines for CDL-based land change estimation. We also characterize a problematic issue of crop area underestimation bias within the CDL that needs to be accounted for and corrected when calculating changes to crop and cropland areas. When used appropriately and in conjunction with related information, the CDL is a valuable and effective tool for detecting diverse trends in agriculture. By explicitly discussing the methods and techniques for post-classification measurement of land-cover and land-use change using the CDL, we aim to further stimulate the discourse and continued development of suitable methodologies. Recommendations generated here are intended specifically for the CDL but may be broadly applicable to additional remotely-sensed land cover datasets including the National Land Cover Database (NLCD), Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS)-based land cover products, and other regional, national, and global land cover classification maps.

Agricultural land use change in the Northeast

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

The USDA Census of Agriculture (http://www.agcensus.usda.gov/) provides county-level estimates of farm numbers, land use area and livestock and crop production every five years. In 2007, only eight of the 299 counties that make up the twelve Northeastern states had no agricultural land use. About 20...

Agricultural Land Conversion: Background and Issues.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Furuseth, Owen J.

1982-01-01

Analyzes forces contributing to the conversion of agricultural land for other uses, causes for the depletion of the land, major issues surrounding the loss of farmland, and current policies designed to control haphazard land conversion. Concludes that the United States lacks a national farmland protection policy. (KC)

Phosphorus runoff from agricultural land and direct fertilizer effects: a review.

PubMed

Hart, Murray R; Quin, Bert F; Nguyen, M Long

2004-01-01

Phosphorus (P) is one of the most important mineral nutrients in agricultural systems, and along with nitrogen (N), is generally the most limiting nutrient for plant production. Farming systems have intensified greatly over time, and in recent years it has become apparent that the concomitant increase in losses of N and P from agricultural land is having a serious detrimental effect on water quality and the environment. The last two decades have seen a marked increase in research into the issues surrounding diffuse losses of P to surface and ground water. This paper reviews this research, examining the issue of P forms in runoff, and highlighting the exceptions to some generally held assumptions about land use and P transport. In particular the review focuses on P losses associated with recent P fertilizer application, as opposed to organic manures, both on the amounts and the forms of P in runoff water. The effects of the physicochemical characteristics of different forms of P fertilizer are explored, particularly in relation to water solubility. Various means of mitigating the risk of loss of P are discussed. It is argued that the influence of recent fertilizer applications is an under-researched area, yet may offer the most readily applicable opportunity to mitigate P losses by land users. This review highlights and discusses some options that have recently become available that may make a significant contribution to the task of sustainable management of nutrient losses from agriculture.

Aspects of agricultural land use in Ireland

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lee, J.

1986-02-01

Ireland's soil regions consist largely of Luvisols, Cambisols, and Gleysols. Approximately 60% of Ireland's land area is subject to varying degrees of soil limitations. Twenty-five percent of the land area comprises wet lowland mineral soils. Ninety percent of Ireland's agricultural area comprises pasture, hay, and silage. Approximately 30% of the agricultural area is devoted to dairying, and 55% to cattle production. is devoted to dairying, and 55% to cattle production. Trends in agricultural land use indicate that tillage declined substantially while livestock showed a substantial increase particularly in the decade 1965 1975. Research concludes that over 2.8 million ha has a capacity to carry at least 100 LU/40 ha (100 acres). Levels of fertilizer use in Ireland are below EEC levels. The highest fertilizer use levels are associated with the eastern and southern areas of Ireland. Tillage crops occupy only 10% of the agricultural area, while they account for 26% of tertilizer and lime use.

Digital spatial soil and land information for agriculture development

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sharma, R. K.; Laghathe, Pankaj; Meena, Ranglal; Barman, Alok Kumar; Das, Satyendra Nath

2006-12-01

Natural resource management calls for study of natural system prevailing in the country. In India floods and droughts visit regularly, causing extensive damages of natural wealth including agriculture that are crucial for sustenance of economic growth. The Indian Sub-continent drained by many major rivers and their tributaries where watershed, the hydrological unit forms a natural system that allows management and development of land resources following natural harmony. Acquisition of various kinds and levels of soil and land characteristics using both conventional and remote sensing techniques and subsequent development of digital spatial data base are essential to evolve strategy for planning watershed development programmes, their monitoring and impact evaluation. The multi-temporal capability of remote sensing sensors helps to update the existing data base which are of dynamic in nature. The paper outlines the concept of spatial data base development, generation using remote sensing techniques, designing of data structure, standardization and integration with watershed layers and various non spatial attribute data for various applications covering watershed development planning, alternate land use planning, soil and water conservation, diversified agriculture practices, generation of soil health card, soil and land reclamation, etc. The soil and land characteristics are vital to derive various interpretative groupings or master table that helps to generate the desired level of information of various clients using the GIS platform. The digital spatial data base on soils and watersheds generated by All India Soil and Land Use Survey will act as a sub-server of the main GIS based Web Server being hoisted by the planning commission for application of spatial data for planning purposes under G2G domain. It will facilitate e-governance for natural resource management using modern technology.

National land-cover data and national agricultural census estimates of agricultural land use in the northeastern United States

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

The landscape of the northeastern United States is diverse and patchy, a complex mixture of forest, agriculture, and developed lands. Many urgent social and environmental issues require spatially-referenced information on land use, a need filled by the National Land-Cover Data (NLCD). The accuracy o...

The importance of agricultural lands for Himalayan birds in winter.

PubMed

Elsen, Paul R; Kalyanaraman, Ramnarayan; Ramesh, Krishnamurthy; Wilcove, David S

2017-04-01

The impacts of land-use change on biodiversity in the Himalayas are poorly known, notwithstanding widespread deforestation and agricultural intensification in this highly biodiverse region. Although intact primary forests harbor many Himalayan birds during breeding, a large number of bird species use agricultural lands during winter. We assessed how Himalayan bird species richness, abundance, and composition during winter are affected by forest loss stemming from agriculture and grazing. Bird surveys along 12 elevational transects within primary forest, low-intensity agriculture, mixed subsistence agriculture, and intensively grazed pastures in winter revealed that bird species richness and abundance were greatest in low-intensity and mixed agriculture, intermediate in grazed pastures, and lowest in primary forest at both local and landscape scales; over twice as many species and individuals were recorded in low-intensity agriculture than in primary forest. Bird communities in primary forests were distinct from those in all other land-use classes, but only 4 species were unique to primary forests. Low-, medium-, and high-intensity agriculture harbored 32 unique species. Of the species observed in primary forest, 80% had equal or greater abundance in low-intensity agricultural lands, underscoring the value of these lands in retaining diverse community assemblages at high densities in winter. Among disturbed landscapes, bird species richness and abundance declined as land-use intensity increased, especially in high-intensity pastures. Our results suggest that agricultural landscapes are important for most Himalayan bird species in winter. But agricultural intensification-especially increased grazing-will likely result in biodiversity losses. Given that forest reserves alone may inadequately conserve Himalayan birds in winter, comprehensive conservation strategies in the region must go beyond protecting intact primary forests and ensure that low-intensity agricultural

Modelling analysis of water and land effects on agricultural development in the Heihe Agricultural Production Area, China

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wang, G.

2017-12-01

Water and land resources play vital roles in agricultural growth. They not only remarkably support overall economic growth, but may also restrict agricultural development. To document the influence of water and land on agriculture, we examined the "drag effects" of these two resources in limiting agricultural production. In this study, data from eight counties collected during 2000-2012 from the Heihe Agricultural Production Area in Gansu Province were used to analyze the drag effects of water and land resources on agricultural growth. These effects varied largely among the eight counties, which was consistent with the availability of these resources. This study will give scientific support to coordinating development with the availability of water and land resources in agricultural areas of China

Agroforestry: working trees for sequestering carbon on agricultural lands

Treesearch

M.M. Schoeneberger

2008-01-01

Agroforestry is an appealing option for sequestering carbon on agricultural lands because it can sequester significant amounts of carbon while leaving the bulk of the land in agricultural production. Simultaneously, it can help landowners and society address many other issues facing these lands, such as economic diversification, biodiversity, and water quality....

Land Conservation in an Evolving Agricultural Industry: Trade-offs to Consider

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Baker, J. S.; Murray, B. C.; McCarl, B. A.; Jackson, R. B.

2008-12-01

practices (exhibiting a 53.4% reversion rate). This reversion is a logical, low cost extensification of crop land; higher reversion rates are observed where agricultural land is most valuable, such as in Iowa and Illinois. Forecasted CRP re-cultivation accompanies environmental degradation in the form of increased chemical applications, irrigation water use and soil erosion relative to the baseline. However, if the CRP is maintained at current levels then this would shift LUC to other conversions, including a greater loss of forest amounting to 6.3 million acres relative to a case where land in CRP freely reverts. This increase in deforestation is likely to spill over into other countries as well. The net carbon loss of deforested land negates the carbon benefits of maintaining the CRP in its current state. Thus, while the environmental impacts of re-cultivating conservation lands are potentially serious, maintaining the CRP in its current form could induce LUC and even greater GHG and environmental emissions. The study concludes by discussing the environmental and economic trade-offs of land conservation under the aforementioned scenarios, and offers policy recommendations for future land conservation initiatives.

PROCESS DESIGN MANUAL: LAND APPLICATION OF ...

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Land application of sewage sludge generated by domestic sewage treatment is performed in an environmentally safe and cost–effective manner in many communities. Land application involves taking advantage of the fertilizing and soil conditioning properties of sewage sludge by spreading the sewage sludge on the soil surface, incorporating or injecting the sewage sludge into soil, or spraying the sewage sludge. Because sewage sludge disposal practices (e.g., landfilling) are becoming less available and more costly, and because of the increasing desire to beneficially reuse waste residuals whenever possible, land application is increasingly chosen as a sewage sludge use or disposal practice. Approximately 33 percent of the 5.4 million dry metric tons of sewage sludge generated annually in the United States at publicly owned treatment works (POTWs) is land applied. Of the sewage sludge that is land applied, approximately 67% is land applied on agricultural lands, 3% on forest lands, approximately 9% on reclamation sites, and 9% on public contact sites; 12% is sold or given away in a bag or other container for application to the land (Federal Register, Vol. 58, No. 32, February 19, 1993). In addition, approximately 8.6 billion gallons of domestic septage is generated annually. Land application of sewage sludge has been practiced in many countries for centuries so that the nutrients (e.g., nitrogen, phosphorus) and organic matter in sewage sludge can be beneficia

The Land Cover Dynamics and Conversion of Agricultural Land in Northwestern Bangladesh, 1973-2003.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Pervez, M.; Seelan, S. K.; Rundquist, B. C.

2006-05-01

The importance of land cover information describing the nature and extent of land resources and changes over time is increasing; this is especially true in Bangladesh, where land cover is changing rapidly. This paper presents research into the land cover dynamics of northwestern Bangladesh for the period 1973-2003 using Landsat satellite images in combination with field survey data collected in January and February 2005. Land cover maps were produced for eight different years during the study period with an average 73 percent overall classification accuracy. The classification results and post-classification change analysis showed that agriculture is the dominant land cover (occupying 74.5 percent of the study area) and is being reduced at a rate of about 3,000 ha per year. In addition, 6.7 percent of the agricultural land is vulnerable to temporary water logging annually. Despite this loss of agricultural land, irrigated agriculture increased substantially until 2000, but has since declined because of diminishing water availability and uncontrolled extraction of groundwater driven by population pressures and the extended need for food. A good agreement (r = 0.73) was found between increases in irrigated land and the depletion of the shallow groundwater table, a factor affecting widely practiced small-scale irrigation in northwestern Bangladesh. Results quantified the land cover change patterns and the stresses placed on natural resources; additionally, they demonstrated an accurate and economical means to map and analyze changes in land cover over time at a regional scale, which can assist decision makers in land and natural resources management decisions.

Climate change impacts on global rainfed agricultural land availability

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhang, X.; Cai, X.

2010-12-01

Global rainfed agricultural land availability can be subject to significant changes in both magnitude and spatial distribution due to climate change. We assess the possible changes using current and projected climate data from thirteen general circulation models (GCMs) under two emission scenarios, A1B & B1, together with global databases on land, including soil properties and slope. Two ensemble methods with the set of GCMs, Simple Average Method (SAM) and Root Mean Square Error Ensemble Method (RMSEMM), are employed to abate uncertainty involved in global GCM projections for assembling regional climate. Fuzzy logic, which handles land classification in an approximate yet efficient way, is adopted to estimate the land suitability through empirically determined membership functions and fuzzy rules chosen through a learning process based on remote sensed crop land products. Land suitability under five scenarios, which include the present-climate baseline scenario and four projected scenarios, A1B-SAM, A1B-RMSEMM, B1-SAM, and B1-RMSEMM, are assessed for both global and seven important agricultural regions in the world, Africa, China, India, Europe (excluding Russia), Russia, South America, and U.S. It is found that countries at the high latitudes of north hemisphere are more likely to benefit from climate change with respect to agricultural land availability; while countries at mid- and low latitudes may suffer different levels of loss of potential arable land. Expansions of the gross potential arable land are likely to occur in regions at the north high latitudes, including Russia, North China and U.S., while land shrinking can be expected in South America, Africa, India and Europe. Although the greatest potential for agricultural expansion lies in Africa and South America, with current cultivated land accounting for 20% and 13% respectively of the net potential arable land, negative effects from climate change may decline the potential. In summary, climate change

Formation of Land Use Order in Hamamatsu City under the Original Criteria of the Farm Land Exclusion from the Agricultural Promotion Area

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Arita, Hiroyuki; Miyazawa, Shingo

While zoning has been practiced to prevent sprawling development and to preserve collective farmland under the Agriculture Promotion Act, The Agricultural Promotion Area (APA) has been reduced in area by the action of the Farm Land Exclusion from the APA (EAPA) aiming at urban-uses. Since the EAPA has a great impact on the regional land use, appropriate criteria application techniques ought to be formulated at the transaction level. However, most local governments seem to have no strategic measure so far. Hamamatsu city, meanwhile, has introduced a unique standard upon which approval of the EAPA aptitude is based in 2003. Since the number of EAPA registration was relatively large in Hamamatsu city owing to the zone bordering on the line of land which a building has erected the officials' willingness to establish an objective standard was high. In this research, we verified the effect of the criteria application over the land use ordering, and made proposals for improvement of the present state through the examination of the EAPA criterion application of Hamamatsu city.

25 CFR 166.300 - How is Indian agricultural land managed?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-04-01

... 25 Indians 1 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false How is Indian agricultural land managed? 166.300 Section 166.300 Indians BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS, DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR LAND AND WATER GRAZING PERMITS Land and Operations Management § 166.300 How is Indian agricultural land managed? Tribes, individual...

25 CFR 166.300 - How is Indian agricultural land managed?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-04-01

... 25 Indians 1 2014-04-01 2014-04-01 false How is Indian agricultural land managed? 166.300 Section 166.300 Indians BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS, DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR LAND AND WATER GRAZING PERMITS Land and Operations Management § 166.300 How is Indian agricultural land managed? Tribes, individual...

Urbanization and agricultural land loss in India: comparing satellite estimates with census data.

PubMed

Pandey, Bhartendu; Seto, Karen C

2015-01-15

We examine the impacts of urbanization on agricultural land loss in India from 2001 to 2010. We combined a hierarchical classification approach with econometric time series analysis to reconstruct land-cover change histories using time series MODIS 250 m VI images composited at 16-day intervals and night time lights (NTL) data. We compared estimates of agricultural land loss using satellite data with agricultural census data. Our analysis highlights six key results. First, agricultural land loss is occurring around smaller cities more than around bigger cities. Second, from 2001 to 2010, each state lost less than 1% of its total geographical area due to agriculture to urban expansion. Third, the northeastern states experienced the least amount of agricultural land loss. Fourth, agricultural land loss is largely in states and districts which have a larger number of operational or approved SEZs. Fifth, urban conversion of agricultural land is concentrated in a few districts and states with high rates of economic growth. Sixth, agricultural land loss is predominantly in states with higher agricultural land suitability compared to other states. Although the total area of agricultural land lost to urban expansion has been relatively low, our results show that since 2006, the amount of agricultural land converted has been increasing steadily. Given that the preponderance of India's urban population growth has yet to occur, the results suggest an increase in the conversion of agricultural land going into the future. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The Land Use Change From Agricultural to Non-Agricultural in Bungo Regency, Jambi Province, Indonesia

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dolly, Fajar Ifan; Kismartini, Kismartini; Purnaweni, Hartuti

2018-02-01

This study aimed at observing the development of agricultural land use in Bungo Regency, Jambi Province, for other purposes, such as plantation, mining, and other commercial buildings. According to the sustainable agriculture supposed by the government, a change in land use has become an important issue to be taken into account as such that the change does not tend to damage the environment. The research findings from Bungo Regency demonstrated the change in agricultural land into copra and rubber plantation areas. Local people had changed their mindset towards reluctance to become farmers, which caused the loss of farmer regeneration and weakened the farmer exchange rate towards the agricultural commodities.

Nitrogen losses to the environment following food-based digestate and compost applications to agricultural land.

PubMed

Nicholson, Fiona; Bhogal, Anne; Cardenas, Laura; Chadwick, Dave; Misselbrook, Tom; Rollett, Alison; Taylor, Matt; Thorman, Rachel; Williams, John

2017-09-01

The anaerobic digestion of food waste for energy recovery produces a nutrient-rich digestate which is a valuable source of crop available nitrogen (N). As with any 'new' material being recycled to agricultural land it is important to develop best management practices that maximise crop available N supply, whilst minimising emissions to the environment. In this study, ammonia (NH 3 ) and nitrous oxide (N 2 O) emissions to air and nitrate (NO 3 - ) leaching losses to water following digestate, compost and livestock manure applications to agricultural land were measured at 3 sites in England and Wales. Ammonia emissions were greater from applications of food-based digestate (c.40% of total N applied) than from livestock slurry (c.30% of total N applied) due to its higher ammonium-N content (mean 5.6 kg/t compared with 1-2 kg/t for slurry) and elevated pH (mean 8.3 compared with 7.7 for slurry). Whilst bandspreading was effective at reducing NH 3 emissions from slurry compared with surface broadcasting it was not found to be an effective mitigation option for food-based digestate in this study. The majority of the NH 3 losses occurred within 6 h of spreading highlighting the importance of rapid soil incorporation as a method for reducing NH 3 emissions. Nitrous oxide losses from food-based digestates were low, with emission factors all less than the IPCC default value of 1% (mean 0.45 ± 0.15%). Overwinter NO 3 - leaching losses from food-based digestate were similar to those from pig slurry, but much greater than from pig farmyard manure or compost. Both gaseous N losses and NO 3 - leaching from green and green/food composts were low, indicating that, in these terms, compost can be considered as an 'environmentally benign' material. These findings have been used in the development of best practice guidelines which provide a framework for the responsible use of digestates and composts in agriculture. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Determinants of Urban Expansion and Agricultural Land Conversion in 25 EU Countries.

PubMed

Ustaoglu, Eda; Williams, Brendan

2017-10-01

Agricultural land conversion is resulting from ongoing complex interaction between the physical environment, policy settings and socio-economic factors. Case studies of the determinants of agricultural land conversion potentially contribute to the analysis of the main causes of land-use change. This can assist authorities and policy makers in understanding the relative importance of a wide range of factors on urban expansion and associated agricultural land-use change. This paper explores the determinants of agricultural land conversion to urban uses in the studied 25 European Union countries between 2000 and 2006. European-level as well as region-specific land-use changes are studied. The research is using the spatial data adapted from European Corine Land Cover maps of 2000 and 2006 and utilised other European sources regarding socio-economic, natural, geological, climate, and policy-related data. The differences in urbanisation processes observed in different regions in Europe emphasise the regional variations of urban conversion process of agricultural land use. This study identifies a combination of socio-economic drivers, policy-related factors, nature and location-based factors as key influences on agricultural land conversion processes in Europe. Specifically we found that the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) subsidies were influential in curbing urbanisation and reducing agricultural land consumption.

Determinants of Urban Expansion and Agricultural Land Conversion in 25 EU Countries

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ustaoglu, Eda; Williams, Brendan

2017-10-01

Agricultural land conversion is resulting from ongoing complex interaction between the physical environment, policy settings and socio-economic factors. Case studies of the determinants of agricultural land conversion potentially contribute to the analysis of the main causes of land-use change. This can assist authorities and policy makers in understanding the relative importance of a wide range of factors on urban expansion and associated agricultural land-use change. This paper explores the determinants of agricultural land conversion to urban uses in the studied 25 European Union countries between 2000 and 2006. European-level as well as region-specific land-use changes are studied. The research is using the spatial data adapted from European Corine Land Cover maps of 2000 and 2006 and utilised other European sources regarding socio-economic, natural, geological, climate, and policy-related data. The differences in urbanisation processes observed in different regions in Europe emphasise the regional variations of urban conversion process of agricultural land use. This study identifies a combination of socio-economic drivers, policy-related factors, nature and location-based factors as key influences on agricultural land conversion processes in Europe. Specifically we found that the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) subsidies were influential in curbing urbanisation and reducing agricultural land consumption.

Global land-water nexus: Agricultural land and freshwater use embodied in worldwide supply chains.

PubMed

Chen, B; Han, M Y; Peng, K; Zhou, S L; Shao, L; Wu, X F; Wei, W D; Liu, S Y; Li, Z; Li, J S; Chen, G Q

2018-02-01

As agricultural land and freshwater inextricably interrelate and interact with each other, the conventional water and land policy in "silos" should give way to nexus thinking when formulating the land and water management strategies. This study constructs a systems multi-regional input-output (MRIO) model to expound global land-water nexus by simultaneously tracking agricultural land and freshwater use flows along the global supply chains. Furthermore, land productivity and irrigation water requirements of 160 crops in different regions are investigated to reflect the land-water linkage. Results show that developed economies (e.g., USA and Japan) and major large developing economies (e.g., mainland China and India) are the overriding drivers of agricultural land and freshwater use globally. In general, significant net transfers of these two resources are identified from resource-rich and less-developed economies to resource-poor and more-developed economies. For some crops, blue water productivity is inversely related to land productivity, indicating that irrigation water consumption is sometimes at odds with land use. The results could stimulus international cooperation for sustainable land and freshwater management targeting on original suppliers and final consumers along the global supply chains. Moreover, crop-specific land-water linkage could provide insights for trade-off decisions on minimizing the environmental impacts on local land and water resources. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Impacts of incorporating land exchanges between forestry and agriculture in sector models.

Treesearch

Ralph J. Alig; Darius M. Adams; Bruce A. McCarl

1998-01-01

The forest and agriculture sectors are linked by having a portion of their land bases suitable for use in either sector. A substantial part of the southern land base is suitable for either forestry or agriculture use, with most of forestation on U.S. agriculture land in the South. We examine how land exchanges between forestry and agriculture are influenced by specific...

Implication of Agricultural Land Use Change on Regional Climate Projection

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wang, G.; Ahmed, K. F.; You, L.

2015-12-01

Agricultural land use plays an important role in land-atmosphere interaction. Agricultural activity is one of the most important processes driving human-induced land use land cover change (LULCC) in a region. In addition to future socioeconomic changes, climate-induced changes in crop yield represent another important factor shaping agricultural land use. In feedback, the resulting LULCC influences the direction and magnitude of global, regional and local climate change by altering Earth's radiative equilibrium. Therefore, assessment of climate change impact on future agricultural land use and its feedback is of great importance in climate change study. In this study, to evaluate the feedback of projected land use changes to the regional climate in West Africa, we employed an asynchronous coupling between a regional climate model (RegCM) and a prototype land use projection model (LandPro). The LandPro model, which was developed to project the future change in agricultural land use and the resulting shift in natural vegetation in West Africa, is a spatially explicit model that can account for both climate and socioeconomic changes in projecting future land use changes. In the asynchronously coupled modeling framework, LandPro was run for every five years during the period of 2005-2050 accounting for climate-induced change in crop yield and socioeconomic changes to project the land use pattern by the mid-21st century. Climate data at 0.5˚ was derived from RegCM to drive the crop model DSSAT for each of the five-year periods to simulate crop yields, which was then provided as input data to LandPro. Subsequently, the land use land cover map required to run RegCM was updated every five years using the outputs from the LandPro simulations. Results from the coupled model simulations improve the understanding of climate change impact on future land use and the resulting feedback to regional climate.

Agricultural lands preservation: a sociology of survival

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

White, T.S.

1983-01-01

This is a rural sociological study investigating the viability of agricultural lands use-values and rural communities in the context of the structure of US agriculture. It outlines the theoretical foundation, ideology, and praxis of a sociology of survival. It is undertaken within the framework of environmental sociology, which focuses on the dynamic interpenetration of social and biotic systems. The concepts of carrying capacity, sustained multiple-use yield, and land-use compatibility and their significance are discussed. The phenomenon of phantom carrying capacity is explored, and its ominous portent noted; but the astonishing potential of agricultural lands to produce huge net gains inmore » use values and in real carrying capacity is affirmed. The theory of unlimited resources, substitution, and market-allocation is falsified. Absolute shortages of renewable and nonrenewable resources are documented, and the necessity for population control, conservation, expanded sustained-yield production, and social allocation is established.« less

The American Land. Its History, Soil, Water, Wildlife, Agricultural Land Planning, and Land Problems of Today and Tomorrow.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Soil Conservation Service (USDA), Washington, DC.

Presented in this booklet is the commentary for "The American Land," a television series prepared by the Soil Conservation Service and the Graduate School, United States Department of Agriculture, in cooperation with WETA - TV, Washington, D.C. It explores the resource of land in America, its history, soil, water, wildlife, agricultural land…

Mapping environmental land use conflict potentials and ecosystem services in agricultural watersheds.

PubMed

Kim, Ilkwon; Arnhold, Sebastian

2018-07-15

In mountainous watersheds, agricultural land use cause changes in ecosystem services, with trade-offs between crop production and erosion regulation. Management of these watersheds can generate environmental land use conflicts among regional stakeholders with different interests. Although several researches have made a start in mapping land use conflicts between human activities and conservation, spatial assessment of land use conflicts on environmental issues and ecosystem service trade-offs within agricultural areas has not been fully considered. In this study, we went further to map land use conflicts between agricultural preferences for crop production and environmental emphasis on erosion regulation. We applied an agricultural land suitability index, based on multi-criteria analysis, to estimate the spatial preference of agricultural activities, while applying the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) to reflect the environmental importance of soil erosion. Then, we classified the agricultural catchment into four levels of land use conflicts (lowest, low, high and highest) according to preference and importance of farmland areas, and we compared the classes by crop type. Soil loss in agricultural areas was estimated as 45.1thayr, and agricultural suitability as 0.873; this indicated that land use conflicts in the catchment could arise between severe soil erosion (environmental importance) and agricultural suitability (land preferences). Dry-field farms are mainly located in areas of low land use conflict level, where land preference outweighs environmental importance. When we applied farmland management scenarios with consideration of services, conversion to highest-conflict areas (Scenario 1) as 7.5% of the total area could reduce soil loss by 24.6%, while fallow land management (Scenario 2) could decrease soil loss 19.4% more than the current scenario (Business as usual). The result could maximize land management plans by extracting issues of spatial

The pan-sharpening of satellite and UAV imagery for agricultural applications

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jenerowicz, Agnieszka; Woroszkiewicz, Malgorzata

2016-10-01

Remote sensing techniques are widely used in many different areas of interest, i.e. urban studies, environmental studies, agriculture, etc., due to fact that they provide rapid, accurate and information over large areas with optimal time, spatial and spectral resolutions. Agricultural management is one of the most common application of remote sensing methods nowadays. Monitoring of agricultural sites and creating information regarding spatial distribution and characteristics of crops are important tasks to provide data for precision agriculture, crop management and registries of agricultural lands. For monitoring of cultivated areas many different types of remote sensing data can be used- most popular are multispectral satellites imagery. Such data allow for generating land use and land cover maps, based on various methods of image processing and remote sensing methods. This paper presents fusion of satellite and unnamed aerial vehicle (UAV) imagery for agricultural applications, especially for distinguishing crop types. Authors in their article presented chosen data fusion methods for satellite images and data obtained from low altitudes. Moreover the authors described pan- sharpening approaches and applied chosen pan- sharpening methods for multiresolution image fusion of satellite and UAV imagery. For such purpose, satellite images from Landsat- 8 OLI sensor and data collected within various UAV flights (with mounted RGB camera) were used. In this article, the authors not only had shown the potential of fusion of satellite and UAV images, but also presented the application of pan- sharpening in crop identification and management.

Integration of strategic inventory and monitoring programs for the forest lands, wood lands, range lands and agricultural lands of the United States

Treesearch

Raymond L. Czaplewski

1999-01-01

The United States Department of Agriculture uses the Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program to monitor the nation's forests and wood lands, and the National Resources Inventory (NRI) program to monitor the nation's agricultural and range lands. Although their measurement methods and sampling frames are very different, both programs are developing annual...

Regional Climate Change Impact on Agricultural Land Use in West Africa

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ahmed, K. F.; Wang, G.; You, L.

2014-12-01

Agriculture is a key element of the human-induced land use land cover change (LULCC) that is influenced by climate and can potentially influence regional climate. Temperature and precipitation directly impact the crop yield (by controlling photosynthesis, respiration and other physiological processes) that then affects agricultural land use pattern. In feedback, the resulting changes in land use and land cover play an important role to determine the direction and magnitude of global, regional and local climate change by altering Earth's radiative equilibrium. The assessment of future agricultural land use is, therefore, of great importance in climate change study. In this study, we develop a prototype land use projection model and, using this model, project the changes to land use pattern and future land cover map accounting for climate-induced yield changes for major crops in West Africa. Among the inputs to the land use projection model are crop yield changes simulated by the crop model DSSAT, driven with the climate forcing data from the regional climate model RegCM4.3.4-CLM4.5, which features a projected decrease of future mean crop yield and increase of inter-annual variability. Another input to the land use projection model is the projected changes of food demand in the future. In a so-called "dumb-farmer scenario" without any adaptation, the combined effect of decrease in crop yield and increase in food demand will lead to a significant increase in agricultural land use in future years accompanied by a decrease in forest and grass area. Human adaptation through land use optimization in an effort to minimize agricultural expansion is found to have little impact on the overall areas of agricultural land use. While the choice of the General Circulation Model (GCM) to derive initial and boundary conditions for the regional climate model can be a source of uncertainty in projecting the future LULCC, results from sensitivity experiments indicate that the changes

Climate change - Agricultural land use - Food security

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nagy, János; Széles, Adrienn

2015-04-01

In Hungary, plougland decreased to 52% of its area by the time of political restructuring (1989) in comparison with the 1950s. Forested areas increased significantly (18%) and lands withdrawn from agricultural production doubled (11%). For today, these proportions further changed. Ploughlands reduced to 46% and forested areas further increased (21%) in 2013. The most significat changes were observed in the proportion of lands withdrawn from agricultural production which increased to 21%. Temperature in Hungary increased by 1°C during the last century and predictions show a further 2.6 °C increase by 2050. The yearly amount of precipitation significantly decreased from 640 mm to 560 mm with a more uneven temporal distribution. The following aspects can be considered in the correlation between climate change and agriculture: a) impact of agriculture on climate, b) future impact of climate change on agriculture and food supply, c) impact of climate change on food security. The reason for the significant change of climate is the accumulation of greenhouse gases (GHG) which results from anthropological activities. Between 2008 and 2012, Hungary had to reduce its GHG emission by 6% compared to the base period between 1985-1987. At the end of 2011, Hungarian GHG emission was 43.1% lower than that of the base period. The total gross emission was 66.2 million CO2 equivalent, while the net emission which also includes land use, land use change and forestry was 62.8 million tons. The emission of agriculture was 8.8 million tons (OMSZ, 2013). The greatest opportunity to reduce agricultural GHG emission is dinitrogen oxides which can be significantly mitigated by the smaller extent and more efficient use of nitrogen-based fertilisers (precision farming) and by using biomanures produced from utilised waste materials. Plant and animal species which better adapt to extreme weather circumstances should be bred and maintained, thereby making an investment in food security. Climate

Patterns of land use, extensification, and intensification of Brazilian agriculture.

PubMed

Dias, Lívia C P; Pimenta, Fernando M; Santos, Ana B; Costa, Marcos H; Ladle, Richard J

2016-08-01

Sustainable intensification of agriculture is one of the main strategies to provide global food security. However, its implementation raises enormous political, technological, and social challenges. Meeting these challenges will require, among other things, accurate information on the spatial and temporal patterns of agricultural land use and yield. Here, we investigate historical patterns of agricultural land use (1940-2012) and productivity (1990-2012) in Brazil using a new high-resolution (approximately 1 km(2) ) spatially explicit reconstruction. Although Brazilian agriculture has been historically known for its extensification over natural vegetation (Amazon and Cerrado), data from recent years indicate that extensification has slowed down and was replaced by a strong trend of intensification. Our results provide the first comprehensive historical overview of agricultural land use and productivity in Brazil, providing clear insights to guide future territorial planning, sustainable agriculture, policy, and decision-making. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Agricultural land use mapping. [Pennsylvania, Montana, and Texas

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Mcmurtry, G. J.; Petersen, G. W. (Principal Investigator); Wilson, A. D.

1973-01-01

The author has identified the following significant results. Agricultural areas were selected or analysis in southeastern Pennsylvania, north central Montana, and southern Texas. These three sites represent a broad range of soils, soil parent materials, climate, modes of agricultural operation, crops, and field sizes. In each of these three sites, ERTS-1 digital data were processed to determine the feasibility of automatically mapping agricultural land use. In Pennsylvania, forest land, cultivated land, and water were separable within a 25,000 acre area. Four classes of water were also classified and identified, using ground truth. A less complex land use pattern was analyzed in Hill County, Montana. A land use map was prepared shown alternating patterns of summer fallow and stubble fields. The location of farmsteads could be inferred, along with that of a railroad line. A river and a creek flowing into the river were discernible. Six categories of water, related to sediment content and depth, were defined in the reservoir held by the Fresno dam. These classifications were completed on a 150 square mile area. Analysis of the data from Texas is in its formative stages. A test site has been selected and a brightness map has been produced.

Benchmarking the performance of a land data assimilation system for agricultural drought monitoring

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

The application of land data assimilation systems to operational agricultural drought monitoring requires the development of (at least) three separate system sub-components: 1) a retrieval model to invert satellite-derived observations into soil moisture estimates, 2) a prognostic soil water balance...

Classification and Mapping of Agricultural Land for National Water-Quality Assessment

USGS Publications Warehouse

Gilliom, Robert J.; Thelin, Gail P.

1997-01-01

Agricultural land use is one of the most important influences on water quality at national and regional scales. Although there is great diversity in the character of agricultural land, variations follow regional patterns that are influenced by environmental setting and economics. These regional patterns can be characterized by the distribution of crops. A new approach to classifying and mapping agricultural land use for national water-quality assessment was developed by combining information on general land-use distribution with information on crop patterns from agricultural census data. Separate classification systems were developed for row crops and for orchards, vineyards, and nurseries. These two general categories of agricultural land are distinguished from each other in the land-use classification system used in the U.S. Geological Survey national Land Use and Land Cover database. Classification of cropland was based on the areal extent of crops harvested. The acreage of each crop in each county was divided by total row-crop area or total orchard, vineyard, and nursery area, as appropriate, thus normalizing the crop data and making the classification independent of total cropland area. The classification system was developed using simple percentage criteria to define combinations of 1 to 3 crops that account for 50 percent or more or harvested acreage in a county. The classification system consists of 21 level I categories and 46 level II subcategories for row crops, and 26 level I categories and 19 level II subcategories for orchards, vineyards, and nurseries. All counties in the United States with reported harvested acreage are classified in these categories. The distribution of agricultural land within each county, however, must be evaluated on the basis of general land-use data. This can be done at the national scale using 'Major Land Uses of the United States,' at the regional scale using data from the national Land Use and Land Cover database, or at

Carbon dynamics on agricultural land reverting to woody land in Ontario, Canada.

PubMed

Voicu, Mihai F; Shaw, Cindy; Kurz, Werner A; Huffman, Ted; Liu, Jiangui; Fellows, Max

2017-05-15

The 2015 Paris Agreement reinforces the importance of the land sector and its contribution to greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions. Thus, there is growing interest in improving estimates of the GHG balance in response to land-use changes (LUCs) involving agriculture and forestry, for national-scale reporting, and for carbon (C) offsets. Large agricultural areas in Europe, Russia and North America are reverting to forest, either naturally or through planting, after abandonment of agricultural land, and this trend may have a substantial impact on carbon budgets. We report results of a pilot project in the Mixedwood Plains ecozone of eastern Canada to analyze the change in the C budget on a landscape over 15 years on abandoned cropland where woody vegetation is regenerating. Thirty-six plots (2 km × 2 km) with paired aerial photographs taken circa 1994 and circa 2008 at a scale of 1:10,000 or larger were randomly selected from the 20 km × 20 km National Forest Inventory (NFI) grid. A spatially-explicit version of the Carbon Budget Model of the Canadian Forest Sector (CBM-CFS3) was used to estimate impacts of LUC on C stocks and fluxes. Polygons identifying areas of LUC within each photo plot were delineated, classified, and evaluated to provide input data for the model. The rate of C accumulation in our study area was found to be relatively constant over the entire simulation period, at 1.07 Mg C/ha/yr. Abandoned agricultural land reverting to woody lands could play an important role in regional and national C sequestration in Canada, but more research is required to quantify the areal extent of this LUC. Crown Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Changes in population and agricultural land in conterminous United States counties, 1790 to 1997

USGS Publications Warehouse

Waisanen, Pamela J.; Bliss, Norman B.

2002-01-01

We have developed a data set of changes in population and agricultural land for the conterminous United States at the county level, resulting in more spatial detail than in previously available compilations. The purpose was to provide data on the timing of land conversion as an input to dynamic models of the carbon cycle, although a wide variety of applications exist for the physical, biological, and social sciences. The spatial data represent the appropriate county boundaries for each census year between 1790 and 1997, and the census attributes are attached to the appropriate spatial region. The resulting time series and maps show the history of population (1790-1990) and the history of agricultural development (1850-1997). The patterns of agricultural development reflect the influences of climate, soil productivity, increases in population size, variations in the general economy, and technological changes in the energy, transportation, and agricultural sectors.

A small-scale land-sparing approach to conserving biological diversity in tropical agricultural landscapes

Treesearch

Richard B. Chandler; David I. King; Raul Raudales; Richard Trubey; Carlin Chandler; Víctor Julio Arce Chávez

2013-01-01

Two contrasting strategies have been proposed for conserving biological diversity while meeting the increasing demand for agricultural products: land sparing and land sharing production systems. Land sparing involves increasing yield to reduce the amount of land needed for agriculture, whereas land-sharing agricultural practices incorporate elements of native...

Factors Influencing Farmers' Expectations to Sell Agricultural Land for Non-Agricultural Uses

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zollinger, Brett; Krannich, Richard S.

2002-01-01

In this study we identify factors that influence farmers' expectations to sell some or all of their farming operation in areas where the increase in the conversion of agricultural land has been relatively rapid. Findings indicate that the following factors increase farmers' propensity to sell some or all of the agricultural operation for…

Coupled social and ecological outcomes of land use change and agricultural intensification in Costa Rica and the future of biodiversity conservation in tropical agricultural regions.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sanfiorenzo, A. R.; Shaver, I.; Chain Guadarrama, A.; Cleary, K.; Santiago-Garcia, R.; Finegan, B.; Hormel, L.; Sibelet, N.; Vierling, L. A.; Bosque-Perez, N.; DeClerck, F.; Fagan, M. E.; Waits, L.

2017-12-01

Tropical ecosystem conversion to agriculture has caused widespread habitat loss and created fragmented landscapes composed of remnant forest patches embedded in a matrix of agricultural land uses. Non- traditional agricultural export (NTAE) crops such as pineapple are rapidly replacing multiuse landscapes characterized by a diverse matrix of pasture and smallholder crops with intensive, large-scale, monoculture plantations. Using an interdisciplinary approach, we conduct a case study to examine the coupled social and ecological implications of LUCC and agricultural intensification in this region, with larger application to regions experiencing similar patterns. Guided by frameworks from both political and landscape ecology, we: (1) describe the social and economic implications of pineapple expansion, specifically the concentration of land, labor and financial resources, (2) quantify pineapple cultivation's spatial characteristics, and (3) assess the effects of pineapple expansion on surrounding forest ecosystems, on the agricultural matrix and on biodiversity conservation. Our results indicate that pineapple production concentrates land, labor, and financial resources, which has a homogenizing effect on the agricultural economy in the study region. This constrains farm-based livelihoods, with larger implications for food security and agricultural diversity. Landscape ecology analyses further reveal how pineapple production simplifies and homogenizes the agricultural matrix between forest patches, which is likely to have a negative effect on biodiversity. To offset the effects of pineapple expansion on social and environmental systems, we recommend developing landscape level land use planning capacity. Furthermore, agricultural and conservation policy reform is needed to promote landscape heterogeneity and economic diversity within the agricultural sector. Our interdisciplinary research provides a detailed examination of the social and ecological impacts of

Coupled social and ecological outcomes of land use change and agricultural intensification in Costa Rica and the future of biodiversity conservation in tropical agricultural regions.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sanfiorenzo, A. R.; Shaver, I.; Chain Guadarrama, A.; Cleary, K.; Santiago-Garcia, R.; Finegan, B.; Hormel, L.; Sibelet, N.; Vierling, L. A.; Bosque-Perez, N.; DeClerck, F.; Fagan, M. E.; Waits, L.

2016-12-01

Tropical ecosystem conversion to agriculture has caused widespread habitat loss and created fragmented landscapes composed of remnant forest patches embedded in a matrix of agricultural land uses. Non- traditional agricultural export (NTAE) crops such as pineapple are rapidly replacing multiuse landscapes characterized by a diverse matrix of pasture and smallholder crops with intensive, large-scale, monoculture plantations. Using an interdisciplinary approach, we conduct a case study to examine the coupled social and ecological implications of LUCC and agricultural intensification in this region, with larger application to regions experiencing similar patterns. Guided by frameworks from both political and landscape ecology, we: (1) describe the social and economic implications of pineapple expansion, specifically the concentration of land, labor and financial resources, (2) quantify pineapple cultivation's spatial characteristics, and (3) assess the effects of pineapple expansion on surrounding forest ecosystems, on the agricultural matrix and on biodiversity conservation. Our results indicate that pineapple production concentrates land, labor, and financial resources, which has a homogenizing effect on the agricultural economy in the study region. This constrains farm-based livelihoods, with larger implications for food security and agricultural diversity. Landscape ecology analyses further reveal how pineapple production simplifies and homogenizes the agricultural matrix between forest patches, which is likely to have a negative effect on biodiversity. To offset the effects of pineapple expansion on social and environmental systems, we recommend developing landscape level land use planning capacity. Furthermore, agricultural and conservation policy reform is needed to promote landscape heterogeneity and economic diversity within the agricultural sector. Our interdisciplinary research provides a detailed examination of the social and ecological impacts of

Watershed Analysis of Nitrate Transport as a Result of Agricultural Inputs for Varying Land Use/Land Cover and Soil Type

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Scott, M. E.; Sykes, J. F.

2006-12-01

The Grand River Watershed is one of the largest watersheds in southwestern Ontario with an area of approximately 7000 square kilometers. Ninety percent of the watershed is classified as rural, and 80 percent of the watershed population relies on groundwater as their source of drinking water. Management of the watershed requires the determination of the effect of agricultural practices on long-term groundwater quality and to identify locations within the watershed that are at a higher risk of contamination. The study focuses on the transport of nitrate through the root zone as a result of agricultural inputs with attenuation due to biodegradation. The driving force for transport is spatially and temporally varying groundwater recharge that is a function of land use/land cover, soil and meteorological inputs that yields 47,229 unique soil columns within the watershed. Fertilizer sources are determined from Statistics Canada's Agricultural Census and include livestock manure and a popular commercial fertilizer, urea. Accounting for different application rates yields 60,066 unique land parcels of which 22,809 are classified as croplands where manure and inorganic fertilizes are directly applied. The transport for the croplands is simulated over a 14-year period to investigate the impact of seasonal applications of nitrate fertilizers on the concentration leaching from the root zone to the water table. Based on land use/land cover maps, ArcView GIS is used to define the location of fertilizer applications within the watershed and to spatially visualize data and analyze results. The large quantity of input data is stored and managed using MS-Access and a relational database management system. Nitrogen transformations and ammonium and nitrate uptake by plants and transport through the soil column are simulated on a daily basis using Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) within MS-Access modules. Nitrogen transformations within the soil column were simplified using

EnviroAtlas - Synthetic N fertilizer application to agricultural lands by 12-digit HUC in the Conterminous United States, 2006

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

This EnviroAtlas dataset contains data on the mean synthetic nitrogen (N) fertilizer application to cultivated crop and hay/pasture lands per 12-digit Hydrologic Unit (HUC) in 2006. Synthetic N fertilizer inputs in 2006 were estimated using county-level estimates of farm N fertilizer inputs. We acquired county-level data describing total farm-level inputs (kg N/yr) of synthetic N fertilizer to individual counties in 2006 from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) (http://pubs.usgs.gov/sir/2012/5207/). These data were converted to per area rates (kg N/ha/yr) of synthetic N fertilizer application by dividing the total N input by the land area (ha) of combined cultivated crop and hay/pasture lands within a county as determined from county-level (http://cta.ornl.gov/transnet/Boundaries.html) summarization of the 2006 National Land Cover Database (NLCD; http://www.mrlc.gov/nlcd06_data.php). We distributed county-specific, annual per area N inputs rates (kg N/ha/yr) to cultivated crop and hay/pasture lands (30 x 30 m pixels) within the corresponding county using the raster calculator tool in ArcMap 10.0 (ESRI, Inc., Redlands, CA). Fertilizer data described here represent an average input to a typical agricultural land type within a county, i.e., they are not specific to individual crop types. This dataset was produced by the US EPA to support research and online mapping activities related to EnviroAtlas. EnviroAtlas (https://www.epa.gov/enviroatlas) allows the us

The potential for land sparing to offset greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lamb, Anthony; Green, Rhys; Bateman, Ian; Broadmeadow, Mark; Bruce, Toby; Burney, Jennifer; Carey, Pete; Chadwick, David; Crane, Ellie; Field, Rob; Goulding, Keith; Griffiths, Howard; Hastings, Astley; Kasoar, Tim; Kindred, Daniel; Phalan, Ben; Pickett, John; Smith, Pete; Wall, Eileen; Zu Ermgassen, Erasmus K. H. J.; Balmford, Andrew

2016-05-01

Greenhouse gas emissions from global agriculture are increasing at around 1% per annum, yet substantial cuts in emissions are needed across all sectors. The challenge of reducing agricultural emissions is particularly acute, because the reductions achievable by changing farming practices are limited and are hampered by rapidly rising food demand. Here we assess the technical mitigation potential offered by land sparing--increasing agricultural yields, reducing farmland area and actively restoring natural habitats on the land spared. Restored habitats can sequester carbon and can offset emissions from agriculture. Using the UK as an example, we estimate net emissions in 2050 under a range of future agricultural scenarios. We find that a land-sparing strategy has the technical potential to achieve significant reductions in net emissions from agriculture and land-use change. Coupling land sparing with demand-side strategies to reduce meat consumption and food waste can further increase the technical mitigation potential--however, economic and implementation considerations might limit the degree to which this technical potential could be realized in practice.

Spatially complex land change: The Indirect effect of Brazil's agricultural sector on land use in Amazonia

PubMed Central

Richards, Peter D.; Walker, Robert T.; Arima, Eugenio Y.

2014-01-01

Soybean farming has brought economic development to parts of South America, as well as environmental hopes and concerns. A substantial hope resides in the decoupling of Brazil's agricultural sector from deforestation in the Amazon region, in which case expansive agriculture need not imply forest degradation. However, concerns have also been voiced about the potential indirect effects of agriculture. This article addresses these indirect effects forthe case of the Brazilian Amazon since 2002. Our work finds that as much as thirty-two percent of deforestation, or the loss of more than 30,000 km2 of Amazon forest, is attributable, indirectly, to Brazil's soybean sector. However, we also observe that the magnitude of the indirect impact of the agriculture sector on forest loss in the Amazon has declined markedly since 2006. We also find a shift in the underlying causes of indirect land use change in the Amazon, and suggest that land appreciation in agricultural regions has supplanted farm expansions as a source of indirect land use change. Our results are broadly congruent with recent work recognizing the success of policy changes in mitigating the impact of soybean expansion on forest loss in the Amazon. However, they also caution that the soybean sector may continue to incentivize land clearings through its impact on regional land markets. PMID:25492993

Governance, agricultural intensification, and land sparing in tropical South America.

PubMed

Ceddia, Michele Graziano; Bardsley, Nicholas Oliver; Gomez-y-Paloma, Sergio; Sedlacek, Sabine

2014-05-20

In this paper we address two topical questions: How do the quality of governance and agricultural intensification impact on spatial expansion of agriculture? Which aspects of governance are more likely to ensure that agricultural intensification allows sparing land for nature? Using data from the Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Bank, the World Database on Protected Areas, and the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy, we estimate a panel data model for six South American countries and quantify the effects of major determinants of agricultural land expansion, including various dimensions of governance, over the period 1970-2006. The results indicate that the effect of agricultural intensification on agricultural expansion is conditional on the quality and type of governance. When considering conventional aspects of governance, agricultural intensification leads to an expansion of agricultural area when governance scores are high. When looking specifically at environmental aspects of governance, intensification leads to a spatial contraction of agriculture when governance scores are high, signaling a sustainable intensification process.

Bridging the gaps between agricultural policy, land-use and biodiversity.

PubMed

Mattison, Elizabeth H A; Norris, Ken

2005-11-01

The fate of biodiversity is intimately linked to agricultural development. Policy reform is an important driver of changes in agricultural land-use, but there is considerable spatial variation in response to policy and its potential impact on biodiversity. We review the links between policy, land-use and biodiversity and advocate a more integrated approach. Ecologists need to recognize that wildlife-friendly farming is not the only land-use strategy that can be used to conserve biodiversity and to research alternative options such as land sparing. There is also a need for social scientists and ecologists to bring their approaches together, so that land-use change and its consequences can be investigated in a more holistic way.

Having it both ways? Land use change in a U.S. midwestern agricultural ecoregion

USGS Publications Warehouse

Auch, Roger F.; Laingen, Chris R.

2015-01-01

Urbanization has been directly linked to decreases in area of agricultural lands and, as such, has been considered a threat to food security. Although the area of land used to produce food has diminished, often overlooked have been changes in agricultural output. The Eastern Corn Belt Plains (ECBP) is an important agricultural region in the U.S. Midwest. It has both gained a significant amount of urban land, primarily from the conversion of agricultural land between 1973 and 2000, and at the same time continued to produce ever-increasing quantities of agricultural products. By 2002, more corn, soybeans, and hogs were produced on a smaller agricultural land base than in 1974. In the last quarter of the twentieth century, ECBP ecoregion society appeared to have “had it both ways”: more urbanization along with increased agricultural output.

Governance, agricultural intensification, and land sparing in tropical South America

PubMed Central

Ceddia, Michele Graziano; Bardsley, Nicholas Oliver; Gomez-y-Paloma, Sergio; Sedlacek, Sabine

2014-01-01

In this paper we address two topical questions: How do the quality of governance and agricultural intensification impact on spatial expansion of agriculture? Which aspects of governance are more likely to ensure that agricultural intensification allows sparing land for nature? Using data from the Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Bank, the World Database on Protected Areas, and the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy, we estimate a panel data model for six South American countries and quantify the effects of major determinants of agricultural land expansion, including various dimensions of governance, over the period 1970–2006. The results indicate that the effect of agricultural intensification on agricultural expansion is conditional on the quality and type of governance. When considering conventional aspects of governance, agricultural intensification leads to an expansion of agricultural area when governance scores are high. When looking specifically at environmental aspects of governance, intensification leads to a spatial contraction of agriculture when governance scores are high, signaling a sustainable intensification process. PMID:24799696

GCAM 3.0 Agriculture and Land Use: Data Sources and Methods

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Kyle, G. Page; Luckow, Patrick; Calvin, Katherine V.

This report presents the data processing methods used in the GCAM 3.0 agriculture and land use component, starting from all source data used, and detailing all calculations and assumptions made in generating the model inputs. The report starts with a brief introduction to modeling of agriculture and land use in GCAM 3.0, and then provides documentation of the data and methods used for generating the base-year dataset and future scenario parameters assumed in the model input files. Specifically, the report addresses primary commodity production, secondary (animal) commodity production, disposition of commodities, land allocation, land carbon contents, and land values.

Challenges for Sustainable Land Management through Climate-Smart Agriculture

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dougill, Andrew; Stringer, Lindsay

2017-04-01

There are increasing pushes for agricultural land management to be both sustainable and climate-smart (in terms of increasing productivity, building resilience to climate change and enhancing carbon storage). Climate-smart agriculture initiatives include conservation agriculture, based on minimum soil disturbance, permanent soil cover and crop rotation, and agroforestry. Such efforts address key international goals of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), but as yet have not seen widespread uptake. Based on analyses of different project interventions from across a range of southern African countries, we outline the inter-related challenges that are preventing adoption of climate-smart agriculture initiatives. We then identify routes to building multi-stakeholder partnerships and empowering communities through participatory monitoring with the aim of increasing uptake of such sustainable land management practices. Good practice examples remain largely restricted to local-level project interventions with significant donor (or private-sector) support, aligned to short-term community priorities relating to access to inputs or reduced labour requirements. Scaling-up to district- and national-level initiatives is yet to be widely successful due to problems of: limited policy coherence; a lack of communication between stakeholders at different levels; and limited understanding of long-term benefits associated with changes in agricultural practices. We outline opportunities associated with improved communication of climate information, empowerment of district-level adaptation planning and diversification of agricultural livelihood strategies as key routes to guide farmers towards more sustainable, and climate-smart, land management practices. Recent experiences in Malawi, which has experienced significant floods and an El Niño drought year in the last two years, are used to

Understanding the drivers of agricultural land use change in south-central Senegal

USGS Publications Warehouse

Wood, E. C.; Tappan, G. Gray; Hadj, Amadou

2004-01-01

Described is (1) the land use and land cover changes that have taken place in the Department of Velingara, an area of tropical dry woodland in south-central Senegal, (2) the biophysical and socio-economic drivers of those changes with an emphasis on transition to agricultural use, and (3) an assessment of the likelihood of intensification of agriculture in the Department. Results indicate that land devoted to agriculture, either in active cultivation or short-term fallow, is increasing. There is little evidence of agricultural intensification in most of Velingara, with extensification coming largely at the cost of reduction in both upland woodlands and riparian forest.

Suitability evaluation tool for lands (rice, corn and soybean) as mobile application

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rahim, S. E.; Supli, A. A.; Damiri, N.

2017-09-01

Evaluation of land suitability for special purposes e.g. for food crops is a must, a means to understand determining factors to be considered in the management of a land successfully. A framework for evaluating the land suitability for purposes in agriculture was first introduced by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in late 1970s. When using the framework manually, it is time consuming and not interesting for land users. Therefore, the authors have developed an effective tool by transforming the FAO framework into smart mobile application. This application is designed by using simple language for each factor and also by utilizing rule based system (RBS) algorithm. The factors involved are soil type, depth of soil solum, soil fertility, soil pH, drainage, risk of flood, etc. Suitability in this paper is limited to rice, corn and soybean. The application is found to be easier to understand and also could automatically determine the suitability of land. Usability testing was also conducted with 75 respondents. The results showed the usability was in "very good" classification. The program is urgently needed by the land managers, farmers, lecturers, students and government officials (planners) to help them more easily manage their land for a better future.

Implications of agricultural land use change to ecosystem services in the Ganges delta.

PubMed

Islam, G M Tarekul; Islam, A K M Saiful; Shopan, Ahsan Azhar; Rahman, Md Munsur; Lázár, Attila N; Mukhopadhyay, Anirban

2015-09-15

Ecosystems provide the basis for human civilization and natural capital for green economy and sustainable development. Ecosystem services may range from crops, fish, freshwater to those that are harder to see such as erosion regulation, carbon sequestration, and pest control. Land use changes have been identified as the main sources of coastal and marine pollution in Bangladesh. This paper explores the temporal variation of agricultural land use change and its implications with ecosystem services in the Ganges delta. With time agricultural lands have been decreased and wetlands have been increased at a very high rate mainly due to the growing popularity of saltwater shrimp farming. In a span of 28 years, the agricultural lands have been reduced by approximately 50%, while the wetlands have been increased by over 500%. A large portion (nearly 40%) of the study area is covered by the Sundarbans which remained almost constant which can be attributed to the strict regulatory intervention to preserve the Sundarbans. The settlement & others land use type has also been increased to nearly 5%. There is a gradual uptrend of shrimp and fish production in the study area. The findings suggest that there are significant linkages between agricultural land use change and ecosystem services in the Ganges delta in Bangladesh. The continuous decline of agricultural land (due to salinization) and an increase of wetland have been attributed to the conversion of agricultural land into shrimp farming in the study area. Such land use change requires significant capital, therefore, only investors and wealthier land owners can get the higher profit from the land conversion while the poor people is left with the environmental consequences that affect their long-term lives and livelihood. An environmental management plan is proposed for sustainable land use in the Ganges delta in Bangladesh. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Relations between retired agricultural land, water quality, and aquatic-community health, Minnesota River Basin

USGS Publications Warehouse

Christensen, Victoria G.; Lee, Kathy E.; McLees, James M.; Niemela, Scott L.

2012-01-01

The relative importance of agricultural land retirement on water quality and aquatic-community health was investigated in the Minnesota River Basin. Eighty-two sites, with drainage areas ranging from 4.3 to 2200 km2, were examined for nutrient concentrations, measures of aquatic-community health (e.g., fish index of biotic integrity [IBI] scores), and environmental factors (e.g., drainage area and amount of agricultural land retirement). The relation of proximity of agricultural land retirement to the stream was determined by calculating the land retirement percent in various riparian zones. Spearman's rho results indicated that IBI score was not correlated to the percentage of agricultural land retirement at the basin scale (p = 0.070); however, IBI score was correlated to retired land percentage in the 50- to 400-m riparian zones surrounding the streams (p < 0.05), indicating that riparian agricultural land retirement may have more influence on aquatic-community health than does agricultural land retirement in upland areas. Multivariate analysis of covariance and analysis of covariance models indicated that other environmental factors (such as drainage area and lacustrine and palustrine features) commonly were correlated to aquatic-community health measures, as were in-stream factors (standard deviation of water depth and substrate type). These results indicate that although agricultural land retirement is significantly related to fish communities as measured by the IBI scores, a combination of basin, riparian, and in-stream factors act together to influence IBI scores.

Spatial and temporal predictions of agricultural land prices using DSM techniques.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Carré, F.; Grandgirard, D.; Diafas, I.; Reuter, H. I.; Julien, V.; Lemercier, B.

2009-04-01

Agricultural land prices highly impacts land accessibility to farmers and by consequence the evolution of agricultural landscapes (crop changes, land conversion to urban infrastructures…) which can turn to irreversible soil degradation. The economic value of agricultural land has been studied spatially, in every one of the 374 French Agricultural Counties, and temporally- from 1995 to 2007, by using data of the SAFER Institute. To this aim, agricultural land price was considered as a digital soil property. The spatial and temporal predictions were done using Digital Soil Mapping techniques combined with tools mainly used for studying temporal financial behaviors. For making both predictions, a first classification of the Agricultural Counties was done for the 1995-2006 periods (2007 was excluded and served as the date of prediction) using a fuzzy k-means clustering. The Agricultural Counties were then aggregated according to land price at the different times. The clustering allows for characterizing the counties by their memberships to each class centroid. The memberships were used for the spatial prediction, whereas the centroids were used for the temporal prediction. For the spatial prediction, from the 374 Agricultural counties, three fourths were used for modeling and one fourth for validating. Random sampling was done by class to ensure that all classes are represented by at least one county in the modeling and validation datasets. The prediction was done for each class by testing the relationships between the memberships and the following factors: (i) soil variable (organic matter from the French BDAT database), (ii) soil covariates (land use classes from CORINE LANDCOVER, bioclimatic zones from the WorldClim Database, landform attributes and landform classes from the SRTM, major roads and hydrographic densities from EUROSTAT, average field sizes estimated by automatic classification of remote sensed images) and (iii) socio-economic factors (population

eFarm: A Tool for Better Observing Agricultural Land Systems

PubMed Central

Yu, Qiangyi; Shi, Yun; Tang, Huajun; Yang, Peng; Xie, Ankun; Liu, Bin; Wu, Wenbin

2017-01-01

Currently, observations of an agricultural land system (ALS) largely depend on remotely-sensed images, focusing on its biophysical features. While social surveys capture the socioeconomic features, the information was inadequately integrated with the biophysical features of an ALS and the applications are limited due to the issues of cost and efficiency to carry out such detailed and comparable social surveys at a large spatial coverage. In this paper, we introduce a smartphone-based app, called eFarm: a crowdsourcing and human sensing tool to collect the geotagged ALS information at the land parcel level, based on the high resolution remotely-sensed images. We illustrate its main functionalities, including map visualization, data management, and data sensing. Results of the trial test suggest the system works well. We believe the tool is able to acquire the human–land integrated information which is broadly-covered and timely-updated, thus presenting great potential for improving sensing, mapping, and modeling of ALS studies. PMID:28245554

Redistributive land and tenancy reform in Bangladesh agriculture.

PubMed

Taslim, M A

1993-04-01

Land is scarce and population dense in Bangladesh. Accordingly, there is great need to maximize agricultural production with intensive cultivation and the diffusion of modern technology. The realization of this goal, however, is impeded by the prevailing inequitable and inefficient structure of agricultural land tenure in which a few rural households hold the bulk of cultivatable land. Cropsharing and the system of land tenancy perpetuates low productivity and stagnation throughout the country. Development professionals, ruling politicians, and general populations in many countries under similar circumstances often suggest that share tenancy be abolished and tenants given ownership of tenanted plots, with large farms broken into smaller ones with an ultimate ceiling on farm size. The political and undertaken by new governments coming to power after violent social upheavals. Careful review reveals that such reform has hardly ever led to the establishment of prosperous and independent peasantries. Small family farms have instead become more dependent on the state and on off-farm employment. The rural elite is destroyed and a small peasant proprietorship dependent on the state is established which is ultimately controlled by the urban elite of the country; control over rural populations is reinforced. The dubious historical motivation for and results of land reform suggest that Bangladesh abandon its consideration in favor of promoting vocational training and education; providing research and extension services to agriculture for more rapid diffusion of high-yield innovations; mobilizing domestic resources to build up the infrastructure; fostering the development of private initiatives; and informing and advising about sustainable development practices to encourage their adoption so that an ecological balance may be maintained.

Influence of long-term land application of class B biosolids on soil bacterial diversity

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

This project evaluated the influence of annual land applications of Class B biosolids on soil bacterial diversity monitored over a 20 year period. Each annual land application was followed by a cotton crop. The study was initiated in 1986 at the University of Arizona Marana Agricultural Center, 21 m...

Rates and potentials of soil organic carbon sequestration in agricultural lands in Japan: an assessment using a process-based model and spatially-explicit land-use change inventories

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yagasaki, Y.; Shirato, Y.

2013-11-01

to other land-use types by abandoning or urbanization accompanied by substantial changes in the rate of organic carbon input to soils, could cause a greater or comparable influence on country-scale SCSC compared with changes in management of agricultural lands. A net-net based accounting on SCSC showed potential influence of variations in future climate on SCSC, that highlighted importance of application of process-based model for estimation of this quantity. Whereas a baseline-based accounting on SCSC was shown to have robustness over variations in future climate and effectiveness to factor out direct human-induced influence on SCSC. Validation of the system's function to estimate SCSC in agricultural lands, by comparing simulation output with data from nation-wide stationary monitoring conducted during year 1979-1998, suggested that the system has an acceptable levels of validity, though only for limited range of conditions at current stage. In addition to uncertainties in estimation of the rate of organic carbon input to soils in different land-use types at large-scale, time course of SOC sequestration, supposition on land-use change pattern in future, as well as feasibility of agricultural policy planning are considered as important factors that need to be taken account in estimation on a potential of country-scale SCSC.

Application of ERTS-1 imagery to land use, forest density and soil investigations

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Yassoglou, N. J. (Principal Investigator)

1973-01-01

The author has identified the following significant results. Photographic and digital imagery obtained by ERTS-1 was analyzed and assigned to land features related to agricultural and forest resources. Land use and forest site evaluation maps were prepared by comparing remote sensing and ground truth data. Relationships found in this investigation between spectral signatures recorded by ERTS-1 and land features can be used for the assessment and development of agricultural and forest resources. The results are applicable to areas with ecological and geological conditions similar to those of Greece.

Determination of the Impact of Urbanization on Agricultural Lands using Multi-temporal Satellite Sensor Images

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kaya, S.; Alganci, U.; Sertel, E.; Ustundag, B.

2015-12-01

Throughout the history, agricultural activities have been performed close to urban areas. Main reason behind this phenomenon is the need of fast marketing of the agricultural production to urban residents and financial provision. Thus, using the areas nearby cities for agricultural activities brings out advantage of easy transportation of productions and fast marketing. For decades, heavy migration to cities has directly and negatively affected natural grasslands, forests and agricultural lands. This pressure has caused agricultural lands to be changed into urban areas. Dense urbanization causes increase in impervious surfaces, heat islands and many other problems in addition to destruction of agricultural lands. Considering the negative impacts of urbanization on agricultural lands and natural resources, a periodic monitoring of these changes becomes indisputably important. At this point, satellite images are known to be good data sources for land cover / use change monitoring with their fast data acquisition, large area coverages and temporal resolution properties. Classification of the satellite images provides thematic the land cover / use maps of the earth surface and changes can be determined with GIS based analysis multi-temporal maps. In this study, effects of heavy urbanization over agricultural lands in Istanbul, metropolitan city of Turkey, were investigated with use of multi-temporal Landsat TM satellite images acquired between 1984 and 2011. Images were geometrically registered to each other and classified using supervised maximum likelihood classification algorithm. Resulting thematic maps were exported to GIS environment and destructed agricultural lands by urbanization were determined using spatial analysis.

Climate change impacts on global agricultural land availability

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhang, Xiao; Cai, Ximing

2011-01-01

Climate change can affect both crop yield and the land area suitable for agriculture. This study provides a spatially explicit estimate of the impact of climate change on worldwide agricultural land availability, considering uncertainty in climate change projections and ambiguity with regard to land classification. Uncertainty in general circulation model (GCM) projections is addressed using data assembled from thirteen GCMs and two representative emission scenarios (A1B and B1 employ CO2-equivalent greenhouse gas concentrations of 850 and 600 ppmv, respectively; B1 represents a greener economy). Erroneous data and the uncertain nature of land classifications based on multiple indices (i.e. soil properties, land slope, temperature, and humidity) are handled with fuzzy logic modeling. It is found that the total global arable land area is likely to decrease by 0.8-1.7% under scenario A1B and increase by 2.0-4.4% under scenario B1. Regions characterized by relatively high latitudes such as Russia, China and the US may expect an increase of total arable land by 37-67%, 22-36% and 4-17%, respectively, while tropical and sub-tropical regions may suffer different levels of lost arable land. For example, South America may lose 1-21% of its arable land area, Africa 1-18%, Europe 11-17%, and India 2-4%. When considering, in addition, land used for human settlements and natural conservation, the net potential arable land may decrease even further worldwide by the end of the 21st century under both scenarios due to population growth. Regionally, it is likely that both climate change and population growth will cause reductions in arable land in Africa, South America, India and Europe. However, in Russia, China and the US, significant arable land increases may still be possible. Although the magnitudes of the projected changes vary by scenario, the increasing or decreasing trends in arable land area are regionally consistent.

Application of Satellite Data for Early Season Assessment of Fallowed Agricultural Lands for Drought Impact Reporting

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rosevelt, C.; Melton, F. S.; Johnson, L.; Verdin, J. P.; Thenkabail, P. S.; mueller, R.; Zakzeski, A.; Jones, J.

2013-12-01

Rapid assessment of drought impacts can aid water managers in assessing mitigation options, and guide decision making with respect to requests for local water transfers, county drought disaster designations, or state emergency proclamations. Satellite remote sensing offers an efficient way to provide quantitative assessments of drought impacts on agricultural production and land fallowing associated with reductions in water supply. A key advantage of satellite-based assessments is that they can provide a measure of land fallowing that is consistent across both space and time. Here we describe an approach for monthly mapping of land fallowing developed as part of a joint effort by USGS, USDA, and NASA to provide timely assessments of land fallowing during drought events. This effort has used the Central Valley of California as a pilot region for development and testing of an operational approach. To provide quantitative measures of fallowed land from satellite data early in the season, we developed a decision tree algorithm and applied it to timeseries of normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) data from Landsat TM, ETM+, and MODIS. Our effort has been focused on development of leading indicators of drought impacts in the March - June timeframe based on measures of crop development patterns relative to a reference period with average or above average rainfall. This capability complements ongoing work by USDA to produce and publicly release within-season estimates of fallowed acreage from the USDA Cropland Data Layer. To assess the accuracy of the algorithms, monthly ground validation surveys were conducted along transects across the Central Valley at more than 200 fields per month from March - June, 2013. Here we present the algorithm for mapping fallowed acreage early in the season along with results from the accuracy assessment, and discuss potential applications to other regions.

25 CFR 162.201 - Must agricultural land be managed in accordance with a tribe's agricultural resource management...

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-04-01

... identify holistic management objectives; and (5) Identify actions to be taken to reach established... tribe's agricultural resource management plan? 162.201 Section 162.201 Indians BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS... Must agricultural land be managed in accordance with a tribe's agricultural resource management plan...

Wind erosion potential after land application of biosolids

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

PI, H.; Sharratt, B. S.; Schillinger, W. F.; Bary, A.; Cogger, C.

2017-12-01

The world population is currently 7.6 billion and, along with continued population growth, comes the challenge of disposing of wastewater and sewage sludge (biosolids). Applying biosolids to agricultural land to replace synthetic fertilizers represents a relatively safe method to recycle or sustainably use biosolids. While land application of biosolids is recognized as a sustainable management practice for enhancing soil health, no studies have determined the effects of biosolids on soil wind erosion. Wind erosion potential of a silt loam was assessed using a portable wind tunnel after applying synthetic and biosolid fertilizer to conventional and conservation tillage practices during the summer fallow phase of a winter wheat-summer fallow rotation in 2015 and 2016 in east-central Washington. Little difference in soil loss was observed between biosolid and synthetic fertilizer treatments, but this result appeared to be dependent on susceptibility of the soil to erosion. Regression analysis between soil loss from fertilizer or tillage treatments indicated that soil loss was lower from biosolid versus synthetic fertilizer and conservation versus conventional tillage at high erosion rates. This suggests that biosolids may reduce wind erosion under highly erodible conditions. Meanwhile, heavy metal concentrations in the windblown sediment were similar for the biosolid and synthetic fertilizer treatments whereas metal loss in windblown sediment was 10% lower from biosolid than synthetic fertilizer. Our results indicate that land application of biosolids did not accelerate the loss of metals or nutrients from soils during high winds. KeywordsLand application of biosolids; wind erosion; wind tunnel; sustainable agriculture

Effects of Governance on Availability of Land for Agriculture and Conservation in Brazil.

PubMed

Sparovek, Gerd; Barretto, Alberto Giaroli de Oliveira Pereira; Matsumoto, Marcelo; Berndes, Göran

2015-09-01

The 2012 revision of the Brazilian Forest Act changed the relative importance of private and public governance for nature conservation and agricultural production. We present a spatially explicit land-use model for Brazilian agricultural production and nature conservation that considers the spatial distribution of agricultural land suitability, technological and management options, legal command, and control frameworks including the Atlantic Forest Law, the revised Forest Act, and the Amazonian land-titling, "Terra Legal," and also market-driven land use regulations. The model is used to analyze land use allocation under three scenarios with varying priorities among agricultural production and environmental protection objectives. In all scenarios, the legal command and control frameworks were the most important determinants of conservation outcomes, protecting at least 80% of the existing natural vegetation. Situations where such frameworks are not expected to be effective can be identified and targeted for additional conservation (beyond legal requirements) through voluntary actions or self-regulation in response to markets. All scenarios allow for a substantial increase in crop production, using an area 1.5-2.7 times the current cropland area, with much of new cropland occurring on current pastureland. Current public arrangements that promote conservation can, in conjunction with voluntary schemes on private lands where conversion to agriculture is favored, provide important additional nature conservation without conflicting with national agricultural production objectives.

A novel application for concentrator photovoltaic in the field of agriculture photovoltaics

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Liu, Luqing; Guan, Chenggang; Zhang, Fangxin; Li, Ming; Lv, Hui; Liu, Yang; Yao, Peijun; Ingenhoff, Jan; Liu, Wen

2017-09-01

Agriculture photovoltaics is a trend setting area which has already led to a new industrial revolution. Shortage of land in some countries and desertification of land where regular solar panels are deployed are some of the major problems in the photovoltaic industry. Concentrator photovoltaics experienced a decline in applicability after the cost erosion of regular solar panels at the end of the last decade. We demonstrate a novel and unique application for concentrator photovoltaics tackling at a same time the issue of conventional photovoltaics preventing the land being used for agricultural purpose where ever solar panels are installed. We leverage the principle of diffractive and interference technology to split the sun light into transmitted wavelengths necessary for plant growth and reflected wavelengths useful for solar energy generation. The technology has been successfully implemented in field trials and sophisticated scientific studies have been undertaken to evaluate the suitability of this technology for competitive solar power generation and simultaneous high-quality plant growth. The average efficiency of the agriculture photovoltaic system has reached more than 8% and the average efficiency of the CPV system is 6.80%.

Spatial modeling of agricultural land use change at global scale

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Meiyappan, P.; Dalton, M.; O'Neill, B. C.; Jain, A. K.

2014-11-01

Long-term modeling of agricultural land use is central in global scale assessments of climate change, food security, biodiversity, and climate adaptation and mitigation policies. We present a global-scale dynamic land use allocation model and show that it can reproduce the broad spatial features of the past 100 years of evolution of cropland and pastureland patterns. The modeling approach integrates economic theory, observed land use history, and data on both socioeconomic and biophysical determinants of land use change, and estimates relationships using long-term historical data, thereby making it suitable for long-term projections. The underlying economic motivation is maximization of expected profits by hypothesized landowners within each grid cell. The model predicts fractional land use for cropland and pastureland within each grid cell based on socioeconomic and biophysical driving factors that change with time. The model explicitly incorporates the following key features: (1) land use competition, (2) spatial heterogeneity in the nature of driving factors across geographic regions, (3) spatial heterogeneity in the relative importance of driving factors and previous land use patterns in determining land use allocation, and (4) spatial and temporal autocorrelation in land use patterns. We show that land use allocation approaches based solely on previous land use history (but disregarding the impact of driving factors), or those accounting for both land use history and driving factors by mechanistically fitting models for the spatial processes of land use change do not reproduce well long-term historical land use patterns. With an example application to the terrestrial carbon cycle, we show that such inaccuracies in land use allocation can translate into significant implications for global environmental assessments. The modeling approach and its evaluation provide an example that can be useful to the land use, Integrated Assessment, and the Earth system modeling

Ecosystem Services Provided by Agricultural Land as Modeled by Broad Scale Geospatial Analysis

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kokkinidis, Ioannis

Agricultural ecosystems provide multiple services including food and fiber provision, nutrient cycling, soil retention and water regulation. Objectives of the study were to identify and quantify a selection of ecosystem services provided by agricultural land, using existing geospatial tools and preferably free and open source data, such as the Virginia Land Use Evaluation System (VALUES), the North Carolina Realistic Yield Expectations (RYE) database, and the land cover datasets NLCD and CDL. Furthermore I sought to model tradeoffs between provisioning and other services. First I assessed the accuracy of agricultural land in NLCD and CDL over a four county area in eastern Virginia using cadastral parcels. I uncovered issues concerning the definition of agricultural land. The area and location of agriculture saw little change in the 19 years studied. Furthermore all datasets have significant errors of omission (11.3 to 95.1%) and commission (0 to 71.3%). Location of agriculture was used with spatial crop yield databases I created and combined with models I adapted to calculate baseline values for plant biomass, nutrient composition and requirements, land suitability for and potential production of biofuels and the economic impact of agriculture for the four counties. The study area was then broadened to cover 97 counties in eastern Virginia and North Carolina, investigating the potential for increased regional grain production through intensification and extensification of agriculture. Predicted yield from geospatial crop models was compared with produced yield from the NASS Survey of Agriculture. Area of most crops in CDL was similar to that in the Survey of Agriculture, but a yield gap is present for most years, partially due to weather, thus indicating potential for yield increase through intensification. Using simple criteria I quantified the potential to extend agriculture in high yield land in other uses and modeled the changes in erosion and runoff should

Does land ownership make a difference? Women's roles in agriculture in Kerala, India.

PubMed

Arun, S

1999-11-01

Drawing on a 12-month study, this paper explores the role of women in agriculture in Kerala, India. Despite claims that women enjoy high status in Kerala, economic, social, and cultural factors interplay to reinforce gender differences in ownership, control over, and access to critical agricultural resources, including land. Although women may gain access to land through inheritance, marriage, or informal networks, none of this guarantee effective control over it. The traditional rights of women to land have not been adequately recognized: the gender gap in the ownership and control of property is the only most significant contributor to the gender gap in the economic well-being, social status, and empowerment of women. The existing socioeconomic changes and crisis which render agricultural land as a main source of livelihood, is leading nair women's share of land being sold, with gains going to men, thus decreasing women¿s ownership of land to the status of male-controlled dowry. The case of the Christian succession laws in Kerala illustrate that legal provisions alone can have a limited impact on changing gendered power structures. The role of women in agriculture needs to be recognized, and institutional support must be increased in order for women to gain access to agricultural inputs and technology, which in turn, leads to better agricultural practices and a higher income from farming in the country. Most importantly, there should be a concerted effort to enable women to function as independent farmers who control their own land.

Scenarios of land use change for agriculture: the role of Land Evaluation in improving model simulation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mereu, V.; Santini, M.; Dettori, G.; Muresu, P.; Spano, D.; Duce, P.

2009-12-01

Integrated scenarios of future climate and land use represent a useful input for impact studies about global changes. In particular, improving future land use simulations is essential for the agricultural sector, which is influenced by both biogeophysical constraints and human needs. Often land use change models are mainly based on statistical relationships between known land use distribution and biophysical or socio-economic factors, neglecting the necessary consideration of physical constraints that interact in making lands more or less capable for agriculture and suitable for supporting specific crops. In this study, a well developed land use change model (CLUE@CMCC) was suited for the Mediterranean basin case study, focusing on croplands. Several climate scenarios and future demands for croplands were combined to drive the model, while the same climate scenarios were used to more reliably allocate crops in the most suitable areas on the basis of Land Evaluation techniques. The probability for each map unit to sustain a specific crop, usually related to location characteristics, elasticity to conversion and competition among land use types, now includes specific crop-favoring location characteristics. Results, besides improving the consistency of the land use change model to allocate land for the future, can have the main feedback to suggest feasibility or reasonable thresholds to adjust land use demands during dynamic simulations.

Agriculture and Energy: Implications for Food Security, Water, and Land Use

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tokgoz, S.; Zhang, W.; Msangi, S.; Bhandary, P.

2011-12-01

Sustainable production of agricultural commodities and growth of international trade in these goods are challenged as never before by supply-side constraints (such as climate change, water and land scarcity, and environmental degradation) and by demand-side dynamics (volatility in food and energy markets, the strengthening food-energy linkage, population growth, and income growth). On the one hand, the rapidly expanding demand can potentially create new market opportunities for agriculture. On the other hand, there are many threats to a sufficient response by the supply side to meet this growing and changing demand. Agricultural production systems in many countries are neither resource-efficient, nor producing according to their full potential. The stock of natural resources such as land, water, nutrients, energy, and genetic diversity is shrinking relative to demand, and their use must become increasingly efficient in order to reduce environmental impacts and preserve the planet's productive capacity. World energy prices have increased rapidly in recent years. At the same time, agriculture has become more energy-intensive. Higher energy costs have pushed up the cost of producing, transporting and processing agricultural commodities, driving up commodity prices. Higher energy costs have also affected water use and availability through increased costs of water extraction, conveyance and desalinization, higher demand for hydroelectric power, and increased cost of subsidizing water services. In the meantime, the development of biofuels has diverted increasing amounts of agricultural land and water resources to the production of biomass-based renewable energy. This more "intensified" linkage between agriculture and energy comes at a time when there are other pressures on the world's limited resources. The related high food prices, especially those in the developing countries, have led to setbacks in the poverty alleviation effort among the global community with more

Climate, Agriculture, Energy and the Optimal Allocation of Global Land Use

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Steinbuks, J.; Hertel, T. W.

2011-12-01

The allocation of the world's land resources over the course of the next century has become a pressing research question. Continuing population increases, improving, land-intensive diets amongst the poorest populations in the world, increasing production of biofuels and rapid urbanization in developing countries are all competing for land even as the world looks to land resources to supply more environmental services. The latter include biodiversity and natural lands, as well as forests and grasslands devoted to carbon sequestration. And all of this is taking place in the context of faster than expected climate change which is altering the biophysical environment for land-related activities. The goal of the paper is to determine the optimal profile for global land use in the context of growing commercial demands for food and forest products, increasing non-market demands for ecosystem services, and more stringent GHG mitigation targets. We then seek to assess how the uncertainty associated with the underlying biophysical and economic processes influences this optimal profile of land use, in light of potential irreversibility in these decisions. We develop a dynamic long-run, forward-looking partial equilibrium framework in which the societal objective function being maximized places value on food production, liquid fuels (including biofuels), timber production, forest carbon and biodiversity. Given the importance of land-based emissions to any GHG mitigation strategy, as well as the potential impacts of climate change itself on the productivity of land in agriculture, forestry and ecosystem services, we aim to identify the optimal allocation of the world's land resources, over the course of the next century, in the face of alternative GHG constraints. The forestry sector is characterized by multiple forest vintages which add considerable computational complexity in the context of this dynamic analysis. In order to solve this model efficiently, we have employed the

Applications of TIMS data in agricultural areas and related atmospheric considerations

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Pelletier, R. E.; Ochoa, M. C.

1986-01-01

While much of traditional remote sensing in agricultural research was limited to the visible and reflective infrared, advances in thermal infrared remote sensing technology are adding a dimension to digital image analysis of agricultural areas. The Thermal Infrared Multispectral Scanner (TIMS) an airborne sensor having six bands over the nominal 8.2 to 12.2 m range, offers the ability to calculate land surface emissivities unlike most previous singular broadband sensors. Preliminary findings on the utility of the TIMS for several agricultural applications and related atmospheric considerations are discussed.

Dynamic Agricultural Land Unit Profile Database Generation using Landsat Time Series Images

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Torres-Rua, A. F.; McKee, M.

2012-12-01

Agriculture requires continuous supply of inputs to production, while providing final or intermediate outputs or products (food, forage, industrial uses, etc.). Government and other economic agents are interested in the continuity of this process and make decisions based on the available information about current conditions within the agriculture area. From a government point of view, it is important that the input-output chain in agriculture for a given area be enhanced in time, while any possible abrupt disruption be minimized or be constrained within the variation tolerance of the input-output chain. The stability of the exchange of inputs and outputs becomes of even more important in disaster-affected zones, where government programs will look for restoring the area to equal or enhanced social and economical conditions before the occurrence of the disaster. From an economical perspective, potential and existing input providers require up-to-date, precise information of the agriculture area to determine present and future inputs and stock amounts. From another side, agriculture output acquirers might want to apply their own criteria to sort out present and future providers (farmers or irrigators) based on the management done during the irrigation season. In the last 20 years geospatial information has become available for large areas in the globe, providing accurate, unbiased historical records of actual agriculture conditions at individual land units for small and large agricultural areas. This data, adequately processed and stored in any database format, can provide invaluable information for government and economic interests. Despite the availability of the geospatial imagery records, limited or no geospatial-based information about past and current farming conditions at the level of individual land units exists for many agricultural areas in the world. The absence of this information challenges the work of policy makers to evaluate previous or current

The trajectories and determinants of agricultural land-use change over the last two decades in post-Soviet European Russia

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Prishchepov, A. V.; Müller, D.; Sieber, A.; Kuemmerle, T.; Radeloff, V. C.; Hostert, P.

2012-04-01

The transition from state-command to market-driven economies in Russia in 1991 triggered fundamental political, economic and institutional changes, which in turn drastically affected agricultural land use. Large tracks of agricultural lands became abandoned, particularly during the first decade of the transition. However, it is not clear how the changing socio-economic and political conditions in post-Soviet Russia changed abandonment trajectories over the last two decades. We analyzed agricultural land-use change, both agricultural land abandonment and recultivation of once abandoned agricultural lands, with multitemporal Landsat TM/ETM+ images for 1990-2000-2009 to study Ryazan province in the forest-steppe transition zone and Rostov province in the steppe zone of European Russia. We classified agricultural land use change over 1990-2000-2009 with Support Vector Machines and assessed classification accuracies with independently of training datasets collected validation data. Overall accuracies were over 80%. We summarized the rates of agricultural land use change, and quantified the spatial determinants of these land use change processes using logistic regressions. Results indicated that 28% of agricultural land managed in 1990 were abandoned by the year 2000 in Ryazan province. From 2000 to 2009, agricultural land abandonment increased by another half what was abandoned from 1990 to 2000 and comprised 42% of abandoned agricultural that was managed in 1990 while only 1.4% of previously abandoned agricultural land was recultivated. In other words, agricultural abandonment was a continuous and permanent land use change in Ryazan province. In Rostov province, abandonment rates were substantially lower at nearly 10% of the agricultural land managed in 1990 and only minor additional abandonment from 2000 to 2009. The pattern of agricultural land abandonment in Ryazan province was largely determined by a mix of socio-economic and environmental factors (e.g. increased

Selected veterinary pharmaceuticals in agricultural water and soil from land application of animal manure.

PubMed

Song, Wenlu; Ding, Yunjie; Chiou, Cary T; Li, Hui

2010-01-01

Veterinary pharmaceuticals are commonly administered to animals for disease control, and added into feeds at subtherapeutic levels to improve feeding efficiency. As a result of these practices, a certain fraction of the pharmaceuticals are excreted into animal manures. Land application of these manures contaminates soils with the veterinary pharmaceuticals, which can subsequently lead to contamination of surface and groundwaters. Information on the occurrence and fate of pharmaceuticals in soil and water is needed to assess the potential for exposure of at-risk populations and the impacts on agricultural ecosystems. In this study, we investigated the occurrence and fate of four commonly used veterinary pharmaceuticals (amprolium, carbadox, monensin, and tylosin) in a farm in Michigan. Amprolium and monensin were frequently detected in nearby surface water, with concentrations ranging from several to hundreds of nanograms per liter, whereas tylosin or carbadox was rarely found. These pharmaceuticals were more frequently detected in surface runoff during nongrowing season (October to April) than during growing season (May to September). Pharmaceuticals resulting from postharvest manure application appeared to be more persistent than those from spring application. High concentrations of pharmaceuticals in soils were generally observed at the sites where the respective concentrations in surface water were also high. For monensin, the ratios of soil-sorbed to aqueous concentrations obtained from field samples were within the order of the distribution coefficients obtained from laboratory studies. These results suggest that soil is a reservoir for veterinary pharmaceuticals that can be disseminated to nearby surface water via desorption from soil, surface runoff, and soil erosion.

12 CFR 614.4070 - Loans and chartered territory-Farm Credit Banks, agricultural credit banks, Federal land bank...

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-01-01

..., agricultural credit banks, Federal land bank associations, Federal land credit associations, production credit associations, and agricultural credit associations. 614.4070 Section 614.4070 Banks and Banking FARM CREDIT... land credit associations, production credit associations, and agricultural credit associations. (a) A...

Identification and Prioritization of Management Practices to Reduce Methylmercury Exports from Wetlands and Irrigated Agricultural Lands

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

McCord, Stephen A.; Heim, Wesley A.

2015-03-01

The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta's (Delta) beneficial uses for humans and wildlife are impaired by elevated methylmercury (MeHg) concentrations in fish. MeHg is a neurotoxin that bioaccumulates in aquatic food webs. The total maximum daily load (TMDL) implementation plan aimed at reducing MeHg in Delta fish obligates dischargers to conduct MeHg control studies. Over 150 stakeholders collaborated to identify 24 management practices (MPs) addressing MeHg nonpoint sources (NPS) in three categories: biogeochemistry (6), hydrology (14), and soil/vegetation (4). Land uses were divided into six categories: permanently and seasonally flooded wetlands, flooded and irrigated agricultural lands, floodplains, and brackish-fresh tidal marshes. Stakeholders scored MPs based on seven criteria: scientific certainty, costs, MeHg reduction potential, spatial applicability, technical capacity to implement, negative impacts to beneficial uses, and conflicting requirements. Semi-quantitative scoring for MPs applicable to each land use (totaling >400 individual scores) led to consensus-based prioritization. This process relied on practical experience from diverse and accomplished NPS stakeholders and synthesis of 17 previous studies. Results provide a comprehensive, stakeholder-driven prioritization of MPs for wetland and irrigated agricultural land managers. Final prioritization highlights the most promising MPs for practical application and control study, and a secondary set of MPs warranting further evaluation. MPs that address hydrology and soil/vegetation were prioritized because experiences were positive and implementation appeared more feasible. MeHg control studies will need to address the TMDL conundrum that MPs effective at reducing MeHg exports could both exacerbate MeHg exposure and contend with other management objectives on site.

Integrated Assessment of Climate Change, Agricultural Land Use, and Regional Carbon Changes

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

MU, J.

2014-12-01

Changes in land use have caused a net release of carbon to the atmosphere over the last centuries and decades1. On one hand, agriculture accounts for 52% and 84% of global anthropogenic methane and nitrous oxide emissions, respectively. On the other hand, many agricultural practices can potentially mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the most prominent of which are improved cropland and grazing land management2. From this perspective, land use change that reduces emissions and/or increases carbon sequestration can play an important role in climate change mitigation. As shown in Figure 1, this paper is an integrated study of climate impacts, land uses, and regional carbon changes to examine, link and assess climate impacts on regional carbon changes via impacts on land uses. This study will contribute to previous research in two aspects: impacts of climate change on future land uses under an uncertain future world and projections of regional carbon dynamics due to changes in future land use. Specifically, we will examine how land use change under historical climate change using observed data and then project changes in land use under future climate projections from 14 Global Climate Models (GCMs) for two emission scenarios (i.e., RCP4.5 and RCP8.5). More importantly, we will investigate future land use under uncertainties with changes in agricultural development and social-economic conditions along with a changing climate. By doing this, we then could integrate with existing efforts by USGS land-change scientists developing and parameterizing models capable of projecting changes across a full spectrum of land use and land cover changes and track the consequences on ecosystem carbon to provide better information for land managers and policy makers when informing climate change adaptation and mitigation policies.

Exclusion of agricultural lands in spatial conservation prioritization strategies: consequences for biodiversity and ecosystem service representation

PubMed Central

Durán, América P.; Duffy, James P.; Gaston, Kevin J.

2014-01-01

Agroecosystems have traditionally been considered incompatible with biological conservation goals, and often been excluded from spatial conservation prioritization strategies. The consequences for the representativeness of identified priority areas have been little explored. Here, we evaluate these for biodiversity and carbon storage representation when agricultural land areas are excluded from a spatial prioritization strategy for South America. Comparing different prioritization approaches, we also assess how the spatial overlap of priority areas changes. The exclusion of agricultural lands was detrimental to biodiversity representation, indicating that priority areas for agricultural production overlap with areas of relatively high occurrence of species. By contrast, exclusion of agricultural lands benefits representation of carbon storage within priority areas, as lands of high value for agriculture and carbon storage overlap little. When agricultural lands were included and equally weighted with biodiversity and carbon storage, a balanced representation resulted. Our findings suggest that with appropriate management, South American agroecosystems can significantly contribute to biodiversity conservation. PMID:25143040

Application of ERTS-1 imagery to land use, forest density and soil investigations in Greece

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Yassoglou, N. J.; Skordalakis, E.; Koutalos, A.

1974-01-01

Photographic and digital imagery received from ERTS-1 was analyzed and evaluated as to its usefulness for the assessment of agricultural and forest land resources. Black and white, and color composite imagery provided spectral and spatial data, which, when matched with temporal land information, provided the basis for a semidetailed land use and forest site evaluation cartography. Color composite photographs have provided some information on the status of irrigation of agricultural lands. Computer processed digital imagery was successfully used for detailed crop classification and semidetailed soil evaluation. The results and techniques of this investigation are applicable to ecological and geological conditions similar to those prevailing in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Groundwater Ecosystems Vary with Land Use across a Mixed Agricultural Landscape.

PubMed

Korbel, K L; Hancock, P J; Serov, P; Lim, R P; Hose, G C

2013-01-01

Changes in surface land use may threaten groundwater quality and ecosystem integrity, particularly in shallow aquifers where links between groundwater and surface activities are most intimate. In this study we examine the response of groundwater ecosystem to agricultural land uses in the shallow alluvial aquifer of the Gwydir River valley, New South Wales, Australia. We compared groundwater quality and microbial and stygofauna assemblages among sites under irrigated cropping, non-irrigated cropping and grazing land uses. Stygofauna abundance and richness was greatest at irrigated sites, with the composition of the assemblage suggestive of disturbance. Microbial assemblages and water quality also varied with land use. Our study demonstrates significant differences in the composition of groundwater ecosystems in areas with different surface land use, and highlights the utility of groundwater biota for biomonitoring, particularly in agricultural landscapes. Copyright © by the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America, Inc.

A method for calculating a land-use change carbon footprint (LUC-CFP) for agricultural commodities - applications to Brazilian beef and soy, Indonesian palm oil.

PubMed

Persson, U Martin; Henders, Sabine; Cederberg, Christel

2014-11-01

The world's agricultural system has come under increasing scrutiny recently as an important driver of global climate change, creating a demand for indicators that estimate the climatic impacts of agricultural commodities. Such carbon footprints, however, have in most cases excluded emissions from land-use change and the proposed methodologies for including this significant emissions source suffer from different shortcomings. Here, we propose a new methodology for calculating land-use change carbon footprints for agricultural commodities and illustrate this methodology by applying it to three of the most prominent agricultural commodities driving tropical deforestation: Brazilian beef and soybeans, and Indonesian palm oil. We estimate land-use change carbon footprints in 2010 to be 66 tCO2 /t meat (carcass weight) for Brazilian beef, 0.89 tCO2 /t for Brazilian soybeans, and 7.5 tCO2 /t for Indonesian palm oil, using a 10 year amortization period. The main advantage of the proposed methodology is its flexibility: it can be applied in a tiered approach, using detailed data where it is available while still allowing for estimation of footprints for a broad set of countries and agricultural commodities; it can be applied at different scales, estimating both national and subnational footprints; it can be adopted to account both for direct (proximate) and indirect drivers of land-use change. It is argued that with an increasing commercialization and globalization of the drivers of land-use change, the proposed carbon footprint methodology could help leverage the power needed to alter environmentally destructive land-use practices within the global agricultural system by providing a tool for assessing the environmental impacts of production, thereby informing consumers about the impacts of consumption and incentivizing producers to become more environmentally responsible. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Interactive boundary delineation of agricultural lands using graphics workstations

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Cheng, Thomas D.; Angelici, Gary L.; Slye, Robert E.; Ma, Matt

1992-01-01

A review is presented of the computer-assisted stratification and sampling (CASS) system developed to delineate the boundaries of sample units for survey procedures. CASS stratifies the sampling units by land-cover and land-use type, employing image-processing software and hardware. This procedure generates coverage areas and the boundaries of stratified sampling units that are utilized for subsequent sampling procedures from which agricultural statistics are developed.

Analysis of road development and associated agricultural land use change.

PubMed

Alphan, Hakan

2017-12-05

Development of road network is one of the strongest drivers of habitat fragmentation. It interferes with ecological processes that are based on material and energy flows between landscape patches. Therefore, changes in temporal patterns of roads may be regarded as important landscape-level environmental indicators. The aim of this study is to analyze road development and associated agricultural land use change near the town of Erdemli located in the eastern Mediterranean coast of Turkey. The study area has witnessed an unprecedented development of agriculture since the 2000s. This process has resulted with the expansion of the road network. Associations between agricultural expansion and road development were investigated. High-resolution satellite images of 2004 and 2015 were used to analyze spatial and temporal dimensions of change. Satellite images were classified using a binary approach, in which land areas were labeled as either "agriculture" or "non-agriculture." Road networks were digitized manually. The study area was divided into 23 sublandscapes using a regular grid with 1-km cell spacing. Percentage of landscape (PL) for agriculture and road density (RD) metrics were calculated for the earlier (2004) and later (2015) years. Metric calculations were performed separately for each of the 23 sublandscapes in order to understand spatial diversity of agriculture and road density. Study results showed that both RD and PL exhibited similar increasing trends between 2004 and 2015.

Nickel, Cobalt, Chromium and Copper in agricultural and grazing land soils of Europe

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Albanese, Stefano; Sadeghi, Martiya; De Vivo, Benedetto; Lima, Annamaria; Cicchella, Domenico; Dinelli, Enrico

2014-05-01

In the framework of the GEMAS (Geochemical Mapping of Agricultural and Grazing Land Soils) project, concentrations of Ni, Co, Cu and Cr were determined for the whole available dataset (2218 samples of agricultural soil and 2127 samples of grazing land soil) covering a total area of 5.6 million sq km all over Europe. The distribution pattern of Ni in the European soils (both agricultural and grazing land soils) shows the highest concentrations in correspondence with the Mediterranean area (especially in Greece, the Balcan Peninsula and NW Italy) with average values generally ranging between 40 mg/kg and 140 mg/kg and anomalous areas characterized by peaks higher than 2400 mg/kg. Concentrations between 10 mg/kg and 40 mg/kg characterize Continental Europe north of Alps and, partly, the Scandinavian countries. Lower concentrations (< 10 mg/kg) occurs near the Trans-European Suture Zone, one of the main tectonic borders in Europe, and they are limited on the south by the maximum extent limit of the last glaciation. Cobalt and Cr show distribution patterns similar to Ni in both agricultural and grazing land soils. The maximum concentration peaks of Cobalt and Cr rise up to respectively 126 mg/kg and 696 mg/kg in agricultural soils and up to 255 mg/kg and 577 mg/kg in grazing land soils. Copper distribution in the soils collected across Europe, although has a general correspondence with the patterns of Ni, Co, Cr, shows some peculiarities. Specifically, Cu is characterized by high concentration values (up to 395 mg/kg in agricultural soils and 373 mg/kg in Grazing land soils) also in correspondence with the Roman Comagmatic Province and the south western coast of France characterized by a wide spread of vineyards.

Detection and assessment of land use dynamics on Tenerife (Canary Islands): the agricultural development between 1986 and 2010

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Günthert, Sebastian; Naumann, Simone; Siegmund, Alexander

2012-10-01

Since Spanish colonial times, the Canary Islands and especially Tenerife have always been used for intensive agriculture. Today almost 1/4 of the total area of Tenerife are agriculturally affected, whereas especially mountainous areas with suitable climate conditions are drastically transformed for agricultural use by building of large terraces. In recent years, political and economical developments lead to a further transformation process, especially inducted by an expansive tourism, which caused concentration- and intensification-tendencies of agricultural land use in lower altitudes as well as agricultural set-aside and rural exodus in the hinterland. The overall aim of the research at hand is to address the agricultural land use dynamics of the past decades, to statistically assess the causal reasons for those changes and to model the future agricultural land use dynamics on Tenerife. Therefore, an object-based classification procedure for recent RapidEye data (2010), Spot 4 (1998) as well as SPOT 1 (1986-88) imagery was developed, followed by a post classification comparison (PCC). Older agricultural fallow land or agricultural set-aside with a higher level of natural succession can hardly be acquired in the used medium satellite imagery. Hence, a second detection technique was generated, which allows an exact identification of the total agriculturally affected area on Tenerife, also containing older agricultural fallow land or agricultural set-aside. The method consists of an automatic texture-oriented detection and area-wide extraction of linear agricultural structures (plough furrows and field boundaries of arable land, utilised and non-utilised agricultural terraces) in current orthophotos of Tenerife. Once the change detection analysis is realised, it is necessary to identify the different driving forces which are responsible for the agricultural land use dynamics. The statistical connections between agricultural land use changes and these driving forces

Forest to agriculture conversion in southern Belize: Implications for migrant land birds

USGS Publications Warehouse

Spruce, J.P.; Dowell, B.A.; Robbins, C.S.; Sader, S.A.; Doyle, Jamie K.; Schelhas, John

1993-01-01

Central America offers a suite of neotropical habitats vital to overwintering migrant land birds. The recent decline of many forest dwelling avian migrants is believed to be related in part to neotropical deforestation and land use change. However, spatio-temporal trends in neotropical habitat availability and avian migrant habitat use are largely unknown. Such information is needed to assess the impact of agriculture conversion on migrant land birds. In response, the USDI Fish and Wildlife Service and the University of Maine began a cooperative study in 1988 which applies remote sensing and field surveys to determine current habitat availability and avian migrant habitat use. Study sites include areas in Belize, Costa Rica, Guatemala and southern Mexico. Visual assessment of Landsat TM imagery indicates southern Belize forests are fragmented by various agricultural systems. Shifting agriculture is predominant in some areas, while permanent agriculture (citrus and mixed animal crops) is the primary system in others. This poster focuses on efforts to monitor forest to agriculture conversion in southern Belize using remote sensing, field surveys and GIS techniques. Procedures and avian migrant use of habitat are summarized.

Urban Expansion: a Geo-Spatial Approach for Temporal Monitoring of Loss of Agricultural Land

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sumari, N. S.; Shao, Z.; Huang, M.; Sanga, C. A.; Van Genderen, J. L.

2017-09-01

This paper presents some preliminary results from research on monitoring the urban growth of Shenzhen in China. Agriculture is still the pillar of national economies in many countries including China. Thus, agriculture contributes to population growth. Population growth follows either exponential or logistic growth models. These models can be examined using a time-series of geospatial data, mainly historical earth observation imagery from satellites such as LANDSAT. Such multitemporal data may provide insights into settlement analysis as well as on population dynamics and hence, quantify the loss of agricultural land. In this study, LANDSAT data of ten dates, at approximately five yearly intervals from 1977 to 2017 were used. The remote sensing techniques used for analysis of data for 40 years were image selection, then followed by geometric and radiometric corrections and mosaicking. Also, classification, remote sensing image fusion, and change detection methods were used. This research extracted the information on the amount, direction, and speed of urbanization, and hence, the number of hectares of agricultural land lost due to urban expansion. Several specific elements were used in the descriptive model of landscape changes and population dynamics of the city of Shenzhen in China. These elements are: i) quantify the urban changes, from a small town (37.000 people in the early 1970's) to the megalopolis of around 20 million habitants today. ii) Examining the rate of urban extension on the loss of agricultural landscape and population growth. iii) The loss of food production was analysed against the economic growth in the region. iv) The aspects of loss of agricultural land, area of built-up urban land, and increase in population are studied quantitatively, by the temporal analysis of earth observation geospatial data. The experimental results from this study show that the proposed method is effective in determining loss of agricultural land in any city due to

A small-scale land-sparing approach to conserving biological diversity in tropical agricultural landscapes.

PubMed

Chandler, Richard B; King, David I; Raudales, Raul; Trubey, Richard; Chandler, Carlin; Chávez, Víctor Julio Arce

2013-08-01

Two contrasting strategies have been proposed for conserving biological diversity while meeting the increasing demand for agricultural products: land sparing and land sharing production systems. Land sparing involves increasing yield to reduce the amount of land needed for agriculture, whereas land-sharing agricultural practices incorporate elements of native ecosystems into the production system itself. Although the conservation value of these systems has been extensively debated, empirical studies are lacking. We compared bird communities in shade coffee, a widely practiced land-sharing system in which shade trees are maintained within the coffee plantation, with bird communities in a novel, small-scale, land-sparing coffee-production system (integrated open canopy or IOC coffee) in which farmers obtain higher yields under little or no shade while conserving an area of forest equal to the area under cultivation. Species richness and diversity of forest-dependent birds were higher in the IOC coffee farms than in the shade coffee farms, and community composition was more similar between IOC coffee and primary forest than between shade coffee and primary forest. Our study represents the first empirical comparison of well-defined land sparing and land sharing production systems. Because IOC coffee farms can be established by allowing forest to regenerate on degraded land, widespread adoption of this system could lead to substantial increases in forest cover and carbon sequestration without compromising agricultural yield or threatening the livelihoods of traditional small farmers. However, we studied small farms (<5 ha); thus, our results may not generalize to large-scale land-sharing systems. Furthermore, rather than concluding that land sparing is generally superior to land sharing, we suggest that the optimal approach depends on the crop, local climate, and existing land-use patterns. © 2013 Society for Conservation Biology.

Land Use Change and Agricultural Land Fragmentation due to Anthropogenic Activities in an Hot Spot Area: A Case Study for Thrace Region of Turkey

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Altürk, Bahadır; Konukcu, Fatih

2017-04-01

Agricultural lands that supply food, energy and ecosystem services for human life have been lost due to anthropogenic activities such as construction of roads, urban and industry areas. The significant reasons for the increase of artificial surfaces were poorly planned economic decisions by the government and internal migration due to this poorly planning. Unplanned urban sprawl also give rise to land fragmentation. Fragmentation of agricultural land affects both the agricultural production capacity and rural sustainable employment. In this study: i) Land use changes between 1990-2014 period were assessed using remotely sensed data and ii) Spatial and temporal agricultural land fragmentation were investigated using landscape pattern indice (effective mesh size), Morphological Spatial Pattern Analysis (MSPA) and Entropy method for 25 years period. The selected"hot spot" study area is located on east Thrace region of Turkey, being the service and industrial development zone where agricultural activities, water resources and natural habitat have been damaged due to rapid urban and industrial development for about 25 years. The results showed that agricultural lands decreased 6.44%, urban areas increased 111.68% and industry areas increased 251.19% during this 25 years period. Additionally, fragmentation analyses demonstrated that core agricultural areas sharply decreased and relative fragmentation (effective mesh size) increased from 50.68% to 56.77% during 1990 and 2014.

Agricultural land-use change in a Mexican oligotrophic desert depletes ecosystem stability

PubMed Central

Hernández-Becerra, Natali; Tapia-Torres, Yunuen; Beltrán-Paz, Ofelia; Blaz, Jazmín; Souza, Valeria

2016-01-01

Background Global demand for food has led to increased land-use change, particularly in dry land ecosystems, which has caused several environmental problems due to the soil degradation. In the Cuatro Cienegas Basin (CCB), alfalfa production irrigated by flooding impacts strongly on the soil. Methods In order to analyze the effect of such agricultural land-use change on soil nutrient dynamics and soil bacterial community composition, this work examined an agricultural gradient within the CCB which was comprised of a native desert grassland, a plot currently cultivated with alfalfa and a former agricultural field that had been abandoned for over 30 years. For each site, we analyzed C, N and P dynamic fractions, the activity of the enzyme phosphatase and the bacterial composition obtained using 16S rRNA clone libraries. Results The results showed that the cultivated site presented a greater availability of water and dissolved organic carbon, these conditions promoted mineralization processes mediated by heterotrophic microorganisms, while the abandoned land was limited by water and dissolved organic nitrogen. The low amount of dissolved organic matter promoted nitrification, which is mediated by autotrophic microorganisms. The microbial N immobilization process and specific phosphatase activity were both favored in the native grassland. As expected, differences in bacterial taxonomical composition were observed among sites. The abandoned site exhibited similar compositions than native grassland, while the cultivated site differed. Discussion The results suggest that the transformation of native grassland into agricultural land induces drastic changes in soil nutrient dynamics as well as in the bacterial community. However, with the absence of agricultural practices, some of the soil characteristics analyzed slowly recovers their natural state. PMID:27602304

Agricultural land-use change in a Mexican oligotrophic desert depletes ecosystem stability.

PubMed

Hernández-Becerra, Natali; Tapia-Torres, Yunuen; Beltrán-Paz, Ofelia; Blaz, Jazmín; Souza, Valeria; García-Oliva, Felipe

2016-01-01

Global demand for food has led to increased land-use change, particularly in dry land ecosystems, which has caused several environmental problems due to the soil degradation. In the Cuatro Cienegas Basin (CCB), alfalfa production irrigated by flooding impacts strongly on the soil. In order to analyze the effect of such agricultural land-use change on soil nutrient dynamics and soil bacterial community composition, this work examined an agricultural gradient within the CCB which was comprised of a native desert grassland, a plot currently cultivated with alfalfa and a former agricultural field that had been abandoned for over 30 years. For each site, we analyzed C, N and P dynamic fractions, the activity of the enzyme phosphatase and the bacterial composition obtained using 16S rRNA clone libraries. The results showed that the cultivated site presented a greater availability of water and dissolved organic carbon, these conditions promoted mineralization processes mediated by heterotrophic microorganisms, while the abandoned land was limited by water and dissolved organic nitrogen. The low amount of dissolved organic matter promoted nitrification, which is mediated by autotrophic microorganisms. The microbial N immobilization process and specific phosphatase activity were both favored in the native grassland. As expected, differences in bacterial taxonomical composition were observed among sites. The abandoned site exhibited similar compositions than native grassland, while the cultivated site differed. The results suggest that the transformation of native grassland into agricultural land induces drastic changes in soil nutrient dynamics as well as in the bacterial community. However, with the absence of agricultural practices, some of the soil characteristics analyzed slowly recovers their natural state.

Exclusion of agricultural lands in spatial conservation prioritization strategies: consequences for biodiversity and ecosystem service representation.

PubMed

Durán, América P; Duffy, James P; Gaston, Kevin J

2014-10-07

Agroecosystems have traditionally been considered incompatible with biological conservation goals, and often been excluded from spatial conservation prioritization strategies. The consequences for the representativeness of identified priority areas have been little explored. Here, we evaluate these for biodiversity and carbon storage representation when agricultural land areas are excluded from a spatial prioritization strategy for South America. Comparing different prioritization approaches, we also assess how the spatial overlap of priority areas changes. The exclusion of agricultural lands was detrimental to biodiversity representation, indicating that priority areas for agricultural production overlap with areas of relatively high occurrence of species. By contrast, exclusion of agricultural lands benefits representation of carbon storage within priority areas, as lands of high value for agriculture and carbon storage overlap little. When agricultural lands were included and equally weighted with biodiversity and carbon storage, a balanced representation resulted. Our findings suggest that with appropriate management, South American agroecosystems can significantly contribute to biodiversity conservation. © 2014 The Author(s) Published by the Royal Society. All rights reserved.

Agricultural land cover mapping in the context of a geographically referenced digital information system. [Carroll, Macon, and Gentry Counties, Missouri

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Stoner, E. R.

1982-01-01

The introduction of soil map information to the land cover mapping process can improve discrimination of land cover types and reduce confusion among crop types that may be caused by soil-specific management practices and background reflectance characteristics. Multiple dates of LANDSAT MSS digital were analyzed for three study areas in northern Missouri to produce cover types for major agricultural land cover classes. Digital data bases were then developed by adding ancillary data such as digitized soil and transportation network information to the LANDSAT-derived cover type map. Procedures were developed to manipulate the data base parameters to extract information applicable to user requirements. An agricultural information system combining such data can be used to determine the productive capacity of land to grow crops, fertilizer needs, chemical weed control rates, irrigation suitability, and trafficability of soil for planting.

The centrifugal and centripetal force influence on spatial competition of agricultural land in Bandung Metropolitan Region

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sadewo, E.

2017-06-01

Agricultural activity has suffered a massive land functional shift caused by market mechanism in Bandung metropolitan region (BMR). We argue that the existence of agricultural land in urban spatial structure is the result of interaction between centrifugal and centripetal force on spatial competition. This research aims to explore how several recognized centrifugal and centripetal force influence to the existence of agricultural land in BMR land development. The analysis using multivariate regression indicates that there exists spatial competition between population density and degree of urbanization with agricultural land areas. Its extended spatial regression model suggested that neighboring situation plays an important role to preserve agricultural land areas existences in BMR. Meanwhile, the influence of distance between the location of the city center and employment opportunities is found to be insignificant in the spatial competition. It is opposed to the theory of von Thünen and monocentric model in general. One of the possible explanation of such condition is that the assumption of centrality does not met. In addition, the agricultural land density decay in the southern parts of the area was related to its geographical conditions as protected areas or unfavorable for farming activity. It is suggested that BMR was in the early phase of polycentric development. Hence, better policies that lead redirected development to the southern part of the region is needed as well as population control and regulation of land use.

Perceptions of Agricultural Leadership Academic Programs of 1862 Land-Grant Universities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Alexander, Jackson C.; Rucker, K. Jill; Graham, Donna L.; Miller, Jefferson D.; Apple, Jason K.

2017-01-01

This study characterized perceptions of agricultural leadership programs in colleges of agriculture, food, life, human, or environmental sciences at 1,862 land-grant institutions. Objectives included describing the need for programs, studying evolution within the discipline, discussing faculty recommendations for future development, and examining…

Change in agricultural land use constrains adaptation of national wildlife refuges to climate change

USGS Publications Warehouse

Hamilton, Christopher M.; Thogmartin, Wayne E.; Radeloff, Volker C.; Plantinga, Andrew J.; Heglund, Patricia J.; Martinuzzi, Sebastian; Pidgeon, Anna M.

2015-01-01

Land-use change around protected areas limits their ability to conserve biodiversity by altering ecological processes such as natural hydrologic and disturbance regimes, facilitating species invasions, and interfering with dispersal of organisms. This paper informs USA National Wildlife Refuge System conservation planning by predicting future land-use change on lands within 25 km distance of 461 refuges in the USA using an econometric model. The model contained two differing policy scenarios, namely a ‘business-as-usual’ scenario and a ‘pro-agriculture’ scenario. Regardless of scenario, by 2051, forest cover and urban land use were predicted to increase around refuges, while the extent of range and pasture was predicted to decrease; cropland use decreased under the business-as-usual scenario, but increased under the pro-agriculture scenario. Increasing agricultural land value under the pro-agriculture scenario slowed an expected increase in forest around refuges, and doubled the rate of range and pasture loss. Intensity of land-use change on lands surrounding refuges differed by regions. Regional differences among scenarios revealed that an understanding of regional and local land-use dynamics and management options was an essential requirement to effectively manage these conserved lands. Such knowledge is particularly important given the predicted need to adapt to a changing global climate.

Changes in climate variability with reference to land quality and agriculture in Scotland.

PubMed

Brown, Iain; Castellazzi, Marie

2015-06-01

Classification and mapping of land capability represents an established format for summarising spatial information on land quality and land-use potential. By convention, this information incorporates bioclimatic constraints through the use of a long-term average. However, climate change means that land capability classification should also have a dynamic temporal component. Using an analysis based upon Land Capability for Agriculture in Scotland, it is shown that this dynamism not only involves the long-term average but also shorter term spatiotemporal patterns, particularly through changes in interannual variability. Interannual and interdecadal variations occur both in the likelihood of land being in prime condition (top three capability class divisions) and in class volatility from year to year. These changing patterns are most apparent in relation to the west-east climatic gradient which is mainly a function of precipitation regime and soil moisture. Analysis is also extended into the future using climate results for the 2050s from a weather generator which show a complex interaction between climate interannual variability and different soil types for land quality. In some locations, variability of land capability is more likely to decrease because the variable climatic constraints are relaxed and the dominant constraint becomes intrinsic soil properties. Elsewhere, climatic constraints will continue to be influential. Changing climate variability has important implications for land-use planning and agricultural management because it modifies local risk profiles in combination with the current trend towards agricultural intensification and specialisation.

Sewage sludge as fertiliser - environmental assessment of storage and land application options.

PubMed

Willén, A; Junestedt, C; Rodhe, L; Pell, M; Jönsson, H

2017-03-01

Sewage sludge (SS) contains beneficial plant nutrients and organic matter, and therefore application of SS on agricultural land helps close nutrient loops. However, spreading operations are restricted to certain seasons and hence the SS needs to be stored. Storage and land application of SS are both potential sources of greenhouse gases and ammonia, leading to global warming, acidification and eutrophication. Covering the stored SS, treating it with urea and choosing the correct time for land application all have the potential to reduce emissions from the system. Using life cycle assessment (LCA), this study compares storage and land application options of SS in terms of global warming potential (GWP), acidification potential, eutrophication potential and primary energy use. The system with covered storage has the lowest impact of all categories. Systems with autumn application are preferable to spring application for all impact categories but, when nitrate leaching is considered, spring application is preferable in terms of eutrophication and primary energy use and, for some SS treatments, GWP. Ammonia addition reduces nitrous oxide and ammonia emissions during storage, but increases these emissions after land application. Storage duration has a large impact on GWP, while amount of chemical nitrogen fertiliser substituted has a large impact on primary energy use.

Impacts of agricultural land use on biological integrity: A causal analysis

USGS Publications Warehouse

Riseng, C.M.; Wiley, M.J.; Black, R.W.; Munn, M.D.

2011-01-01

Agricultural land use has often been linked to nutrient enrichment, habitat degradation, hydrologic alteration, and loss of biotic integrity in streams. The U.S. Geological Survey's National Water Quality Assessment Program sampled 226 stream sites located in eight agriculture-dominated study units across the United States to investigate the geographic variability and causes of agricultural impacts on stream biotic integrity. In this analysis we used structural equation modeling (SEM) to develop a national and set of regional causal models linking agricultural land use to measured instream conditions. We then examined the direct, indirect, and total effects of agriculture on biotic integrity as it acted through multiple water quality and habitat pathways. In our nation-wide model, cropland affected benthic communities by both altering structural habitats and by imposing water quality-related stresses. Regionspecific modeling demonstrated that geographic context altered the relative importance of causal pathways through which agricultural activities affected stream biotic integrity. Cropland had strong negative total effects on the invertebrate community in the national, Midwest, and Western models, but a very weak effect in the Eastern Coastal Plain model. In theWestern Arid and Eastern Coastal Plain study regions, cropland impacts were transmitted primarily through dissolved water quality contaminants, but in the Midwestern region, they were transmitted primarily through particulate components of water quality. Habitat effects were important in the Western Arid model, but negligible in the Midwest and Eastern Coastal Plain models. The relative effects of riparian forested wetlands also varied regionally, having positive effects on biotic integrity in the Eastern Coastal Plain andWestern Arid region models, but no statistically significant effect in the Midwest. These differences in response to cropland and riparian cover suggest that best management practices and

An inexact risk management model for agricultural land-use planning under water shortage

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Li, Wei; Feng, Changchun; Dai, Chao; Li, Yongping; Li, Chunhui; Liu, Ming

2016-09-01

Water resources availability has a significant impact on agricultural land-use planning, especially in a water shortage area such as North China. The random nature of available water resources and other uncertainties in an agricultural system present risk for land-use planning and may lead to undesirable decisions or potential economic loss. In this study, an inexact risk management model (IRM) was developed for supporting agricultural land-use planning and risk analysis under water shortage. The IRM model was formulated through incorporating a conditional value-at-risk (CVaR) constraint into an inexact two-stage stochastic programming (ITSP) framework, and could be used to control uncertainties expressed as not only probability distributions but also as discrete intervals. The measure of risk about the second-stage penalty cost was incorporated into the model so that the trade-off between system benefit and extreme expected loss could be analyzed. The developed model was applied to a case study in the Zhangweinan River Basin, a typical agricultural region facing serious water shortage in North China. Solutions of the IRM model showed that the obtained first-stage land-use target values could be used to reflect decision-makers' opinions on the long-term development plan. The confidence level α and maximum acceptable risk loss β could be used to reflect decisionmakers' preference towards system benefit and risk control. The results indicated that the IRM model was useful for reflecting the decision-makers' attitudes toward risk aversion and could help seek cost-effective agricultural land-use planning strategies under complex uncertainties.

Agricultural land abandonment in Mediterranean environment provides ecosystem services via soil carbon sequestration.

PubMed

Novara, Agata; Gristina, Luciano; Sala, Giovanna; Galati, Antonino; Crescimanno, Maria; Cerdà, Artemi; Badalamenti, Emilio; La Mantia, Tommaso

2017-01-15

Abandonment of agricultural land leads to several consequences for ecosystem functions. Agricultural abandonment may be a significant and low cost strategy for carbon sequestration and mitigation of anthropogenic CO 2 emissions due to the vegetation recovery and increase in soil organic matter. The aim of this study was to: (i) estimate the influence of different Soil Regions (areas characterized by a typical climate and parent material association) and Bioclimates (zones with homogeneous climatic regions and thermotype indices) on soil organic carbon (SOC) dynamics after agricultural land abandonment; and (ii) to analyse the efficiency of the agri-environment policy (agri-environment measures) suggested by the European Commission in relation to potential SOC stock ability in the Sicilian Region (Italy). In order to quantify the effects of agricultural abandonment on SOC, a dataset with original data that was sampled in Sicily and existing data from the literature were analysed according to the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) methodology. Results showed that abandonment of cropland soils increased SOC stock by 9.03MgCha -1 on average, ranging from 5.4MgCha -1 to 26.7MgCha -1 in relation to the Soil Region and Bioclimate. The estimation of SOC change after agricultural use permitted calculation of the payments for ecosystem service (PES) of C sequestration after agricultural land abandonment in relation to environmental benefits, increasing in this way the efficiency of PES. Considering the 14,337ha of abandoned lands in Sicily, the CO 2 emission as a whole was reduced by 887,745Mg CO 2 . Therefore, it could be concluded that abandoned agricultural fields represents a valid opportunity to mitigate agriculture sector emissions in Sicily. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Clustering of Multi-Temporal Fully Polarimetric L-Band SAR Data for Agricultural Land Cover Mapping

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tamiminia, H.; Homayouni, S.; Safari, A.

2015-12-01

Recently, the unique capabilities of Polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar (PolSAR) sensors make them an important and efficient tool for natural resources and environmental applications, such as land cover and crop classification. The aim of this paper is to classify multi-temporal full polarimetric SAR data using kernel-based fuzzy C-means clustering method, over an agricultural region. This method starts with transforming input data into the higher dimensional space using kernel functions and then clustering them in the feature space. Feature space, due to its inherent properties, has the ability to take in account the nonlinear and complex nature of polarimetric data. Several SAR polarimetric features extracted using target decomposition algorithms. Features from Cloude-Pottier, Freeman-Durden and Yamaguchi algorithms used as inputs for the clustering. This method was applied to multi-temporal UAVSAR L-band images acquired over an agricultural area near Winnipeg, Canada, during June and July in 2012. The results demonstrate the efficiency of this approach with respect to the classical methods. In addition, using multi-temporal data in the clustering process helped to investigate the phenological cycle of plants and significantly improved the performance of agricultural land cover mapping.

Life cycle modelling of environmental impacts of application of processed organic municipal solid waste on agricultural land (EASEWASTE).

PubMed

Hansen, Trine Lund; Bhander, Gurbakhash S; Christensen, Thomas Højlund; Bruun, Sander; Jensen, Lars Stoumann

2006-04-01

A model capable of quantifying the potential environmental impacts of agricultural application of composted or anaerobically digested source-separated organic municipal solid waste (MSW) is presented. In addition to the direct impacts, the model accounts for savings by avoiding the production and use of commercial fertilizers. The model is part of a larger model, Environmental Assessment of Solid Waste Systems and Technology (EASEWASTE), developed as a decision-support model, focusing on assessment of alternative waste management options. The environmental impacts of the land application of processed organic waste are quantified by emission coefficients referring to the composition of the processed waste and related to specific crop rotation as well as soil type. The model contains several default parameters based on literature data, field experiments and modelling by the agro-ecosystem model, Daisy. All data can be modified by the user allowing application of the model to other situations. A case study including four scenarios was performed to illustrate the use of the model. One tonne of nitrogen in composted and anaerobically digested MSW was applied as fertilizer to loamy and sandy soil at a plant farm in western Denmark. Application of the processed organic waste mainly affected the environmental impact categories global warming (0.4-0.7 PE), acidification (-0.06 (saving)-1.6 PE), nutrient enrichment (-1.0 (saving)-3.1 PE), and toxicity. The main contributors to these categories were nitrous oxide formation (global warming), ammonia volatilization (acidification and nutrient enrichment), nitrate losses (nutrient enrichment and groundwater contamination), and heavy metal input to soil (toxicity potentials). The local agricultural conditions as well as the composition of the processed MSW showed large influence on the environmental impacts. A range of benefits, mainly related to improved soil quality from long-term application of the processed organic waste

Urban Expansion and the Loss of Prime Agricultural Lands in Puerto Rico

Treesearch

T. Mitchell Aide Tania del Mar López

2001-01-01

In many countries where the economy has shifted from mainly agricultural to industrial, abandoned agricultural lands are lost to urbanization. For more than 4 centuries the Puerto Rican economy depended almost entirely on agriculture, but sociopolitical changes early in the 20th century resulted in a shift to industry. This shift in the economy, and an increase in...

[Theories and methodologies of engineering designs on sustainable agricultural land consolidation project--a case study of Xuemeiyang land consolidation project in Changtai County, Fujian Province].

PubMed

Ye, Yanmei; Wu, Cifang; Cheng, Chengbiao; Qiu, Lingzhang; Huang, Shengyu; Zheng, Ruihui

2002-09-01

The concept and characteristics of engineering designs on sustainable agricultural land consolidation project were discussed in this paper. Principles, basic methods and procedures of engineering designs on agricultural land consolidation project were put forward, which were successfully adopted for designing agricultural land consolidation in Xuemeiyang region of Changtai County, including diversity designs of sustainable land use, engineering designs of soil improvement, roads, ditches, and drains for protecting existent animal environments, and design of ecological shelter-forests in farmland. Moreover, from sustainable economic, ecological and social points, the results of these engineering designs were evaluated based on fouteen important indexes. After carrying out these engineeringdesigns, the eco-environments and agricultural production conditions were significantly improved, and the farm income was increased in planned regions.

As Land-Grant Law Turns 150, Students Crowd into Agriculture Colleges

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Biemiller, Lawrence

2012-01-01

On July 2, 1862, Abraham Lincoln signed Justin Morrill's second agriculture-school bill into law. Along with another measure he championed, in 1890, it created a system of land-grant colleges that rooted agriculture firmly in university research and helped democratize American higher education, creating institutions not for the sons and daughters…

Land-Sparing Agriculture Best Protects Avian Phylogenetic Diversity.

PubMed

Edwards, David P; Gilroy, James J; Thomas, Gavin H; Uribe, Claudia A Medina; Haugaasen, Torbjørn

2015-09-21

The conversion of natural habitats to farmland is a major driver of the global extinction crisis. Two strategies are promoted to mitigate the impacts of agricultural expansion on biodiversity: land sharing integrates wildlife-friendly habitats within farmland landscapes, and land sparing intensifies farming to allow the offset of natural reserves. A key question is which strategy would protect the most phylogenetic diversity--the total evolutionary history shared across all species within a community. Conserving phylogenetic diversity decreases the chance of losing unique phenotypic and ecological traits and provides benefits for ecosystem function and stability. Focusing on birds in the threatened Chocó-Andes hotspot of endemism, we tested the relative benefits of each strategy for retaining phylogenetic diversity in tropical cloud forest landscapes threatened by cattle pastures. Using landscape simulations, we find that land sharing would protect lower community-level phylogenetic diversity than land sparing and that with increasing distance from forest (from 500 to >1,500 m), land sharing is increasingly inferior to land sparing. Isolation from forest also leads to the loss of more evolutionarily distinct species from communities within land-sharing landscapes, which can be avoided with effective land sparing. Land-sharing policies that promote the integration of small-scale wildlife-friendly habitats might be of limited benefit without the simultaneous protection of larger blocks of natural habitat, which is most likely to be achieved via land-sparing measures. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Targeting land-use change for nitratenitrogen load reductions in an agricultural watershed

USGS Publications Warehouse

Jha, M.K.; Schilling, K.E.; Gassman, Philip W.; Wolter, C.F.

2010-01-01

The research was conducted as part of the USDA's Conservation Effects Assessment Project. The objective of the project was to evaluate the environmental effects of land-use changes, with a focus on understanding how the spatial distribution throughout a watershed influences their effectiveness.The Soil and Water AssessmentTool (SWAT) water quality model was applied to the Squaw Creek watershed, which covers 4,730 ha (11,683 ac) of prime agriculture land in southern Iowa. The model was calibrated (2000 to 2004) and validated (1996 to 1999) for overall watershed hydrology and for streamflow and nitrate loadings at the watershed outlet on an annual and monthly basis. Four scenarios for land-use change were evaluated including one scenario consistent with recent land-use changes and three scenarios focused on land-use change on highly erodible land areas, upper basin areas, and floodplain areas. Results for the Squaw Creek watershed suggested that nitrate losses were sensitive to land-use change. If land-use patterns were restored to 1990 conditions, nitrate loads may be reduced 7% to 47% in the watershed and subbasins, whereas converting row crops to grass in highly erodible land, upper basin, and floodplain areas would reduce nitrate loads by 47%, 16%, and 8%, respectively. These SWAT model simulations can provide guidance on how to begin targeting land-use change for nitrate load reductions in agricultural watersheds.

Interpretation of Pennsylvania agricultural land use from ERTS-1 data

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Mcmurtry, G. J.; Petersen, G. W. (Principal Investigator); Wilson, A. D.

1974-01-01

The author has identified the following significant results. To study the complex agricultural patterns in Pennsylvania, a portion of an ERTS scene was selected for detailed analysis. Various photographic products were made and were found to be only of limited value. This necessitated the digital processing of the ERTS data. Using an unsupervised classification procedure, it was possible to delineate the following categories: (1) forest land with a northern aspect, (2) forest land with a southern aspect, (3) valley trees, (4) wheat, (5) corn, (6) alfalfa, grass, pasture, (7) disturbed land, (8) builtup land, (9) strip mines, and (10) water. These land use categories were delineated at a scale of approximately 1:20,000 on the line printer output. Land use delineations were also made using the General Electric IMAGE 100 interactive analysis system.

Land use efficiency: anticipating future demand for land-sector greenhouse gas emissions abatement and managing trade-offs with agriculture, water, and biodiversity.

PubMed

Bryan, Brett A; Crossman, Neville D; Nolan, Martin; Li, Jing; Navarro, Javier; Connor, Jeffery D

2015-11-01

Competition for land is increasing, and policy needs to ensure the efficient supply of multiple ecosystem services from land systems. We modelled the spatially explicit potential future supply of ecosystem services in Australia's intensive agricultural land in response to carbon markets under four global outlooks from 2013 to 2050. We assessed the productive efficiency of greenhouse gas emissions abatement, agricultural production, water resources, and biodiversity services and compared these to production possibility frontiers (PPFs). While interacting commodity markets and carbon markets produced efficient outcomes for agricultural production and emissions abatement, more efficient outcomes were possible for water resources and biodiversity services due to weak price signals. However, when only two objectives were considered as per typical efficiency assessments, efficiency improvements involved significant unintended trade-offs for the other objectives and incurred substantial opportunity costs. Considering multiple objectives simultaneously enabled the identification of land use arrangements that were efficient over multiple ecosystem services. Efficient land use arrangements could be selected that meet society's preferences for ecosystem service provision from land by adjusting the metric used to combine multiple services. To effectively manage competition for land via land use efficiency, market incentives are needed that effectively price multiple ecosystem services. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

75 FR 52713 - Nationwide Aerial Application of Fire Retardant on National Forest System Lands

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2010-08-27

... DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE Forest Service Nationwide Aerial Application of Fire Retardant on... statement for the continued nationwide aerial application of fire retardant on National Forest System lands... 26667, Salt Lake City, UT 84126-0667. Comments may also be sent via e- mail to Fire[email protected

Influence of agricultural land-use and pesticides on benthic macroinvertebrate assemblages in an agricultural river basin in southeast Brazil.

PubMed

Egler, M; Buss, D F; Moreira, J C; Baptista, D F

2012-08-01

Land-use alterations and pesticide run-offs are among the main causes for impairment in agricultural areas. We evaluated the influence of different land-uses (forest, pasture and intensive agriculture) on the water quality and on benthic macroinvertebrate assemblages on three occasions: in the dry season, wet season and at the end of the wet season. Macroinvertebrates responded to this gradient of impairment: agricultural sites had significantly lower richness numbers than forested and pasture sites, and all major invertebrate groups were significantly affected. Most taxa found in forested sites were found in pasture sites, but often with lower densities. In this case, the loss of habitats due to sedimentation and the lower complexity of substrates seem to be the disruptive force for the macroinvertebrate fauna.

Livelihood profiling and sensitivity of livelihood strategies to land cover dynamics and agricultural variability

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Berchoux, Tristan; Hutton, Craig; Watmough, Gary; Amoako Johnson, Fiifi; Atkinson, Peter

2017-04-01

With population increase and the urbanisation of rural areas, land scarcity is one of the biggest challenges now faced by communities in agrarian societies. At the household level, loss of land can be due to physical processes such as erosion, to social constraints such as inheritance, or to financial constraints such as loan reimbursement or the need of cash. For rural households, whose livelihoods are mainly based on agriculture, a decrease in the area of land cultivated can have significant consequences on their livelihood strategies, thus on their livelihood outcomes. However, it is still unclear how changes in cultivated area and agricultural productivity influence households' livelihood systems, including community capitals and households' livelihood strategies. This study aims to answer this gap by combining together earth observation from space, national census and participatory qualitative data into a community-wise analysis of the relationships between land cover dynamics, variability in agricultural production and livelihood activities. Its overarching aim is to investigate how land cover dynamics relates to changes in livelihood strategies and livelihood capitals. The study demonstrates that a change in land cover influences livelihood activities differently depending on the community capitals that households have access to. One significant aspect of integrating land dynamics with livelihood activities is its capacity to provide insights on the relationships between climate, agriculture, livelihood dynamics and rural development. More broadly, it gives policymakers new methods to characterise livelihood dynamics, thus to monitor some of the key Sustainable Development Goals: food security (SDG2), employment dynamics (SDG8), inequalities (SDG10) and sustainability of communities (SDG11).

Agricultural Intensification in the Brazilian Agricultural-Forest Frontier: Land Use Responses to Development and Conservation Policy

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Garrett, R.; Koh, I.; le Polain de Waroux, Y.; Lambin, E.; Kastens, J.; Brown, J. C.

2017-12-01

Agricultural expansion, extensive cattle ranching, and deforestation remain pressing challenges for sustainable development and climate mitigation throughout South America. In response to these challenges, national and local governments, as well as private and non-governmental actors have developed new forest conservation governance mechanisms. The objective of this study is to better understand how conservation policies interact with supply chain development to influence land use. In particular, we endeavor to understand the timing and spatial patterns of crop and cattle intensification, an understudied phenomenon that is critical to understanding the future of agricultural-forest frontiers and the impacts of conservation policies. We focus on Mato Grosso, the largest soy and cattle producing state in Brazil, which spans the Cerrado and Amazon biomes and has experienced higher levels of deforestation for agricultural expansion than any other state globally over the last decade. Using a newly created spatially explicit data set of land use intensity, supply chain development, and forest policy, we find that agricultural intensification is occurring rapidly in the region, but is only partially driven by changes in conservation policies. The intensification of cattle production is the result of improvements in deforestation monitoring, penalties, and enforcement, and increased land scarcity. Crop intensification, in contrast, preceded increases in conservation restrictions, and is associated with the positive spillovers resulting from agribusiness agglomeration and development. These results suggest that intensification is not a foregone conclusion of increasing forest conservation restrictions, but is highly dependent on wider development processes. A combined effort to direct agribusiness development away from forest regions via tax credits and subsidized credit, when applied in concert with stringent conservation requirements, could help promote intensification

Tropical forests were the primary sources of new agricultural land in the 1980s and 1990s.

PubMed

Gibbs, H K; Ruesch, A S; Achard, F; Clayton, M K; Holmgren, P; Ramankutty, N; Foley, J A

2010-09-21

Global demand for agricultural products such as food, feed, and fuel is now a major driver of cropland and pasture expansion across much of the developing world. Whether these new agricultural lands replace forests, degraded forests, or grasslands greatly influences the environmental consequences of expansion. Although the general pattern is known, there still is no definitive quantification of these land-cover changes. Here we analyze the rich, pan-tropical database of classified Landsat scenes created by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations to examine pathways of agricultural expansion across the major tropical forest regions in the 1980s and 1990s and use this information to highlight the future land conversions that probably will be needed to meet mounting demand for agricultural products. Across the tropics, we find that between 1980 and 2000 more than 55% of new agricultural land came at the expense of intact forests, and another 28% came from disturbed forests. This study underscores the potential consequences of unabated agricultural expansion for forest conservation and carbon emissions.

A Spatial Data Model Desing For The Management Of Agricultural Data (Farmer, Agricultural Land And Agricultural Production)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Taşkanat, Talha; İbrahim İnan, Halil

2016-04-01

Since the beginning of the 2000s, it has been conducted many projects such as Agricultural Sector Integrated Management Information System, Agriculture Information System, Agricultural Production Registry System and Farmer Registry System by the Turkish Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock and the Turkish Statistical Institute in order to establish and manage better agricultural policy and produce better agricultural statistics in Turkey. Yet, it has not been carried out any study for the structuring of a system which can meet the requirements of different institutions and organizations that need similar agricultural data. It has been tried to meet required data only within the frame of the legal regulations from present systems. Whereas the developments in GIS (Geographical Information Systems) and standardization, and Turkey National GIS enterprise in this context necessitate to meet the demands of organizations that use the similar data commonly and to act in terms of a data model logic. In this study, 38 institutions or organization which produce and use agricultural data were detected, that and thanks to survey and interviews undertaken, their needs were tried to be determined. In this study which is financially supported by TUBITAK, it was worked out relationship between farmer, agricultural land and agricultural production data and all of the institutions and organizations in Turkey and in this context, it was worked upon the best detailed and effective possible data model. In the model design, UML which provides object-oriented design was used. In the data model, for the management of spatial data, sub-parcel data model was used. Thanks to this data model, declared and undeclared areas can be detected spatially, and thus declarations can be associated to sub-parcels. Within this framework, it will be able to developed agricultural policies as a result of acquiring more extensive, accurate, spatially manageable and easily updatable farmer and

Estimating the Effects of Conversion of Agricultural Land to Urban Land on Deep Percolation of Irrigation Water in the Grand Valley, Western Colorado

USGS Publications Warehouse

Mayo, John W.

2008-01-01

The conversion of agricultural land to urban residential land is associated with rapid population growth in the Grand Valley of western Colorado. Information regarding the effects of this land-use conversion on deep percolation, irrigation-water application, and associated salt loading to the Colorado River is needed to support water-resource planning and conservation efforts. The Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) assessed deep percolation and estimated salt loading derived from irrigated agricultural lands in the Grand Valley in a 1985 to 2002 monitoring and evaluation study (NRCS M&E). The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with the Colorado River Salinity Control Forum and the Mesa Conservation District, quantified the current (2005-2006) deep percolation and irrigation-water application characteristics of 1/4-acre residential lots and 5-acre estates, urban parks, and urban orchard grass fields in the Grand Valley, and compared the results to NRCS M&E results from alfalfa-crop sites. In addition, pond seepage from three irrigation-water holding ponds was estimated. Salt loading was estimated for the urban study results and the NRCS M&E results by using standard salt-loading factors. A daily soil-moisture balance calculation technique was used at all urban study irrigated sites. Deep percolation was defined as any water infiltrating below the top 12 inches of soil. Deep percolation occurred when the soil-moisture balance in the first 12 inches of soil exceeded the field capacity for the soil type at each site. Results were reported separately for urban study bluegrass-only sites and for all-vegetation type (bluegrass, native plants, and orchard grass) sites. Deep percolation and irrigation-water application also were estimated for a complete irrigation season at three subdivisions by using mean site data from each subdivision. It was estimated that for the three subdivisions, 37 percent of the developed acreage was irrigated (the balance

Impacts of land-use history on the recovery of ecosystems after agricultural abandonment

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Krause, Andreas; Pugh, Thomas A. M.; Bayer, Anita D.; Lindeskog, Mats; Arneth, Almut

2016-09-01

Land-use changes have been shown to have large effects on climate and biogeochemical cycles, but so far most studies have focused on the effects of conversion of natural vegetation to croplands and pastures. By contrast, relatively little is known about the long-term influence of past agriculture on vegetation regrowth and carbon sequestration following land abandonment. We used the LPJ-GUESS dynamic vegetation model to study the legacy effects of different land-use histories (in terms of type and duration) across a range of ecosystems. To this end, we performed six idealized simulations for Europe and Africa in which we made a transition from natural vegetation to either pasture or cropland, followed by a transition back to natural vegetation after 20, 60 or 100 years. The simulations identified substantial differences in recovery trajectories of four key variables (vegetation composition, vegetation carbon, soil carbon, net biome productivity) after agricultural cessation. Vegetation carbon and composition typically recovered faster than soil carbon in subtropical, temperate and boreal regions, and vice versa in the tropics. While the effects of different land-use histories on recovery periods of soil carbon stocks often differed by centuries across our simulations, differences in recovery times across simulations were typically small for net biome productivity (a few decades) and modest for vegetation carbon and composition (several decades). Spatially, we found the greatest sensitivity of recovery times to prior land use in boreal forests and subtropical grasslands, where post-agricultural productivity was strongly affected by prior land management. Our results suggest that land-use history is a relevant factor affecting ecosystems long after agricultural cessation, and it should be considered not only when assessing historical or future changes in simulations of the terrestrial carbon cycle but also when establishing long-term monitoring networks and

Land-use change affects water recycling in Brazil's last agricultural frontier.

PubMed

Spera, Stephanie A; Galford, Gillian L; Coe, Michael T; Macedo, Marcia N; Mustard, John F

2016-10-01

Historically, conservation-oriented research and policy in Brazil have focused on Amazon deforestation, but a majority of Brazil's deforestation and agricultural expansion has occurred in the neighboring Cerrado biome, a biodiversity hotspot comprised of dry forests, woodland savannas, and grasslands. Resilience of rainfed agriculture in both biomes likely depends on water recycling in undisturbed Cerrado vegetation; yet little is known about how changes in land-use and land-cover affect regional climate feedbacks in the Cerrado. We used remote sensing techniques to map land-use change across the Cerrado from 2003 to 2013. During this period, cropland agriculture more than doubled in area from 1.2 to 2.5 million ha, with 74% of new croplands sourced from previously intact Cerrado vegetation. We find that these changes have decreased the amount of water recycled to the atmosphere via evapotranspiration (ET) each year. In 2013 alone, cropland areas recycled 14 km(3) less (-3%) water than if the land cover had been native Cerrado vegetation. ET from single-cropping systems (e.g., soybeans) is less than from natural vegetation in all years, except in the months of January and February, the height of the growing season. In double-cropping systems (e.g., soybeans followed by corn), ET is similar to or greater than natural vegetation throughout a majority of the wet season (December-May). As intensification and extensification of agricultural production continue in the region, the impacts on the water cycle and opportunities for mitigation warrant consideration. For example, if an environmental goal is to minimize impacts on the water cycle, double cropping (intensification) might be emphasized over extensification to maintain a landscape that behaves more akin to the natural system. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

US agricultural policy, land use change, and biofuels: are we driving our way to the next dust bowl?

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wright, Christopher K.

2015-05-01

Lark et al (2015 Environ. Res. Lett. 10 044003), analyze recent shifts in US agricultural land use (2008-2012) using newly-available, high-resolution geospatial information, the Cropland Data Layer. Cropland expansion documented by Lark et al suggests the need to reform national agricultural policies in the wake of an emerging, new era of US agriculture characterized by rapid land cover/land use change.

Sycamore and sweetgum plantation productivity on former agricultural land in South Carolina

Treesearch

A.A. Davis; C.C. Trettin

2006-01-01

Former agricultural lands in the southern US comprise a significant land base to support short rotation woody crop (SRWC) plantations. This study presents the seven-year response of productivity and biomass allocation in operational-scale, first rotation sycamore (Plantanus occidentalis L.) and sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua L...

Estimating the benefits of land imagery in environmental applications: a case study in nonpoint source pollution of groundwater

USGS Publications Warehouse

Bernknopf, Richard L.; Forney, William M.; Raunikar, Ronald P.; Mishra, Shruti K.; Laxminarayan, Ramanan; Maccauley, Molly K.

2012-01-01

Moderate-resolution land imagery (MRLI) is crucial to a more complete assessment of the cumulative, landscape-level effect of agricultural land use and land cover on environmental quality. If this improved assessment yields a net social benefit, then that benefit reflects the value of information (VOI) from MRLI. Environmental quality and the capacity to provide ecosystem services evolve because of human actions, changing natural conditions, and their interaction with natural physical processes. The human actions, in turn, are constrained and redirected by many institutions and regulations such as agricultural, energy, and environmental policies. We present a general framework for bringing together sociologic, biologic, physical, hydrologic, and geologic processes at meaningful scales to interpret environmental implications of MRLI applications. We set out a specific application using MRLI observations to identify crop planting patterns and thus estimate surface management activities that influence groundwater resources over a regional landscape. We tailor the application to the characteristics of nonpoint source groundwater pollution hazards in Iowa to illustrate a general framework in a land use-hydrologic-economic system. In the example, MRLI VOI derives from reducing the risk of both losses to agricultural production and damage to human health and other consequences of contaminated groundwater.

'Underutilised' agricultural land: its definitions, potential use for future biomass production and its environmental implications

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Miyake, Saori; Bargiel, Damian

2017-04-01

A growing bioeconomy and increased demand for biomass products on food, health, fibre, industrial products and energy require land resources for feedstock production. It has resulted in significant environmental and socio-economic challenges on a global scale. As a result, consideration of such effects of land use change (LUC) from biomass production (particularly for biofuel feedstock) has emerged as an important area of policy and research, and several potential solutions have been proposed to minimise such adverse LUC effects. One of these solutions is the use of lands that are not in production or not suitable for food crop production, such as 'marginal', 'degraded', 'abandoned' and 'surplus' agricultural lands for future biomass production. The terms referring to these lands are usually associated with the potential production of 'marginal crops', which can grow in marginal conditions (e.g. poor soil fertility, low rainfall, drought) without much water and agrochemical inputs. In our research, we referred to these lands as 'underutilised' agricultural land and attempted to define them for our case study areas located in Australia and Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Our goal is to identify lands that can be used for future biomass production and to evaluate their environmental implications, particularly impacts related to biodiversity, water and soil at a landscape scale. The identification of these lands incorporates remote sensing and spatially explicit approaches. Our findings confirmed that there was no universal or single definition of the term 'underutilised' agricultural land as the definitions significantly vary by country and region depending not only on the biophysical environment but also political, institutional and socio-economic conditions. Moreover, our results highlighted that the environmental implications of production of biomass on 'underutilised' agricultural land for biomass production are highly controversial. Thus land use change

Namibia specific climate smart agricultural land use practices: Challenges and opportunities for enhancing ecosystem services

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kuhn, Nikolaus J.; Talamondjila Naanda, Martha; Bloemertz, Lena

2015-04-01

Agriculture is a backbone for many African economies, with an estimated 70% of Africans active in agricultural production. The sector often does not only directly contribute to, but sustains food security and poverty reduction efforts. Sustaining this productivity poses many challenges, particularly to small scale subsistence farmers (SSF) in dry land areas and semi-arid countries like Namibia. SSF in northern central Namibia mix crop and livestock production on degraded semi-arid lands and nutrient-poor sandy soils. They are fully dependent on agricultural production with limited alternative sources of income. Mostly, their agricultural harvests and outputs are low, not meeting their livelihood needs. At the same time, the land use is often not sustainable, leading to degradation. The Namibia case reveals that addressing underlying economic, social and environmental challenges requires a combination of farm level-soil management practices with a shift towards integrated landscape management. This forms the basis for SSF to adopt sustainable land management practices while building institutional foundations, like establishing SSF cooperatives. One way in which this has been tested is through the concept of incentive-based motivation, i.e. payment for ecosystem services (PES), in which some of the beneficiaries pay, for instance for farmers or land users, who provide the services. The farmers provide these services by substituting their unsustainable land and soil management and adopting new (climate smart agricultural) land use practices. Climate Smart Agricultural land use practices (CSA-LUP) are one way of providing ecosystem services, which could be fundamental to long-term sustainable soil and land management solutions in Africa. There are few PES cases which have been systematically studied from an institutional development structure perspective. This study presents lessons evolving from the notion that direct participation and involvement of local people

Breeding biology of Mottled Ducks on agricultural lands in southwestern Louisiana

USGS Publications Warehouse

Durham, R.S.; Afton, A.D.

2006-01-01

Breeding biology of Anas fulvigula maculosa (Mottled Ducks) has been described in coastal marsh and associated habitats, but little information is available for agricultural habitats in Louisiana. We located nests to determine nest-initiation dates and clutch sizes during the primary breeding season (February-May) in 1999 (n = 29) and 2000 (n = 37) on agricultural lands in southwestern Louisiana. In 1999, 60% of located nests were initiated between 22 March and 10 April, whereas in 2000, only 22% of nests were initiated during the same time period. Average clutch size was 0.9 eggs smaller in 2000 than in 1999. Annual differences in reproductive parameters corresponded with extremely dry conditions caused by low rainfall before the laying period in 2000. Flooded rice fields appear to be important loafing and feeding habitat of Mottled Ducks nesting in agricultural lands, especially during drought periods when other wetland types are not available or where natural wetlands have been eliminated.

Development of a regionally consistent geospatial dataset of agricultural lands in the Upper Colorado River Basin, 2007-10

USGS Publications Warehouse

Buto, Susan G.; Gold, Brittany L.; Jones, Kimberly A.

2014-01-01

Irrigation in arid environments can alter the natural rate at which salts are dissolved and transported to streams. Irrigated agricultural lands are the major anthropogenic source of dissolved solids in the Upper Colorado River Basin (UCRB). Understanding the location, spatial distribution, and irrigation status of agricultural lands and the method used to deliver water to agricultural lands are important to help improve the understanding of agriculturally derived dissolved-solids loading to surface water in the UCRB. Irrigation status is the presence or absence of irrigation on an agricultural field during the selected growing season or seasons. Irrigation method is the system used to irrigate a field. Irrigation method can broadly be grouped into sprinkler or flood methods, although other techniques such as drip irrigation are used in the UCRB. Flood irrigation generally causes greater dissolved-solids loading to streams than sprinkler irrigation. Agricultural lands in the UCRB mapped by state agencies at varying spatial and temporal resolutions were assembled and edited to represent conditions in the UCRB between 2007 and 2010. Edits were based on examination of 1-meter resolution aerial imagery collected between 2009 and 2011. Remote sensing classification techniques were used to classify irrigation status for the June to September growing seasons between 2007 and 2010. The final dataset contains polygons representing approximately 1,759,900 acres of agricultural lands in the UCRB. Approximately 66 percent of the mapped agricultural lands were likely irrigated during the study period.

Reanalysis of Water, Land Use, and Production Data for Assessing China's Agricultural Resources

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Smith, T.; Pan, J.; McLaughlin, D.

2016-12-01

Quantitative data about water availability, crop evapotranspiration (ET), agricultural land use, and production are needed at high temporal and spatial resolutions to develop sustainable water and agricultural plan and policies. However, large-scale high-resolution measured data can be susceptible to errors, physically inconsistent, or incomplete. Reanalysis provides a way to develop improved physically consistent estimates of both measured and hidden variables. The reanalysis approach described here uses a least-squares technique constrained by water balances and crop water requirements to assimilate many possibly redundant data sources to yield estimates of water, land use, and food production variables that are physically consistent while minimizing differences from measured data. As an example, this methodology is applied in China, where food demand is expected to increase but land and water resources could constrain further increases in food production. Hydrologic fluxes, crop ET, agricultural land use, yields, and food production are characterized at 0.5o by 0.5o resolution for a nominal year around the year 2000 for 22 different crop groups. The reanalysis approach provides useful information for resource management and policy, both in China and around the world.

Prospects for land-use sustainability on the agricultural frontier of the Brazilian Amazon.

PubMed

Galford, Gillian L; Soares-Filho, Britaldo; Cerri, Carlos E P

2013-06-05

The Brazilian Amazon frontier shows how remarkable leadership can work towards increased agricultural productivity and environmental sustainability without new greenhouse gas emissions. This is due to initiatives among various stakeholders, including national and state government and agents, farmers, consumers, funding agencies and non-governmental organizations. Change has come both from bottom-up and top-down actions of these stakeholders, providing leadership, financing and monitoring to foster environmental sustainability and agricultural growth. Goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from land-cover and land-use change in Brazil are being achieved through a multi-tiered approach that includes policies to reduce deforestation and initiatives for forest restoration, as well as increased and diversified agricultural production, intensified ranching and innovations in agricultural management. Here, we address opportunities for the Brazilian Amazon in working towards low-carbon rural development and environmentally sustainable landscapes.

Prospects for land-use sustainability on the agricultural frontier of the Brazilian Amazon

PubMed Central

Galford, Gillian L.; Soares-Filho, Britaldo; Cerri, Carlos E. P.

2013-01-01

The Brazilian Amazon frontier shows how remarkable leadership can work towards increased agricultural productivity and environmental sustainability without new greenhouse gas emissions. This is due to initiatives among various stakeholders, including national and state government and agents, farmers, consumers, funding agencies and non-governmental organizations. Change has come both from bottom-up and top-down actions of these stakeholders, providing leadership, financing and monitoring to foster environmental sustainability and agricultural growth. Goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from land-cover and land-use change in Brazil are being achieved through a multi-tiered approach that includes policies to reduce deforestation and initiatives for forest restoration, as well as increased and diversified agricultural production, intensified ranching and innovations in agricultural management. Here, we address opportunities for the Brazilian Amazon in working towards low-carbon rural development and environmentally sustainable landscapes. PMID:23610175

Modelling nitrate from land-surface to wells-perforations under Mediterranean agricultural land: success, failure, and future scenarios

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Levy, Yehuda; Chefetz, Benny; Shapira, Roi; Kurtzman, Daniel

2017-04-01

Contamination of groundwater resources by nitrate due to leaching under agricultural land is probably the most troublesome agriculture-related water contamination, worldwide. Deep soil sampling (10 m) were used for calibrating vertical flow and nitrogen-transport numerical models of the unsaturated zone, under different agricultural land uses. Vegetables fields (potato and strawberries) and deciduous (persimmon) orchards in the Sharon area overlaying the coastal aquifer of Israel, were examined. Average nitrate-nitrogen fluxes below vegetables fields were 210-290 kg ha-1 a-1 and under deciduous orchards were 110-140 kg ha-1 a-1. The output water and nitrate-nitrogen fluxes of the unsaturated zone models were used as input for a three dimensional flow and nitrate-transport model in the aquifer under an area of 13.3 square kilometers of agricultural land. The area was subdivided to 4 agricultural land-uses: vegetables, deciduous, citrus orchards and non-cultivated. Fluxes of water and nitrate-nitrogen below citrus orchards were taken from a previous study in this area (Kurtzman et al., 2013, j. Contam. Hydrol.). The groundwater flow model was calibrated to well heads only by changing the hydraulic conductivity while transient recharge fluxes were constraint to the bottom-fluxes of the unsaturated zone flow models. The nitrate-transport model in the aquifer, which was fed at the top by the nitrate fluxes of the unsaturated zone models, succeeded in reconstructing the average nitrate concentration in the wells. On the other hand, this transport model failed in calculating the high concentrations in the most contaminated wells and the large spatial variability of nitrate-concentrations in the aquifer. In order to reconstruct the spatial variability and enable predictions nitrate-fluxes from the unsaturated zone were multiplied by local multipliers. This action was rationalized by the fact that the high concentrations in some wells cannot be explained by regular

Land Allocation in the Southeastern U.S. in Response to Climate Change Impacts on Forestry and Agriculture

Treesearch

Brian C. Murray; Robert C. Abt; David N. Wear; Peter J. Parks; Ian W. Hardie

2001-01-01

Forest and agriculture are the two dominant land uses in the Southeastern U.S., collectively accounting for almost 90 percent of the land base. Differences in climate change impacts on forest and agricultural productivity can lead to reallocations of land between the two sectors as landowners adjust to the changes in economic conditions. In this paper, we apply the...

Denitrification potential of different land-use types in an agricultural watershed, lower Mississippi valley

USGS Publications Warehouse

Ullah, S.; Faulkner, S.P.

2006-01-01

Expansion of agricultural land and excessive nitrogen (N) fertilizer use in the Mississippi River watershed has resulted in a three-fold increase in the nitrate load of the river since the early 1950s. One way to reduce this nitrate load is to restore wetlands at suitable locations between croplands and receiving waters to remove run-off nitrate through denitrification. This research investigated denitrification potential (DP) of different land uses and its controlling factors in an agricultural watershed in the lower Mississippi valley (LMV) to help identify sites with high DP for reducing run-off nitrate. Soil samples collected from seven land-use types of an agricultural watershed during spring, summer, fall and winter were incubated in the laboratory for DP determination. Low-elevation clay soils in wetlands exhibited 6.3 and 2.5 times greater DP compared to high-elevation silt loam and low-elevation clay soils in croplands, respectively. DP of vegetated-ditches was 1.3 and 4.2 times that of un-vegetated ditches and cultivated soils, respectively. Soil carbon and nitrogen availability, bulk density, and soil moisture significantly affected DP. These factors were significantly influenced in turn by landscape position and land-use type of the watershed. It is evident from these results that low-elevation, fine-textured soils under natural wetlands are the best locations for mediating nitrate loss from agricultural watersheds in the LMV. Landscape position and land-use types can be used as indices for the assessment/modeling of denitrification potential and identification of sites for restoration for nitrate removal in agricultural watersheds. ?? 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

A GIS-based hedonic price model for agricultural land

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Demetriou, Demetris

2015-06-01

Land consolidation is a very effective land management planning approach that aims towards rural/agricultural sustainable development. Land reallocation which involves land tenure restructuring is the most important, complex and time consuming component of land consolidation. Land reallocation relies on land valuation since its fundamental principle provides that after consolidation, each landowner shall be granted a property of an aggregate value that is approximately the same as the value of the property owned prior to consolidation. Therefore, land value is the crucial factor for the land reallocation process and hence for the success and acceptance of the final land consolidation plan. Land valuation is a process of assigning values to all parcels (and its contents) and it is usually carried out by an ad-hoc committee. However, the process faces some problems such as it is time consuming hence costly, outcomes may present inconsistency since it is carried out manually and empirically without employing systematic analytical tools and in particular spatial analysis tools and techniques such as statistical/mathematical. A solution to these problems can be the employment of mass appraisal land valuation methods using automated valuation models (AVM) based on international standards. In this context, this paper presents a spatial based linear hedonic price model which has been developed and tested in a case study land consolidation area in Cyprus. Results showed that the AVM is capable to produce acceptable in terms of accuracy and reliability land values and to reduce time hence cost required by around 80%.

Seawater/Saline Agriculture for Energy, Warming, Water, Rainfall, Land, Food and Minerals

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Bushnell, Dennis

2006-01-01

The combination of the incipient demise of cheap oil and increasing evidence of Global Warming due to anthropogenic fossil carbon release has reinvigorated the need for and efforts on Renewable energy sources, especially for transportation applications. Biomass/Bio-diesel appears to have many benefits compared to Hydrogen, the only other major renewable transportation fuel candidate. Biomass Production is currently limited by available arable land and fresh water. Halophyte Plants and seawater irrigation proffer a wholly new biomass production mantra using wastelands and very plentiful seawater. Such an approach addresses many-to-most of the major emerging Societal Problems including Land, Water, Food, Warming and Energy. For many reasons, including seawater agriculture, portions of the Sahara appear to be viable candidates for future Biomass Production. The apparent nonlinearity between vegetation cover and atmospheric conditions over North Africa necessitates serious coupled boundary layer Meteorology and Global Circulation Modeling to ensure that this form of Terra Forming is Favorable and to avoid adverse Unintended Consequences.

Multimedia Sampling During The Application Of Biosolids On A Land Test Site (Presentation)

EPA Science Inventory

The goal of this research study was to evaluate air and soil sampling methods and analytical techniques for commercial land application of biosolids. Biosolids, were surface applied at agronomic rates to an agricultural field. During the period of August 2004 to January 2005, 3...

Trade-off between water pollution prevention, agriculture profit, and farmer practice--an optimization methodology for discussion on land-use adjustment in China.

PubMed

Liu, Jianchang; Zhang, Luoping; Zhang, Yuzhen; Deng, Hongbing

2015-01-01

Agricultural decision-making to control nonpoint source (NPS) water pollution may not be efficiently implemented, if there is no appropriate cost-benefit analysis on agricultural management practices. This paper presents an interval-fuzzy linear programming (IFLP) model to deal with the trade-off between agricultural revenue, NPS pollution control, and alternative practices through land adjustment for Wuchuan catchment, a typical agricultural area in Jiulong River watershed, Fujian Province of China. From the results, the lower combination of practice 1, practice 2, practice 3, and practice 7 with the land area of 12.6, 5.2, 145.2, and 85.3 hm(2), respectively, could reduce NPS pollution load by 10%. The combination yields an income of 98,580 Chinese Yuan/a. If the pollution reduction is 15%, the higher combination need practice 1, practice 2, practice 3, practice 5, and practice 7 with the land area of 54.4, 23.6, 18.0, 6.3, and 85.3 hm(2), respectively. The income of this combination is 915,170 Chinese Yuan/a. The sensitivity analysis of IFLP indicates that the cost-effective practices are ranked as follows: practice 7 > practice 2 > practice 1 > practice 5 > practice 3 > practice 6 > practice 4. In addition, the uncertainties in the agriculture NPS pollution control system could be effectively quantified by the IFLP model. Furthermore, to accomplish a reasonable and applicable project of land-use adjustment, decision-makers could also integrate above solutions with their own experience and other information.

Remote sensing is a viable tool for mapping soil salinity in agricultural lands

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

Soil salinity negatively impacts the productivity and profitability of western San Joaquin Valley (WSJV) farmland. Drought, climate change, reduced water allocations, and land use changes are among many current phenomena that could potentially worsen salinity conditions in agricultural lands. Monito...

Inventory of wetlands and agricultural land cover in the upper Sevier River Basin, Utah

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Jaynes, R. A.; Clark, L. D., Jr.; Landgraf, K. F. (Principal Investigator)

1981-01-01

The use of color infrared aerial photography in the mapping of agricultural land use and wetlands in the Sevier River Basin of south central utah is described. The efficiency and cost effectiveness of utilizing LANDSAT multispectral scanner digital data to augment photographic interpretations are discussed. Transparent overlays for 27 quadrangles showing delineations of wetlands and agricultural land cover were produced. A table summarizing the acreage represented by each class on each quadrangle overlay is provided.

Climate impacts on agricultural land use in the USA: the role of socio-economic scenarios

USGS Publications Warehouse

Mu, Jianhong E.; Sleeter, Benjamin M.; Abatzoglou, John T.; Antle, John M.

2017-01-01

We examine the impacts of climate on net returns from crop and livestock production and the resulting impact on land-use change across the contiguous USA. We first estimate an econometric model to project effects of weather fluctuations on crop and livestock net returns and then use a semi-reduced form land-use share model to study agricultural land-use changes under future climate and socio-economic scenarios. Estimation results show that crop net returns are more sensitive to thermal and less sensitive to moisture variability than livestock net returns; other agricultural land uses substitute cropland use when 30-year averaged degree-days or precipitation are not beneficial for crop production. Under future climate and socio-economic scenarios, we project that crop and livestock net returns are both increasing, but with crop net returns increasing at a higher rate; cropland increases with declines of marginal and pastureland by the end of the twenty-first century. Projections also show that impacts of future climate on agricultural land uses are substantially different and a larger variation of land-use change is evident when socio-economic scenarios are incorporated into the climate impact analysis.

[Ecological design of ditches in agricultural land consolidation: a review].

PubMed

Ye, Yan-mei; Wu, Ci-fang; Yu, Jing

2011-07-01

Agricultural land consolidation is a strong disturbance to farmland ecosystem. In traditional agricultural land consolidation, the main technical and economic indices for the design of ditches include the convenience for production and transportation, the allocation of water resources, and the improvement of water utilization, but short of ecological consideration, which has already affected the spread of agricultural species, caused the degradation of bio-habitat, and given obvious negative effects on the bio-competition mechanism, buffering and compensation capacity, and insect pests-resistance of farmland ecosystem. This paper summarized the functions of ecological ditches, and introduced the recent progress on the formations and construction designs of ecological ditches, tests of ecological engineering methods, and technologies and methods of choosing correct ecological materials. It was suggested that the future research should focus on the different functional requirements and specifications for different roads and ditches, and the characteristics and habitats of all the organisms and animals should be considered by the designers and constructors. Moreover, a comprehensive design which meets the ecological demands for the ditches' formations, structures, and regulatory sizes should be taken into account to solve the most of the problems listed above.

Agricultural land change in the Carpathian ecoregion after the breakdown of socialism and expansion of the European Union

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Griffiths, Patrick; Müller, Daniel; Kuemmerle, Tobias; Hostert, Patrick

2013-12-01

Widespread changes of agricultural land use occurred in Eastern Europe since the collapse of socialism and the European Union’s eastward expansion, but the rates and patterns of recent land changes remain unclear. Here we assess agricultural land change for the entire Carpathian ecoregion in Eastern Europe at 30 m spatial resolution with Landsat data and for two change periods, between 1985-2000 and 2000-2010. The early period is characterized by post-socialist transition processes, the late period by an increasing influence of EU politics in the region. For mapping and change detection, we use a machine learning approach (random forests) on image composites and variance metrics which were derived from the full decadal archive of Landsat imagery. Our results suggest that cropland abandonment was the most prevalent change process, but we also detected considerable areas of grassland conversion and forest expansion on non-forest land. Cropland abandonment was most extensive during the transition period and predominantly occurred in marginal areas with low suitability for agriculture. Conversely, we observed substantial recultivation of formerly abandoned cropland in high-value agricultural areas since 2000. Hence, market forces increasingly adjust socialist legacies of land expansive production and agricultural land use clusters in favorable areas while marginal lands revert to forest.

Adaptation Options for Land Drainage Systems Towards Sustainable Agriculture and Environment: A Czech Perspective

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kulhavý, Zbyněk; Fučík, Petr

2015-04-01

In this paper, issues of agricultural drainage systems are introduced and discussed from the views of their former, current and future roles and functioning in the Czech Republic (CR). A methodologically disparate survey was done on thirty-nine model localities in CR with different intensity and state of land drainage systems, aimed at description of commonly occurred problems and possible adaptations of agricultural drainage as perceived by farmers, land owners, landscape managers or by protective water management. The survey was focused on technical state of drainage, fragmentation of land ownership within drained areas as well as on possible conflicts between agricultural and environmental interests in a landscape. Achieved results confirmed that there is obviously an increasing need to reassess some functions of prevailingly single-purpose agricultural drainage systems. Drainage intensity and detected unfavourable technical state of drainage systems as well as the risks connected with the anticipated climate change from the view of possible water scarcity claims for a complex solution. An array of adaptation options for agricultural drainage systems is presented, aiming at enhancement of water retention time and improvement of water quality. It encompasses additional flow-controlling measures on tiles or ditches, or facilities for making selected parts of a drainage system inoperable in order to retain or slow down the drainage runoff, to establish water accumulation zones and to enhance water self-cleaning processes. However, it was revealed that the question of landowner parcels fragmentation on drained land in CR would dramatically complicate design and realization of these measures. Presented solutions and findings are propounded with a respect to contemporary and future state policies and international strategies for sustainable agriculture, water management and environment.

Agricultural chemicals in groundwater of the midwestern United States: Relations to land use

USGS Publications Warehouse

Kolpin, D.W.

1997-01-01

To determine the relations between land use and concentrations of selected agricultural chemicals (nitrate, atrazine residue [atrazine (2-chloro-4-ethylamino-6-isopropylamino-s-triazine) + deethylatrazinc (2-amino-4-chloro-6-isopropylamino-s-triazine) + deisopropylatrazine (2-amino-4-chloro-6-ethylamino-s-triazine)], and alachlor residue [alachlor, [2-chloro-2′,6′-diethyl-N-(methoxymethyl) acetanilide] + alachlor ethanesulfonic acid (alachlor-ESA; 2-[(2,6-diethylphenyl)(methoxymethyl)amino]-2-oxoethanesulfonic acid)] in groundwater, detailed land use information based on accurate measurements from aerial photographs for the 1991 growing season was obtained within a 2-km radius surrounding 100 wells completed in near-surface unconsolidated aquifers in the midwestern USA. The most significant land use factors to the agricultural chemicals examined were: nitrate (amount of irrigated crop production, positive relation), atrazine residue (amount of irrigated crop production, positive relation), and alachlor residue (amount of highly erodible land, inverse relation). The investigation of smaller buffer sizes (size of circular area around sampled wells) proved insightful for this study. Additional land use factors having significant relations to all three agricultural chemicals were identified using these smaller buffer radii. The most significant correlations (correlation maxima) generally occurred at ≤500-m for nitrate and ≥1000-m for atrazine residue and alachlor residue. An attempt to improve the statistical relations to land use by taking hydrologic considerations into account (removing land outside the estimated most probable recharge area from the statistical analysis) was not as successful as anticipated. Only 45% of the nitrate, 32% of the atrazine residue, and 20% of the alachlor residue correlations were improved by a consideration of the estimated most probable recharge area.

Agricultural land use doubled sediment yield of western China's rivers

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Schmidt, A. H.; Bierman, P. R.; Sosa-Gonzalez, V.; Neilson, T. B.; Rood, D. H.; Martin, J.; Hill, M.

2017-12-01

Land use changes, such as deforestation and agriculture, increase soil erosion rates on the scale of hillslopes and small drainage basins; however, the effects of these changes on the sediment load in larger rivers is poorly quantified, with a few studies scattered globally, and only 10 data points in the world's most populous nation, China. At 20 different sites in western China, we compare contemporary (1945-1987) fluvial sediment yield data collected daily over 4 to 26 years (median = 19 years) to long-term measures of erosion (sediment generation) based on new isotopic measurements of in situ 10Be in river sediments. We find that median sediment transport at these sites exceeds background sediment generation rates by a factor of two (from 0.13 to 5.79 times, median 1.85 times) and that contemporary sediment yield is statistically significantly different from long-term sediment yield (p < 0.05). Agricultural land use is directly and significantly proportional to the ratio of contemporary sediment yield to long term sediment generation rates (Spearman correlation coefficient rho = 0.52, p < 0.05). We support these findings by calculating erosion indices (following Brown et al., 1988), which compare the delivery of meteoric 10Be to each watershed with the export of meteoric 10Be bound to riverine sediment. Erosion indices are also directly and significantly proportional to agricultural land use (rho = 0.58, p < 0.05). We measured unsupported 210Pb and 137Cs in 130 detrital samples from throughout the region. We find that only 4 samples (those from high elevation, low relief watersheds) have detectable 137Cs and 31 samples have detectable unsupported 210Pb. The lack of 137Cs in most samples suggests high rates of erosion in the 1950s-1960s when 137Cs would have been delivered to the landscape. Detectable 210Pb in 25% of the watersheds suggests that in some areas erosion rates have slowed since that time allowing 210Pb to accumulate to measurable levels. Together

Simulating Changes in Land-Atmosphere Interactions From Expanding Agriculture and Irrigation in India and the Potential Impacts on the Indian Monsoon.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Douglas, E. M.; Beltran-Przekurat, A.; Niyogi, D.; Pielke, R. A.

2006-05-01

With over 57 million hectares under irrigation in 2002, India has the largest irrigated agricultural area on the planet. Between 80 and 90% of India's water use goes to support irrigated agriculture. The Indian monsoon belt is a home to a large part of the world's population and agriculture is the major land-use activity in the region. Previous results showed that annual vapor fluxes in India have increased by 17% (340 km3) over that which would be expected from a natural (non-agricultural) land cover. Two-thirds of this increase was attributed to irrigated agriculture. The largest increases in vapor and latent heat fluxes occurred where both cropland and irrigated lands were the predominant contemporary land cover classes (particularly northwest and north-central India). Our current study builds upon this work by evaluating possible changes in near-surface energy fluxes and regional atmospheric circulation patterns resulting from the expansion of irrigated agriculture on the Indian sub-continent using a regional atmospheric model RAMS. We investigate three separate land- use scenarios: Scenario 1, with a potential (pre-agricultural) land cover, Scenario 2: the potential land-cover overlain by cropland and Scenario 3: potential land-cover overlain by cropland and irrigated area. We will assess the impact of agricultural land-cover conversion and intensive irrigation on water and energy fluxes between the land and the atmosphere and how these flux changes may affect regional weather patterns. The simulation period covers July 16-20, 2002 which allow us to assess potential impacts of land-cover changes on the onset of the Indian Monsoon.

Agricultural Conservation Planning Framework: 3. Land Use and Field Boundary Database Development and Structure.

PubMed

Tomer, Mark D; James, David E; Sandoval-Green, Claudette M J

2017-05-01

Conservation planning information is important for identifying options for watershed water quality improvement and can be developed for use at field, farm, and watershed scales. Translation across scales is a key issue impeding progress at watershed scales because watershed improvement goals must be connected with implementation of farm- and field-level conservation practices to demonstrate success. This is particularly true when examining alternatives for "trap and treat" practices implemented at agricultural-field edges to control (or influence) water flows through fields, landscapes, and riparian corridors within agricultural watersheds. We propose that database structures used in developing conservation planning information can achieve translation across conservation-planning scales, and we developed the Agricultural Conservation Planning Framework (ACPF) to enable practical planning applications. The ACPF comprises a planning concept, a database to facilitate field-level and watershed-scale analyses, and an ArcGIS toolbox with Python scripts to identify specific options for placement of conservation practices. This paper appends two prior publications and describes the structure of the ACPF database, which contains land use, crop history, and soils information and is available for download for 6091 HUC12 watersheds located across Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, and parts of Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and Wisconsin and comprises information on 2.74 × 10 agricultural fields (available through /). Sample results examining land use trends across Iowa and Illinois are presented here to demonstrate potential uses of the database. While designed for use with the ACPF toolbox, users are welcome to use the ACPF watershed data in a variety of planning and modeling approaches. Copyright © by the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America, Inc.

Land-use policies and corporate investments in agriculture in the Gran Chaco and Chiquitano

PubMed Central

le Polain de Waroux, Yann; Garrett, Rachael D.; Heilmayr, Robert; Lambin, Eric F.

2016-01-01

Growing demand for agricultural commodities is causing the expansion of agricultural frontiers onto native vegetation worldwide. Agribusiness companies linking these frontiers to distant spaces of consumption through global commodity chains increasingly make zero-deforestation pledges. However, production and land conversion are often carried out by less-visible local and regional actors that are mobile and responsive to new agricultural expansion opportunities and legal constraints on land use. With more stringent deforestation regulations in some countries, we ask whether their movements are determined partly by differences in land-use policies, resulting in “deforestation havens.” We analyze the determinants of investment decisions by agricultural companies in the Gran Chaco and Chiquitano, a region that has become the new deforestation “hot spot” in South America. We test whether companies seek out less-regulated forest areas for new agricultural investments. Based on interviews with 82 companies totaling 2.5 Mha of properties, we show that, in addition to proximity to current investments and the availability of cheap forestland, lower deforestation regulations attract investments by companies that tend to clear more forest, mostly cattle ranching operations, and that lower enforcement attracts all companies. Avoiding deforestation leakage requires harmonizing deforestation regulations across regions and commodities and promoting sustainable intensification in cattle ranching. PMID:27035995

Land-use policies and corporate investments in agriculture in the Gran Chaco and Chiquitano.

PubMed

le Polain de Waroux, Yann; Garrett, Rachael D; Heilmayr, Robert; Lambin, Eric F

2016-04-12

Growing demand for agricultural commodities is causing the expansion of agricultural frontiers onto native vegetation worldwide. Agribusiness companies linking these frontiers to distant spaces of consumption through global commodity chains increasingly make zero-deforestation pledges. However, production and land conversion are often carried out by less-visible local and regional actors that are mobile and responsive to new agricultural expansion opportunities and legal constraints on land use. With more stringent deforestation regulations in some countries, we ask whether their movements are determined partly by differences in land-use policies, resulting in "deforestation havens." We analyze the determinants of investment decisions by agricultural companies in the Gran Chaco and Chiquitano, a region that has become the new deforestation "hot spot" in South America. We test whether companies seek out less-regulated forest areas for new agricultural investments. Based on interviews with 82 companies totaling 2.5 Mha of properties, we show that, in addition to proximity to current investments and the availability of cheap forestland, lower deforestation regulations attract investments by companies that tend to clear more forest, mostly cattle ranching operations, and that lower enforcement attracts all companies. Avoiding deforestation leakage requires harmonizing deforestation regulations across regions and commodities and promoting sustainable intensification in cattle ranching.

The Monitoring Erosion of Agricultural Land and spatial database of erosion events

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kapicka, Jiri; Zizala, Daniel

2013-04-01

In 2011 originated in The Czech Republic The Monitoring Erosion of Agricultural Land as joint project of State Land Office (SLO) and Research Institute for Soil and Water Conservation (RISWC). The aim of the project is collecting and record keeping information about erosion events on agricultural land and their evaluation. The main idea is a creation of a spatial database that will be source of data and information for evaluation and modeling erosion process, for proposal of preventive measures and measures to reduce negative impacts of erosion events. A subject of monitoring is the manifestations of water erosion, wind erosion and slope deformation in which cause damaged agriculture land. A website, available on http://me.vumop.cz, is used as a tool for keeping and browsing information about monitored events. SLO employees carry out record keeping. RISWC is specialist institute in the Monitoring Erosion of Agricultural Land that performs keeping the spatial database, running the website, managing the record keeping of events, analysis the cause of origins events and statistical evaluations of keeping events and proposed measures. Records are inserted into the database using the user interface of the website which has map server as a component. Website is based on database technology PostgreSQL with superstructure PostGIS and MapServer UMN. Each record is in the database spatial localized by a drawing and it contains description information about character of event (data, situation description etc.) then there are recorded information about land cover and about grown crops. A part of database is photodocumentation which is taken in field reconnaissance which is performed within two days after notify of event. Another part of database are information about precipitations from accessible precipitation gauges. Website allows to do simple spatial analysis as are area calculation, slope calculation, percentage representation of GAEC etc.. Database structure was designed

Mediterranean California’s water use future under multiple scenarios of developed and agricultural land use change

USGS Publications Warehouse

Wilson, Tamara; Sleeter, Benjamin M.; Cameron, D. Richard

2017-01-01

With growing demand and highly variable inter-annual water supplies, California’s water use future is fraught with uncertainty. Climate change projections, anticipated population growth, and continued agricultural intensification, will likely stress existing water supplies in coming decades. Using a state-and-transition simulation modeling approach, we examine a broad suite of spatially explicit future land use scenarios and their associated county-level water use demand out to 2062. We examined a range of potential water demand futures sampled from a 20-year record of historical (1992–2012) data to develop a suite of potential future land change scenarios, including low/high change scenarios for urbanization and agriculture as well as “lowest of the low” and “highest of the high” anthropogenic use. Future water demand decreased 8.3 billion cubic meters (Bm3) in the lowest of the low scenario and decreased 0.8 Bm3 in the low agriculture scenario. The greatest increased water demand was projected for the highest of the high land use scenario (+9.4 Bm3), high agricultural expansion (+4.6 Bm3), and high urbanization (+2.1 Bm3) scenarios. Overall, these scenarios show agricultural land use decisions will likely drive future demand more than increasing municipal and industrial uses, yet improved efficiencies across all sectors could lead to potential water use savings. Results provide water managers with information on diverging land use and water use futures, based on historical, observed land change trends and water use histories.

Mediterranean California’s water use future under multiple scenarios of developed and agricultural land use change

PubMed Central

Sleeter, Benjamin M.; Cameron, D. Richard

2017-01-01

With growing demand and highly variable inter-annual water supplies, California’s water use future is fraught with uncertainty. Climate change projections, anticipated population growth, and continued agricultural intensification, will likely stress existing water supplies in coming decades. Using a state-and-transition simulation modeling approach, we examine a broad suite of spatially explicit future land use scenarios and their associated county-level water use demand out to 2062. We examined a range of potential water demand futures sampled from a 20-year record of historical (1992–2012) data to develop a suite of potential future land change scenarios, including low/high change scenarios for urbanization and agriculture as well as “lowest of the low” and “highest of the high” anthropogenic use. Future water demand decreased 8.3 billion cubic meters (Bm3) in the lowest of the low scenario and decreased 0.8 Bm3 in the low agriculture scenario. The greatest increased water demand was projected for the highest of the high land use scenario (+9.4 Bm3), high agricultural expansion (+4.6 Bm3), and high urbanization (+2.1 Bm3) scenarios. Overall, these scenarios show agricultural land use decisions will likely drive future demand more than increasing municipal and industrial uses, yet improved efficiencies across all sectors could lead to potential water use savings. Results provide water managers with information on diverging land use and water use futures, based on historical, observed land change trends and water use histories. PMID:29088254

Fate of phosphorus in Everglades agricultural soils after fertilizer application

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Wright, Alan L.; Hanlon, Edward A.; McCray, J. Mabry

2012-07-01

Land use changes, agricultural drainage and conventional cultivation of winter vegetables and sugarcane cropping in the Everglades Agricultural Area (EAA) may alter soil conditions and organic matter decomposition and ultimately influence the fate of phosphorus (P). Theses agricultural practices promote soil subsidence, reduce the soil depth to bedrock limestone and increase the potential for incorporation of limestone into the root zone of crops. The incorporation of limestone into surface soil has significantly increased soil pH which in turns causes greater fixation of P fertilizer into unavailable forms for plant growth. Additional P fertilization is thus required to satisfy crop nutrientmore » requirements in plant-available P form. It is important to determine how the mixing of bedrock limestone into soils influences the behavior of P fertilizers after their application. To accomplish this task, P fertilizers were applied to (1) typical cultivated soils and to (2) soils that have never been fertilized or extensively tilled. The changes in P concentrations over time were then compared between the two land uses, with differences being attributable to the impacts of cultivation practices. The P distribution in soil varied between land uses, with sugarcane having more P in inorganic pools while the uncultivated soil had more in organic pools. Water-soluble P concentrations in soil increased with increasing fertilizer application rates for all sampling times and both land uses. However, concentrations in uncultivated soil increased proportionally to P-fertilized soil due to organic P mineralization. At all sampling times, plant-available P concentrations remained higher for uncultivated than sugarcane soil. Lower P concentrations for sugarcane were related to adsorption by mineral components (e.g. limestone). Cultivated soils have higher calcium concentrations resulting from incorporation of bedrock limestone into soil by tillage, which increased pH and fostered

A spatially explicit representation of conservation agriculture for application in global change studies.

PubMed

Prestele, Reinhard; Hirsch, Annette L; Davin, Edouard L; Seneviratne, Sonia I; Verburg, Peter H

2018-05-10

Conservation agriculture (CA) is widely promoted as a sustainable agricultural management strategy with the potential to alleviate some of the adverse effects of modern, industrial agriculture such as large-scale soil erosion, nutrient leaching and overexploitation of water resources. Moreover, agricultural land managed under CA is proposed to contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation through reduced emission of greenhouse gases, increased solar radiation reflection, and the sustainable use of soil and water resources. Due to the lack of official reporting schemes, the amount of agricultural land managed under CA systems is uncertain and spatially explicit information about the distribution of CA required for various modeling studies is missing. Here, we present an approach to downscale present-day national-level estimates of CA to a 5 arcminute regular grid, based on multicriteria analysis. We provide a best estimate of CA distribution and an uncertainty range in the form of a low and high estimate of CA distribution, reflecting the inconsistency in CA definitions. We also design two scenarios of the potential future development of CA combining present-day data and an assessment of the potential for implementation using biophysical and socioeconomic factors. By our estimates, 122-215 Mha or 9%-15% of global arable land is currently managed under CA systems. The lower end of the range represents CA as an integrated system of permanent no-tillage, crop residue management and crop rotations, while the high estimate includes a wider range of areas primarily devoted to temporary no-tillage or reduced tillage operations. Our scenario analysis suggests a future potential of CA in the range of 533-1130 Mha (38%-81% of global arable land). Our estimates can be used in various ecosystem modeling applications and are expected to help identifying more realistic climate mitigation and adaptation potentials of agricultural practices. © 2018 The Authors. Global

Agriculture, Food Production, and Rural Land Use in Advanced Placement® Human Geography

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Moseley, William G.; Watson, Nancy H.

2016-01-01

''Agriculture, Food, and Rural Land Use" constitutes a major part of the AP Human Geography course outline. This article explores challenging topics to teach, emerging research trends in agricultural geography, and sample teaching approaches for concretizing abstract topics. It addresses content identified as "essential knowledge"…

Conservation Management of Agriculture Land using Geospatial Approach (A Case Study in the Bone Watershed, Gorontalo Province, Indonesia)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Maryati, Sri; Eraku, Sunarty; Kasim, Muh

2018-02-01

Bone Watershed is one of the major watersheds in Gorontalo Province. Bone watershed has a very important role for the people of Gorontalo Province. The role of Bone Watershed is mainly related to the providing clean water, producing oxygen, controlling flood, providing habitat for endemic flora fauna and other environmental functions. The role of Bone Watershed for the community's economic sector is also very important, the Bone watershed provides livelihood for surrounding communities includes fertile land resources for agriculture and plantations, forest products, and livestock feed. This research is important considering the Bone watershed has limited availability of land for agriculture and the high risk of natural disasters such as floods and landslides. Geospatial data includes topography map, landform map, soil map, integrated with field survey results and soil properties were analized to determine conservation management of agriculture land in the Bone Watershed, Gorontalo Province, Indonesia. The result of this study shows that based on soil properties and physical land characteristics, land use for agriculture should consider appropriate conservation techniques, land capability and respect to local wisdom.

Mapping irrigated lands at 250-m scale by merging MODIS data and National Agricultural Statistics

USGS Publications Warehouse

Pervez, Md Shahriar; Brown, Jesslyn F.

2010-01-01

Accurate geospatial information on the extent of irrigated land improves our understanding of agricultural water use, local land surface processes, conservation or depletion of water resources, and components of the hydrologic budget. We have developed a method in a geospatial modeling framework that assimilates irrigation statistics with remotely sensed parameters describing vegetation growth conditions in areas with agricultural land cover to spatially identify irrigated lands at 250-m cell size across the conterminous United States for 2002. The geospatial model result, known as the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Irrigated Agriculture Dataset (MIrAD-US), identified irrigated lands with reasonable accuracy in California and semiarid Great Plains states with overall accuracies of 92% and 75% and kappa statistics of 0.75 and 0.51, respectively. A quantitative accuracy assessment of MIrAD-US for the eastern region has not yet been conducted, and qualitative assessment shows that model improvements are needed for the humid eastern regions where the distinction in annual peak NDVI between irrigated and non-irrigated crops is minimal and county sizes are relatively small. This modeling approach enables consistent mapping of irrigated lands based upon USDA irrigation statistics and should lead to better understanding of spatial trends in irrigated lands across the conterminous United States. An improved version of the model with revised datasets is planned and will employ 2007 USDA irrigation statistics.

Environmental characteristics, agricultural land use, and vulnerability to degradation in Malopolska Province (Poland).

PubMed

Nowak, Agnieszka; Schneider, Christian

2017-07-15

Environmental degradation encompasses multiple processes that are rarely combined in analyses. This study refers to three types of environmental degradation resulting from agricultural activity: soil erosion, nutrient loss, and groundwater pollution. The research was conducted in seven distinct study areas in the Malopolska Province, Poland, each characterized by different environmental properties. Calculations were made on the basis of common models, i.e., USLE (soil erosion), InVEST (nutrient loss), and DRASTIC (groundwater pollution). Two scenarios were calculated to identify the areas contributing to potential and actual degradation. For the potential degradation scenario all study areas were treated as arable land. To identify the areas actually contributing to all three types of degradation, the de facto land use pattern was used for a second scenario. The results show that the areas most endangered by agricultural activity are located in the mountainous region, whereas most of the degraded zones were located in valley bottoms and areas with intensive agriculture. The different hazards rarely overlap spatially in the given study areas - meaning that different areas require different management approaches. The distribution of arable land was negatively correlated with soil erosion hazard, whereas no linkage was found between nutrient loss or groundwater pollution hazards and the proportion of arable land. This indicates that the soil erosion hazard is the most influential factor in the distribution of arable land, whereas nutrient loss and groundwater pollution is widely ignored during land use decision-making. Slope largely and most frequently influences all hazard types, whereas land use also played an important role in the case of soil and nutrient losses. In this study we presented a consistent methodology to capture complex degradation processes and provide robust indicators which can be included in existing impact assessment approaches like Life Cycle

Decree No. 922 on land use and exercise of agricultural activities, 19 May 1989.

PubMed

1989-01-01

The Bulgarian Decree 922, May 19, 1989, regulates land use and the exercise of agricultural activities. It stipulates in general that agricultural activities and land use will be based on the principles of company organization, ensuring the unity and indivisibility of socialist property and the variety of forms of land use and management, using collective farms and companies. Citizens may engage in agricultural activities without having a registered company; users of farmland must protect the environment; observe veterinary, plant protection, and sanitary hygiene regulations; and protect and improve soil fertility. Farms and other companies will carry out their activities under equal conditions, may sell their commodities may set up an association for the protection of their economic and social interests, and may establish agricultural stock exchanges and other cooperatives in accordance with stipulated procedures. Individual farms include an individual farmer or several farmers. Farmers may rent or purchase agricultural equipment without restriction as to model, capacity, or other features. Limitations apply on the number of workers employed on a nonseasonal basis. Farmers may form associations for specified purposes. Taxation is based on the general income tax law. Piece rate is a form of organization and payment of labor in agriculture; written agreements are required regarding wages, quality, quantity, deadlines, and supplies furnished. Lease contracts must be in writing, be registered by the municipal people's council at the location of the project, and contain specified information.

Agricultural Land Use mapping by multi-sensor approach for hydrological water quality monitoring

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Brodsky, Lukas; Kodesova, Radka; Kodes, Vit

2010-05-01

classified: winter crops, spring crops, oilseed rape, legumes, summer and other crops. This study highlights operational potentials of high temporal full resolution MERIS images in agricultural land use monitoring. Practical application of this methodology is foreseen, among others, in the water quality monitoring. Effective pesticide monitoring relies also on spatial distribution of applied pesticides, which can be derived from crop - plant protection product relationship. Knowledge of areas with predominant occurrence of specific crop based on remote sensing data described above can be used for a forecast of probable plant protection product application, thus cost-effective pesticide monitoring. The remote sensing data used on a continuous basis can be used in other long-term water management issues and provide valuable data for decision makers. Acknowledgement: Authors acknowledge the financial support of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic (grants No. 2B06095 and No. MSM 6046070901). The study was also supported by ESA CAT-1 (ref. 4358) and SOSI projects (Spatial Observation Services and Infrastructure; ref. GSTP-RTDA-EOPG-SW-08-0004).

Stream sediment sources in midwest agricultural basins with land retirement along channel

USGS Publications Warehouse

Williamson, Tanja N.; Christensen, Victoria G.; Richardson, William B.; Frey, Jeffrey W.; Gellis, Allen C.; Kieta, K. A.; Fitzpatrick, Faith A.

2014-01-01

Documenting the effects of agricultural land retirement on stream-sediment sources is critical to identifying management practices that improve water quality and aquatic habitat. Particularly difficult to quantify are the effects from conservation easements that commonly are discontinuous along channelized streams and ditches throughout the agricultural midwestern United States. Our hypotheses were that sediment from cropland, retired land, stream banks, and roads would be discernible using isotopic and elemental concentrations and that source contributions would vary with land retirement distribution along tributaries of West Fork Beaver Creek in Minnesota. Channel-bed and suspended sediment were sampled at nine locations and compared with local source samples by using linear discriminant analysis and a four-source mixing model that evaluated seven tracers: In, P, total C, Be, Tl, Th, and Ti. The proportion of sediment sources differed significantly between suspended and channel-bed sediment. Retired land contributed to channel-bed sediment but was not discernible as a source of suspended sediment, suggesting that retired-land material was not mobilized during high-flow conditions. Stream banks were a large contributor to suspended sediment; however, the percentage of stream-bank sediment in the channel bed was lower in basins with more continuous retired land along the riparian corridor. Cropland sediments had the highest P concentrations; basins with the highest cropland-sediment contributions also had the highest P concentrations. Along stream reaches with retired land, there was a lower proportion of cropland material in suspended sediment relative to sites that had almost no land retirement, indicating less movement of nutrients and sediment from cropland to the channel as a result of land retirement.

Modeling nitrate from land surface to wells' perforations under agricultural land: success, failure, and future scenarios in a Mediterranean case study

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Levy, Yehuda; Shapira, Roi H.; Chefetz, Benny; Kurtzman, Daniel

2017-07-01

Contamination of groundwater resources by nitrate leaching under agricultural land is probably the most troublesome agriculture-related water contamination worldwide. Contaminated areas often show large spatial variability of nitrate concentration in wells. In this study, we tried to assess whether this spatial variability can be characterized on the basis of land use and standard agricultural practices. Deep soil sampling (10 m) was used to calibrate vertical flow and nitrogen-transport numerical models of the unsaturated zone under different agricultural land uses. Vegetable fields (potato and strawberry) and deciduous orchards (persimmon) in the Sharon area overlying the coastal aquifer of Israel were examined. Average nitrate-nitrogen fluxes below vegetable fields were 210-290 kg ha-1 yr-1 and under deciduous orchards were 110-140 kg ha-1 yr-1. The output water and nitrate-nitrogen fluxes of the unsaturated-zone models were used as input data for a three-dimensional flow and nitrate-transport model in the aquifer under an area of 13.3 km2 of agricultural land. The area was subdivided into four agricultural land uses: vegetables, deciduous orchards, citrus orchards, and non-cultivated. Fluxes of water and nitrate-nitrogen below citrus orchards were taken from a previous study in the area. The groundwater flow model was calibrated to well heads by changing the hydraulic conductivity. The nitrate-transport model, which was fed by the above-mentioned models of the unsaturated zone, succeeded in reconstructing the average nitrate concentration in the wells. However, this transport model failed in calculating the high concentrations in the most contaminated wells and the large spatial variability of nitrate concentrations in the aquifer. To reconstruct the spatial variability and enable predictions, nitrate fluxes from the unsaturated zone were multiplied by local multipliers. This action was rationalized by the fact that the high concentrations in some wells cannot

Water limited agriculture in Africa: Climate change sensitivity of large scale land investments

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rulli, M. C.; D'Odorico, P.; Chiarelli, D. D.; Davis, K. F.

2015-12-01

The past few decades have seen unprecedented changes in the global agricultural system with a dramatic increase in the rates of food production fueled by an escalating demand for food calories, as a result of demographic growth, dietary changes, and - more recently - new bioenergy policies. Food prices have become consistently higher and increasingly volatile with dramatic spikes in 2007-08 and 2010-11. The confluence of these factors has heightened demand for land and brought a wave of land investment to the developing world: some of the more affluent countries are trying to secure land rights in areas suitable for agriculture. According to some estimates, to date, roughly 38 million hectares have been acquired worldwide by large scale investors, 16 million of which in Africa. More than 85% of large scale land acquisitions in Africa are by foreign investors. Many land deals are motivated not only by the need for fertile land but for the water resources required for crop production. Despite some recent assessments of the water appropriation associated with large scale land investments, their impact on the water resources of the target countries under present conditions and climate change scenarios remains poorly understood. Here we investigate irrigation water requirements by various crops planted in the acquired land as an indicator of the pressure likely placed by land investors on ("blue") water resources of target regions in Africa and evaluate the sensitivity to climate changes scenarios.

Land Sales - Division of Mining, Land, and Water

Science.gov Websites

to Alaska Land Sales Public Notices Residential Land Auction #484 Agricultural Land Auction #485 Over for sale Agricultural Land Auction (#485)Open until June 7th This program allows anyone (resident or non-resident) to bid on a parcel of agricultural land. Agricultural land has covenants and conditions

Reconstructing Land Use History from Landsat Time-Series. Case study of Swidden Agriculture Intensification in Brazil

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dutrieux, L.; Jakovac, C. C.; Siti, L. H.; Kooistra, L.

2015-12-01

We developed a method to reconstruct land use history from Landsat images time-series. The method uses a breakpoint detection framework derived from the econometrics field and applicable to time-series regression models. The BFAST framework is used for defining the time-series regression models which may contain trend and phenology, hence appropriately modelling vegetation intra and inter-annual dynamics. All available Landsat data are used, and the time-series are partitioned into segments delimited by breakpoints. Segments can be associated to land use regimes, while the breakpoints then correspond to shifts in regimes. To further characterize these shifts, we classified the unlabelled breakpoints returned by the algorithm into their corresponding processes. We used a Random Forest classifier, trained from a set of visually interpreted time-series profiles to infer the processes and assign labels to the breakpoints. The whole approach was applied to quantifying the number of cultivation cycles in a swidden agriculture system in Brazil. Number and frequency of cultivation cycles is of particular ecological relevance in these systems since they largely affect the capacity of the forest to regenerate after abandonment. We applied the method to a Landsat time-series of Normalized Difference Moisture Index (NDMI) spanning the 1984-2015 period and derived from it the number of cultivation cycles during that period at the individual field scale level. Agricultural fields boundaries used to apply the method were derived using a multi-temporal segmentation. We validated the number of cultivation cycles predicted against in-situ information collected from farmers interviews, resulting in a Normalized RMSE of 0.25. Overall the method performed well, producing maps with coherent patterns. We identified various sources of error in the approach, including low data availability in the 90s and sub-object mixture of land uses. We conclude that the method holds great promise for

Estimating Hydrologic Fluxes, Crop Water Use, and Agricultural Land Area in China using Data Assimilation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Smith, Tiziana; McLaughlin, Dennis B.; Hoisungwan, Piyatida

2016-04-01

Crop production has significantly altered the terrestrial environment by changing land use and by altering the water cycle through both co-opted rainfall and surface water withdrawals. As the world's population continues to grow and individual diets become more resource-intensive, the demand for food - and the land and water necessary to produce it - will continue to increase. High-resolution quantitative data about water availability, water use, and agricultural land use are needed to develop sustainable water and agricultural planning and policies. However, existing data covering large areas with high resolution are susceptible to errors and can be physically inconsistent. China is an example of a large area where food demand is expected to increase and a lack of data clouds the resource management dialogue. Some assert that China will have insufficient land and water resources to feed itself, posing a threat to global food security if they seek to increase food imports. Others believe resources are plentiful. Without quantitative data, it is difficult to discern if these concerns are realistic or overly dramatized. This research presents a quantitative approach using data assimilation techniques to characterize hydrologic fluxes, crop water use (defined as crop evapotranspiration), and agricultural land use at 0.5 by 0.5 degree resolution and applies the methodology in China using data from around the year 2000. The approach uses the principles of water balance and of crop water requirements to assimilate existing data with a least-squares estimation technique, producing new estimates of water and land use variables that are physically consistent while minimizing differences from measured data. We argue that this technique for estimating water fluxes and agricultural land use can provide a useful basis for resource management modeling and policy, both in China and around the world.

Spatial and temporal contrasts in the distribution of crops and pastures across Amazonia: A new agricultural land use data set from census data since 1950.

PubMed

Imbach, P; Manrow, M; Barona, E; Barretto, A; Hyman, G; Ciais, P

2015-06-01

Amazonia holds the largest continuous area of tropical forests with intense land use change dynamics inducing water, carbon, and energy feedbacks with regional and global impacts. Much of our knowledge of land use change in Amazonia comes from studies of the Brazilian Amazon, which accounts for two thirds of the region. Amazonia outside of Brazil has received less attention because of the difficulty of acquiring consistent data across countries. We present here an agricultural statistics database of the entire Amazonia region, with a harmonized description of crops and pastures in geospatial format, based on administrative boundary data at the municipality level. The spatial coverage includes countries within Amazonia and spans censuses and surveys from 1950 to 2012. Harmonized crop and pasture types are explored by grouping annual and perennial cropping systems, C3 and C4 photosynthetic pathways, planted and natural pastures, and main crops. Our analysis examined the spatial pattern of ratios between classes of the groups and their correlation with the agricultural extent of crops and pastures within administrative units of the Amazon, by country, and census/survey dates. Significant correlations were found between all ratios and the fraction of agricultural lands of each administrative unit, with the exception of planted to natural pastures ratio and pasture lands extent. Brazil and Peru in most cases have significant correlations for all ratios analyzed even for specific census and survey dates. Results suggested improvements, and potential applications of the database for carbon, water, climate, and land use change studies are discussed. The database presented here provides an Amazon-wide improved data set on agricultural dynamics with expanded temporal and spatial coverage. Agricultural census database covers Amazon basin municipalities from 1950 to 2012Harmonized database groups crops and pastures by cropping system, C3/C4, and main cropsWe explored

Spatially differentiated trends in urbanization, agricultural land abandonment and reclamation, and woodland recovery in Northern China.

PubMed

Wang, Chao; Gao, Qiong; Wang, Xian; Yu, Mei

2016-11-22

Uncovering magnitude, trend, and spatial pattern of land cover/land use changes (LCLUC) is crucial for understanding mechanisms of LCLUC and assisting land use planning and conservation. China has been undergoing unprecedented economic growth, massive rural-to-urban migration, and large-scale policy-driven ecological restoration, and therefore encountering enormous LCLUC in recent decades. However, comprehensive understandings of spatiotemporal LCLUC dynamics and underlying mechanisms are still lacking. Based on classification of annual LCLU maps from MODIS satellite imagery, we proposed a land change detection method to capture significant land change hotspots over Northern China during 2001-2013, and further analyzed temporal trends and spatial patterns of LCLUC. We found rapid decline of agricultural land near urban was predominantly caused by urban expansion. The process was especially strong in North China Plain with 14,057 km 2 of urban gain and -21,017 km 2 of agricultural land loss. To offset the loss of agricultural land, Northeast China Plain and Xinjiang were reclaimed. Substantial recovery of forests (49,908 km 2 ) and closed shrubland (60,854 km 2 ) occurred in mountainous regions due to abandoned infertile farmland, secondary succession, and governmental conservation policies. The spatial patterns and trends of LCLUC in Northern China provide information to support effective environmental policies towards sustainable development.

Spatially differentiated trends in urbanization, agricultural land abandonment and reclamation, and woodland recovery in Northern China

PubMed Central

Wang, Chao; Gao, Qiong; Wang, Xian; Yu, Mei

2016-01-01

Uncovering magnitude, trend, and spatial pattern of land cover/land use changes (LCLUC) is crucial for understanding mechanisms of LCLUC and assisting land use planning and conservation. China has been undergoing unprecedented economic growth, massive rural-to-urban migration, and large-scale policy-driven ecological restoration, and therefore encountering enormous LCLUC in recent decades. However, comprehensive understandings of spatiotemporal LCLUC dynamics and underlying mechanisms are still lacking. Based on classification of annual LCLU maps from MODIS satellite imagery, we proposed a land change detection method to capture significant land change hotspots over Northern China during 2001–2013, and further analyzed temporal trends and spatial patterns of LCLUC. We found rapid decline of agricultural land near urban was predominantly caused by urban expansion. The process was especially strong in North China Plain with 14,057 km2 of urban gain and −21,017 km2 of agricultural land loss. To offset the loss of agricultural land, Northeast China Plain and Xinjiang were reclaimed. Substantial recovery of forests (49,908 km2) and closed shrubland (60,854 km2) occurred in mountainous regions due to abandoned infertile farmland, secondary succession, and governmental conservation policies. The spatial patterns and trends of LCLUC in Northern China provide information to support effective environmental policies towards sustainable development. PMID:27874092

Spatially differentiated trends in urbanization, agricultural land abandonment and reclamation, and woodland recovery in Northern China

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wang, Chao; Gao, Qiong; Wang, Xian; Yu, Mei

2016-11-01

Uncovering magnitude, trend, and spatial pattern of land cover/land use changes (LCLUC) is crucial for understanding mechanisms of LCLUC and assisting land use planning and conservation. China has been undergoing unprecedented economic growth, massive rural-to-urban migration, and large-scale policy-driven ecological restoration, and therefore encountering enormous LCLUC in recent decades. However, comprehensive understandings of spatiotemporal LCLUC dynamics and underlying mechanisms are still lacking. Based on classification of annual LCLU maps from MODIS satellite imagery, we proposed a land change detection method to capture significant land change hotspots over Northern China during 2001-2013, and further analyzed temporal trends and spatial patterns of LCLUC. We found rapid decline of agricultural land near urban was predominantly caused by urban expansion. The process was especially strong in North China Plain with 14,057 km2 of urban gain and -21,017 km2 of agricultural land loss. To offset the loss of agricultural land, Northeast China Plain and Xinjiang were reclaimed. Substantial recovery of forests (49,908 km2) and closed shrubland (60,854 km2) occurred in mountainous regions due to abandoned infertile farmland, secondary succession, and governmental conservation policies. The spatial patterns and trends of LCLUC in Northern China provide information to support effective environmental policies towards sustainable development.

Soil, land use time, and sustainable intensification of agriculture in the Brazilian Cerrado region.

PubMed

Trabaquini, Kleber; Galvão, Lênio Soares; Formaggio, Antonio Roberto; de Aragão, Luiz Eduardo Oliveira E Cruz

2017-02-01

The Brazilian Cerrado area is in rapid decline because of the expansion of modern agriculture. In this study, we used extensive field data and a 30-year chronosequence of Landsat images (1980-2010) to assess the effects of time since conversion of Cerrado into agriculture upon soil chemical attributes and soybean/corn yield in the Alto do Rio Verde watershed. We determined the rates of vegetation conversion into agriculture, the agricultural land use time since conversion, and the temporal changes in topsoil (0-20 cm soil depth) and subsurface (20-40 cm) chemical attributes of the soils. In addition, we investigated possible associations between fertilization/over-fertilization and land use history detected from the satellites. The results showed that 61.8% of the native vegetation in the Alto do Rio Verde watershed was already converted into agriculture with 31% of soils being used in agriculture for more than 30 years. While other fertilizers in cultivated soils (e.g., Ca +2 , Mg +2 , and P) have been compensated over time by soil management practices to keep crop yield high, large reductions in C org (38%) and N tot (29%) were observed in old cultivated areas. Furthermore, soybean and cornfields having more than 10 years of farming presented higher values of P and Mg +2 than the ideal levels necessary for plant development. Therefore, increased risks of over-fertilization of the soils and environmental contamination with these macronutrients were associated with soybean and cornfields having more than 10 years of farming, especially those with more than 30 years of agricultural land use.

Coupled carbon-nitrogen land surface modelling for UK agricultural landscapes using JULES and JULES-ECOSSE-FUN (JEF)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Comyn-Platt, Edward; Clark, Douglas; Blyth, Eleanor

2016-04-01

The UK is required to provide accurate estimates of the UK greenhouse gas (GHG; CO2, CH4 and N2O) emissions for the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change). Process based land surface models (LSMs), such as the Joint UK Land Environment Simulator (JULES), attempt to provide such estimates based on environmental (e.g. land use and soil type) and meteorological conditions. The standard release of JULES focusses on the water and carbon cycles, however, it has long been suggested that a coupled carbon-nitrogen scheme could enhance simulations. This is of particular importance when estimating agricultural emission inventories where the carbon cycle is effectively managed via the human application of nitrogen based fertilizers. JULES-ECOSSE-FUN (JEF) links JULES with the Estimation of Carbon in Organic Soils - Sequestration and Emission (ECOSSE) model and the Fixation and Uptake of Nitrogen (FUN) model as a means of simulating C:N coupling. This work presents simulations from the standard release of JULES and the most recent incarnation of the JEF coupled system at the point and field scale. Various configurations of JULES and JEF were calibrated and fine-tuned based on comparisons with observations from three UK field campaigns (Crichton, Harwood Forest and Brattleby) specifically chosen to represent the managed vegetation types that cover the UK. The campaigns included flux tower and chamber measurements of CO2, CH4 and N2O amongst other meteorological parameters and records of land management such as application of fertilizer and harvest date at the agricultural sites. Based on the results of these comparisons, JULES and/or JEF will be used to provide simulations on the regional and national scales in order to provide improved estimates of the total UK emission inventory.

Stream Sediment Sources in Midwest Agricultural Basins with Land Retirement along Channel.

PubMed

Williamson, T N; Christensen, V G; Richardson, W B; Frey, J W; Gellis, A C; Kieta, K A; Fitzpatrick, F A

2014-09-01

Documenting the effects of agricultural land retirement on stream-sediment sources is critical to identifying management practices that improve water quality and aquatic habitat. Particularly difficult to quantify are the effects from conservation easements that commonly are discontinuous along channelized streams and ditches throughout the agricultural midwestern United States. Our hypotheses were that sediment from cropland, retired land, stream banks, and roads would be discernible using isotopic and elemental concentrations and that source contributions would vary with land retirement distribution along tributaries of West Fork Beaver Creek in Minnesota. Channel-bed and suspended sediment were sampled at nine locations and compared with local source samples by using linear discriminant analysis and a four-source mixing model that evaluated seven tracers: In, P, total C, Be, Tl, Th, and Ti. The proportion of sediment sources differed significantly between suspended and channel-bed sediment. Retired land contributed to channel-bed sediment but was not discernible as a source of suspended sediment, suggesting that retired-land material was not mobilized during high-flow conditions. Stream banks were a large contributor to suspended sediment; however, the percentage of stream-bank sediment in the channel bed was lower in basins with more continuous retired land along the riparian corridor. Cropland sediments had the highest P concentrations; basins with the highest cropland-sediment contributions also had the highest P concentrations. Along stream reaches with retired land, there was a lower proportion of cropland material in suspended sediment relative to sites that had almost no land retirement, indicating less movement of nutrients and sediment from cropland to the channel as a result of land retirement. Copyright © by the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America, Inc.

Assessment of the intrinsic vulnerability of agricultural land to water and nitrogen losses: case studies in Italy and Greece

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Aschonitis, V. G.; Mastrocicco, M.; Colombani, N.; Salemi, E.; Castaldelli, G.

2014-09-01

LOS indices (abbr. of Losses) can be used for the assessment of the intrinsic vulnerability of agricultural land to water and nitrogen losses through percolation and runoff. The indices were applied on the lowland region of Ferrara Province (FP) in Italy and the upland region of Sarigkiol Basin (SB) in Greece. The most vulnerable zones in FP were the coastal areas consisting of high permeability sandy dunes and the areas close to riverbanks and palaeochannels, and in SB were the areas characterized by high slopes and high permeability soils at high altitude and areas belonging to the upper part of the alluvial plain close to the boundaries between agricultural land and mountainous regions. The application of LOS indices highlighted the specific features of both lowland and upland regions that contribute to water and nitrogen losses and showed their ability for use as tools in designing environmental management plans.

Agricultural aviation application in the USA

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

The United States has the most advanced equipment and applications in agricultural aviation. It also has a complete service system in agricultural aviation. This article introduces the current status of aerial application including service, equipment, and aerial application techniques. It has a c...

Agricultural land use intensity and its determinants: A case study in Taibus Banner, Inner Mongolia, China

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hao, Haiguang; Li, Xiubin; Tan, Minghong; Zhang, Jiping; Zhang, Huiyuan

2015-06-01

Based on rural household survey data from Taibus Banner, in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, China, this study separately categorizes agricultural land use intensity into labor intensity, capital intensity, the intensity of labor-saving inputs, and the intensity of yield-increasing inputs, and then analyzes their determinants at the household level. The findings reveal that within the study area: (1) labor intensity is higher and capital intensity is lower than in the major grain-producing and economically developed areas of eastern and central China; (2) the most widely planted crops are those with the lowest labor intensity (oats) and capital intensity (benne); (3) there are marked differences in agricultural land use intensity among households; a major factor affecting land use decision-making is the reduced need for labor intensity for those households with high opportunity costs, such as those with income earned from non-farming activities which alleviates financial constraints and allows for increased capital intensity. As a result, these households invest more in labor-saving inputs; (4) households with a larger number of workers will allocate adequate time to manage their land and thus they will not necessarily invest more in labor-saving inputs. Those households with more land to manage tend to adopt an extensive cultivation strategy. Total income has a positive impact on capital intensity and a negative impact on labor intensity. Households that derive a higher proportion of their total income through farming are more reliant upon agriculture, which necessitates significant labor and yield-increasing inputs. Finally, the authors contend that policy makers should clearly recognize the impacts of non-farming employment on agricultural land use intensity. In order to ensure long-term food security and sustainable agricultural development in China, income streams from both farming and non-farming employment should be balanced.

Establishing sustainable GHG inventory systems in African countries for Agriculture and Land Use, Land-use Change and Forestry (LULUCF)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wirth, T. C.; Troxler, T.

2015-12-01

As signatories to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), developing countries are required to produce greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories every two years. For many developing countries, including many of those in Africa, this is a significant challenge as it requires establishing a robust and sustainable GHG inventory system. In order to help support these efforts, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has worked in collaboration with the UNFCCC to assist African countries in establishing sustainable GHG inventory systems and generating high-quality inventories on a regular basis. The sectors we have focused on for these GHG inventory capacity building efforts in Africa are Agriculture and Land Use, Land-use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) as these tend to represent a significant portion of their GHG emissions profile and the data requirements and methodologies are often more complex than for other sectors. To support these efforts, the U.S. EPA has provided technical assistance in understanding the methods in the IPCC Guidelines, assembling activity data and emission factors, including developing land-use maps for representing a country's land base, and implementing the calculations. EPA has also supported development of various tools such as a Template Workbook that helps the country build the institutional arrangement and strong documentation that are necessary for generating GHG inventories on a regular basis, as well as performing other procedures as identified by IPCC Good Practice Guidance such as quality assurance/quality control, key category analysis and archiving. Another tool used in these projects and helps country's implement the methods from the IPCC Guidelines for the Agriculture and LULUCF sectors is the Agriculture and Land Use (ALU) tool. This tool helps countries assemble the activity data and emission factors, including supporting the import of GIS maps, and applying the equations from the IPPC Guidelines to

How conflict affects land use: agricultural activity in areas seized by the Islamic State

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Eklund, Lina; Degerald, Michael; Brandt, Martin; Prishchepov, Alexander V.; Pilesjö, Petter

2017-05-01

Socio-economic shocks, technogenic catastrophes, and armed conflicts often have drastic impacts on local and regional food security through disruption of agricultural production and food trade, reduced investments, and deterioration of land and infrastructure. Recently, more research has focused on the effects of armed conflict on land systems, but still little is known about the processes and outcomes of such events. Here we use the case of Syria and Iraq and the seizure of land by the Islamic State (IS) since 2014 as an example of armed conflict, where we investigate the effects on agricultural land use. We apply a reproducible approach using 250 m satellite-based time-series data to quantify the areas under cultivation from 2000 to 2015. Despite a common belief about widespread land abandonment in areas under conflict, results point to multiple trajectories regarding cropland cultivation in the IS seized area: (1) expansion of cropland to formerly un-cultivated areas, (2) cropland abandonment, and (3) decrease of high-intensity cropland. Our study highlights the need to understand these diverse conflict-related and context-dependent changes to the land system.

Modeling Land Application of Food-Processing Wastewater in the Central Valley, California

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rubin, Y.; Benito, P.; Miller, G.; McLaughlin, J.; Hou, Z.; Hermanowicz, S.; Mayer, U.

2007-12-01

California's Central Valley contains over 640 food-processing plants, serving a multi-billion dollar agricultural industry. These processors consume approximately 7.9 x 107 m3 of water per year. Approximately 80% of these processors discharge the resulting wastewater, which is typically high in organic matter, nitrogen, and salts, to land, and many of these use land application as a treatment method. Initial investigations revealed elevated salinity levels to be the most common form of groundwater degradation near land application sites, followed by concentrations of nitrogen compounds, namely ammonia and nitrate. Enforcement actions have been taken against multiple food processors, and the regulatory boards have begun to re-examine the land disposal permitting process. This paper summarizes a study that was commissioned in support of these actions. The study has multiple components which will be reviewed briefly, including: (1) characterization of the food-processing related waste stream; (2) fate and transport of the effluent waste stream in the unsaturated zone at the land application sites; (3) fate and transport of the effluent waste stream at the regional scale; (4) predictive uncertainty due to spatial variability and data scarcity at the land application sites and at the regional scale; (5) problem mitigation through off-site and in-situ actions; (6) long-term solutions. The emphasis of the talk will be placed on presenting and demonstrating a stochastic framework for modeling the transport and attenuation of these wastes in the vadose zone and in the saturated zone, and the related site characterization needs, as affected by site conditions, water table depth, waste water application rate, and waste constituent concentrations.

Agricultural Development, Land Change, and Livelihoods in Tanzania's Kilombero Valley

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Connors, John Patrick

The Kilombero Valley lies at the intersection of a network of protected areas that cross Tanzania. The wetlands and woodlands of the Valley, as well as the forest of surrounding mountains are abundant in biodiversity and are considered to be critical areas for conservation. This area, however, is also the home to more than a half million people, primarily poor smallholder farmers. In an effort to support the livelihoods and food security of these farmers and the larger Tanzanian population, the country has recently targeted a series of programs to increase agricultural production in the Kilombero Valley and elsewhere in the country. Bridging concepts and methods from land change science, political ecology, and sustainable livelihoods, I present an integrated assessment of the linkages between development and conservation efforts in the Kilombero Valley and the implications for food security. This dissertation uses three empirical studies to understand the process of development in the Kilombero Valley and to link the priorities and perceptions of conservation and development efforts to the material outcomes in food security and land change. The first paper of this dissertation examines the changes in land use in the Kilombero Valley between 1997 and 2014 following the privatization of agriculture and the expansion of Tanzania's Kilimo Kwanza program. Remote sensing analysis reveals a two-fold increase in agricultural area during this short time, largely at the expense of forest. Protected areas in some parts of the Valley appear to be deterring deforestation, but rapid agricultural growth, particularly surrounding a commercial rice plantation, has led to loss of extant forest and sustained habitat fragmentation. The second paper focuses examines livelihood strategies in the Valley and claims regarding the role of agrobiodiversity in food security. The results of household survey reveal no difference or lower food security among households that diversify their

Land use policy and agricultural water management of the previous half of century in Africa

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Valipour, Mohammad

2015-12-01

This paper examines land use policy and agricultural water management in Africa from 1962 to 2011. For this purpose, data were gathered from Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Bank Group. Using the FAO database, ten indices were selected: permanent crops to cultivated area (%), rural population to total population (%), total economically active population in agriculture to total economically active population (%), human development index, national rainfall index (mm/year), value added to gross domestic product by agriculture (%), irrigation water requirement (mm/year), percentage of total cultivated area drained (%), difference between national rainfall index and irrigation water requirement (mm/year), area equipped for irrigation to cultivated area or land use policy index (%). These indices were analyzed for all 53 countries in the study area and the land use policy index was estimated by two different formulas. The results show that value of relative error is <20 %. In addition, an average index was calculated using various methods to assess countries' conditions for agricultural water management. Ability of irrigation and drainage systems was studied using other eight indices with more limited information. These indices are surface irrigation (%), sprinkler irrigation (%), localized irrigation (%), spate irrigation (%), agricultural water withdrawal (10 km3/year), conservation agriculture area as percentage of cultivated area (%), percentage of area equipped for irrigation salinized (%), and area waterlogged by irrigation (%). Finally, tendency of farmers to use irrigation systems for cultivated crops has been presented. The results show that Africa needs governments' policy to encourage farmers to use irrigation systems and raise cropping intensity for irrigated area.

The Contribution of Agriculture, Forestry and other Land Use activities to Global Warming, 1990-2012.

PubMed

Tubiello, Francesco N; Salvatore, Mirella; Ferrara, Alessandro F; House, Jo; Federici, Sandro; Rossi, Simone; Biancalani, Riccardo; Condor Golec, Rocio D; Jacobs, Heather; Flammini, Alessandro; Prosperi, Paolo; Cardenas-Galindo, Paola; Schmidhuber, Josef; Sanz Sanchez, Maria J; Srivastava, Nalin; Smith, Pete

2015-01-10

We refine the information available through the IPCC AR5 with regard to recent trends in global GHG emissions from agriculture, forestry and other land uses (AFOLU), including global emission updates to 2012. Using all three available AFOLU datasets employed for analysis in the IPCC AR5, rather than just one as done in the IPCC AR5 WGIII Summary for Policy Makers, our analyses point to a down-revision of global AFOLU shares of total anthropogenic emissions, while providing important additional information on subsectoral trends. Our findings confirm that the share of AFOLU emissions to the anthropogenic total declined over time. They indicate a decadal average of 28.7 ± 1.5% in the 1990s and 23.6 ± 2.1% in the 2000s and an annual value of 21.2 ± 1.5% in 2010. The IPCC AR5 had indicated a 24% share in 2010. In contrast to previous decades, when emissions from land use (land use, land use change and forestry, including deforestation) were significantly larger than those from agriculture (crop and livestock production), in 2010 agriculture was the larger component, contributing 11.2 ± 0.4% of total GHG emissions, compared to 10.0 ± 1.2% of the land use sector. Deforestation was responsible for only 8% of total anthropogenic emissions in 2010, compared to 12% in the 1990s. Since 2010, the last year assessed by the IPCC AR5, new FAO estimates indicate that land use emissions have remained stable, at about 4.8 Gt CO 2 eq yr -1 in 2012. Emissions minus removals have also remained stable, at 3.2 Gt CO 2 eq yr -1 in 2012. By contrast, agriculture emissions have continued to grow, at roughly 1% annually, and remained larger than the land use sector, reaching 5.4 Gt CO 2 eq yr -1 in 2012. These results are useful to further inform the current climate policy debate on land use, suggesting that more efforts and resources should be directed to further explore options for mitigation in agriculture, much in line with the large efforts devoted to REDD+ in the

The potential and sustainability of agricultural land use in a changing ecosystem in southern Greenland

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hunziker, Matthias; Caviezel, Chatrina; Kuhn, Nikolaus J.

2015-04-01

Southern Greenland currently experiences an increase in summer temperatures and a prolonged growing season (Masson-Delmotte et al. 2012), resulting in an increased potential regarding agricultural land use. Subsequently, the agricultural sector is expected to grow. Thereby, a higher hay production and grazing capacity is pursued by applying more efficient farming practices (Greenland Agriculture Advisory Board 2009). However, agricultural potential at borderline ecotones is not only influenced by factors like temperature and growing season but also by other ecologic parameters. In addition, the intensification of land use in the fragile boreal - tundra border ecotone has various environmental impacts (Perren et al. 2012; Normand et al. 2013). Already the Norse settlers practiced animal husbandry in southern Greenland between 986-1450 AD. Several authors mention the unadapted land use as main reason for the demise of the Norse in Greenland, as grazing pressure exceeded the resilience of the landscape and pasture economy failed (Fredskild 1988; Perren et al. 2012). During the field work in summer 2014, we compared the pedologic properties of already used hay fields, grazed land, birch woodland and barren, unused land around Igaliku (South Greenland), in order to estimate the potential and the sustainability of the land use in southern Greenland. Beside physical soil properties, nutrient condition of the different land use types, the shrub woodland and barren areas was analyzed. The results of the study show that the most suitable areas for intensive agricultural activity are mostly occupied. Further on, the fields, which were used by the Norse, seem to be the most productive sites nowadays. Less productive hay fields are characterized by a higher coarse fraction, leading to a reduced ability to store water and to an unfavorable nutrient status. An intensification of the agricultural land use by applying fertilizer would lead to an increased environmental impact

Applications of DNA Technologies in Agriculture.

PubMed

Fang, Jinggui; Zhu, Xudong; Wang, Chen; Shangguan, Lingfei

2016-08-01

With the development of molecular biology, some DNA-based technologies have showed great potentiality in promoting the efficiency of crop breeding program, protecting germplasm resources, improving the quality and outputs of agricultural products, and protecting the eco-environment etc., making their roles in modern agriculture more and more important. To better understand the application of DNA technologies in agriculture, and achieve the goals to promote their utilities in modern agriculture, this paper describes, in some different way, the applications of molecular markers, transgenic engineering and gene's information in agriculture. Some corresponding anticipations for their development prospects are also made.

Linking Landsat observations with MODIS derived Land Surface Phenology data to map agricultural expansion and contraction in Russia

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Caliskan, S.; de Beurs, K.

2010-12-01

Direct human impacts on the land surface are especially pronounced in agricultural regions that cover a substantial portion of the global land surface: 12% of the terrestrial surface is under active agricultural management. Crops display phenologies distinct from natural vegetation; the growing seasons are often shifted in time, crop establishment is generally fast and the vegetation is rapidly removed at harvest. Previously we have demonstrated that agricultural land abandonment alters land surface phenology sufficiently to be detectable from a time series of coarse resolution imagery. With land surface phenology models based on accumulated growing degree-days (AGDD) and AVHRR NDVI, we demonstrated that abandoned croplands covered with native grasses and weeds typically greened-up and peaked sooner than active croplands. Here we present an expansion of these analyses for the MODIS time period with the ultimate goal to map agricultural abandonment and expansion in European Russia from 2000 to 2010. We used the 8-day, 1km L3 Land Surface Temperature data (MOD11A2) to generate the accumulated growing degree days and the 16-day L3 Nadir BRDF-Adjusted reflectance data at 500m resolution (MCD43A4) to calculate NDVI. We calculated phenological metrics based on three methods: 1) Double-logistic models such as those applied to produce the standard MODIS phenology product (MOD12Q2); 2) A combination of NDII and NDVI; this method has been shown to provide start/end of season measurement closest to field observations in snowy areas; and 3) A quadratic model linking accumulated growing degree days and vegetation indices which we successfully applied in agricultural areas of Kazakhstan and semi-arid Africa. We selected Landsat imagery for two vastly different regions in Russia and present a Landsat-guided probabilistic detection of abandoned and active croplands for all available years of the MODIS image time series (2000-2010). For each region, we selected at least two images

Mitigation Strategies for Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Agriculture and Land-Use Change: Consequences for Food Prices.

PubMed

Stevanović, Miodrag; Popp, Alexander; Bodirsky, Benjamin Leon; Humpenöder, Florian; Müller, Christoph; Weindl, Isabelle; Dietrich, Jan Philipp; Lotze-Campen, Hermann; Kreidenweis, Ulrich; Rolinski, Susanne; Biewald, Anne; Wang, Xiaoxi

2017-01-03

The land use sector of agriculture, forestry, and other land use (AFOLU) plays a central role in ambitious climate change mitigation efforts. Yet, mitigation policies in agriculture may be in conflict with food security related targets. Using a global agro-economic model, we analyze the impacts on food prices under mitigation policies targeting either incentives for producers (e.g., through taxes) or consumer preferences (e.g., through education programs). Despite having a similar reduction potential of 43-44% in 2100, the two types of policy instruments result in opposite outcomes for food prices. Incentive-based mitigation, such as protecting carbon-rich forests or adopting low-emission production techniques, increase land scarcity and production costs and thereby food prices. Preference-based mitigation, such as reduced household waste or lower consumption of animal-based products, decreases land scarcity, prevents emissions leakage, and concentrates production on the most productive sites and consequently lowers food prices. Whereas agricultural emissions are further abated in the combination of these mitigation measures, the synergy of strategies fails to substantially lower food prices. Additionally, we demonstrate that the efficiency of agricultural emission abatement is stable across a range of greenhouse-gas (GHG) tax levels, while resulting food prices exhibit a disproportionally larger spread.

Characterization of agricultural land using singular value decomposition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Herries, Graham M.; Danaher, Sean; Selige, Thomas

1995-11-01

A method is defined and tested for the characterization of agricultural land from multi-spectral imagery, based on singular value decomposition (SVD) and key vector analysis. The SVD technique, which bears a close resemblance to multivariate statistic techniques, has previously been successfully applied to problems of signal extraction for marine data and forestry species classification. In this study the SVD technique is used as a classifier for agricultural regions, using airborne Daedalus ATM data, with 1 m resolution. The specific region chosen is an experimental research farm in Bavaria, Germany. This farm has a large number of crops, within a very small region and hence is not amenable to existing techniques. There are a number of other significant factors which render existing techniques such as the maximum likelihood algorithm less suitable for this area. These include a very dynamic terrain and tessellated pattern soil differences, which together cause large variations in the growth characteristics of the crops. The SVD technique is applied to this data set using a multi-stage classification approach, removing unwanted land-cover classes one step at a time. Typical classification accuracy's for SVD are of the order of 85-100%. Preliminary results indicate that it is a fast and efficient classifier with the ability to differentiate between crop types such as wheat, rye, potatoes and clover. The results of characterizing 3 sub-classes of Winter Wheat are also shown.

7 CFR 12.3 - Applicability.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-01-01

... 7 Agriculture 1 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Applicability. 12.3 Section 12.3 Agriculture Office of the Secretary of Agriculture HIGHLY ERODIBLE LAND AND WETLAND CONSERVATION General Provisions § 12.3 Applicability. (a) Geographic scope. The provisions of this part shall apply to all land, including Indian tribal land, in the fifty States, the...

Assessment on the rates and potentials of soil organic carbon sequestration in agricultural lands in Japan using a process-based model and spatially explicit land-use change inventories - Part 2: Future potentials

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yagasaki, Y.; Shirato, Y.

2014-08-01

Future potentials of the sequestration of soil organic carbon (SOC) in agricultural lands in Japan were estimated using a simulation system we recently developed to simulate SOC stock change at country-scale under varying land-use change, climate, soil, and agricultural practices, in a spatially explicit manner. Simulation was run from 1970 to 2006 with historical inventories, and subsequently to 2020 with future scenarios of agricultural activity comprised of various agricultural policy targets advocated by the Japanese government. Furthermore, the simulation was run subsequently until 2100 while forcing no temporal changes in land-use and agricultural activity to investigate duration and course of SOC stock change at country scale. A scenario with an increased rate of organic carbon input to agricultural fields by intensified crop rotation in combination with the suppression of conversion of agricultural lands to other land-use types was found to have a greater reduction of CO2 emission by enhanced soil carbon sequestration, but only under a circumstance in which the converted agricultural lands will become settlements that were considered to have a relatively lower rate of organic carbon input. The size of relative reduction of CO2 emission in this scenario was comparable to that in another contrasting scenario (business-as-usual scenario of agricultural activity) in which a relatively lower rate of organic matter input to agricultural fields was assumed in combination with an increased rate of conversion of the agricultural fields to unmanaged grasslands through abandonment. Our simulation experiment clearly demonstrated that net-net-based accounting on SOC stock change, defined as the differences between the emissions and removals during the commitment period and the emissions and removals during a previous period (base year or base period of Kyoto Protocol), can be largely influenced by variations in future climate. Whereas baseline-based accounting, defined

Past agricultural land use and present-day fire regimes can interact to determine the nature of seed predation.

PubMed

Stuhler, John D; Orrock, John L

2016-06-01

Historical agriculture and present-day fire regimes can have significant effects on contemporary ecosystems. Although past agricultural land use can lead to long-term changes in plant communities, it remains unclear whether these persistent land-use legacies alter plant-consumer interactions, such as seed predation, and whether contemporary disturbance (e.g., fire) alters the effects of historical agriculture on these interactions. We conducted a study at 27 sites distributed across 80,300 ha in post-agricultural and non-agricultural longleaf pine woodlands with different degrees of fire frequency to test the hypothesis that past and present-day disturbances that alter plant communities can subsequently alter seed predation. We quantified seed removal by arthropods and rodents for Tephrosia virginiana and Vernonia angustifolia, species of conservation interest. We found that the effects of land-use history and fire frequency on seed removal were contingent on granivore guild and microhabitat characteristics. Tephrosia virginiana removal was greater in low fire frequency sites, due to greater seed removal by rodents. Although overall removal of V. angustifolia did not differ among habitats, rodents removed more seeds than arthropods at post-agricultural sites and non-agricultural sites with low fire frequencies, but not at non-agricultural sites with high fire frequencies. Land-use history and fire frequency also affected the relationship between microhabitat characteristics and removal of V. angustifolia. Our results suggest that historical agriculture and present-day fire regimes may alter seed predation by shifting the impact of rodent and arthropod seed predators among habitats, with potential consequences for the establishment of rare plant species consumed by one or both predators.

Global Tree Cover and Biomass Carbon on Agricultural Land: The contribution of agroforestry to global and national carbon budgets.

PubMed

Zomer, Robert J; Neufeldt, Henry; Xu, Jianchu; Ahrends, Antje; Bossio, Deborah; Trabucco, Antonio; van Noordwijk, Meine; Wang, Mingcheng

2016-07-20

Agroforestry systems and tree cover on agricultural land make an important contribution to climate change mitigation, but are not systematically accounted for in either global carbon budgets or national carbon accounting. This paper assesses the role of trees on agricultural land and their significance for carbon sequestration at a global level, along with recent change trends. Remote sensing data show that in 2010, 43% of all agricultural land globally had at least 10% tree cover and that this has increased by 2% over the previous ten years. Combining geographically and bioclimatically stratified Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Tier 1 default estimates of carbon storage with this tree cover analysis, we estimated 45.3 PgC on agricultural land globally, with trees contributing >75%. Between 2000 and 2010 tree cover increased by 3.7%, resulting in an increase of >2 PgC (or 4.6%) of biomass carbon. On average, globally, biomass carbon increased from 20.4 to 21.4 tC ha(-1). Regional and country-level variation in stocks and trends were mapped and tabulated globally, and for all countries. Brazil, Indonesia, China and India had the largest increases in biomass carbon stored on agricultural land, while Argentina, Myanmar, and Sierra Leone had the largest decreases.

Global Tree Cover and Biomass Carbon on Agricultural Land: The contribution of agroforestry to global and national carbon budgets

PubMed Central

Zomer, Robert J.; Neufeldt, Henry; Xu, Jianchu; Ahrends, Antje; Bossio, Deborah; Trabucco, Antonio; van Noordwijk, Meine; Wang, Mingcheng

2016-01-01

Agroforestry systems and tree cover on agricultural land make an important contribution to climate change mitigation, but are not systematically accounted for in either global carbon budgets or national carbon accounting. This paper assesses the role of trees on agricultural land and their significance for carbon sequestration at a global level, along with recent change trends. Remote sensing data show that in 2010, 43% of all agricultural land globally had at least 10% tree cover and that this has increased by 2% over the previous ten years. Combining geographically and bioclimatically stratified Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Tier 1 default estimates of carbon storage with this tree cover analysis, we estimated 45.3 PgC on agricultural land globally, with trees contributing >75%. Between 2000 and 2010 tree cover increased by 3.7%, resulting in an increase of >2 PgC (or 4.6%) of biomass carbon. On average, globally, biomass carbon increased from 20.4 to 21.4 tC ha−1. Regional and country-level variation in stocks and trends were mapped and tabulated globally, and for all countries. Brazil, Indonesia, China and India had the largest increases in biomass carbon stored on agricultural land, while Argentina, Myanmar, and Sierra Leone had the largest decreases. PMID:27435095

Spatial and temporal contrasts in the distribution of crops and pastures across Amazonia: A new agricultural land use data set from census data since 1950

PubMed Central

Imbach, P; Manrow, M; Barona, E; Barretto, A; Hyman, G; Ciais, P

2015-01-01

Amazonia holds the largest continuous area of tropical forests with intense land use change dynamics inducing water, carbon, and energy feedbacks with regional and global impacts. Much of our knowledge of land use change in Amazonia comes from studies of the Brazilian Amazon, which accounts for two thirds of the region. Amazonia outside of Brazil has received less attention because of the difficulty of acquiring consistent data across countries. We present here an agricultural statistics database of the entire Amazonia region, with a harmonized description of crops and pastures in geospatial format, based on administrative boundary data at the municipality level. The spatial coverage includes countries within Amazonia and spans censuses and surveys from 1950 to 2012. Harmonized crop and pasture types are explored by grouping annual and perennial cropping systems, C3 and C4 photosynthetic pathways, planted and natural pastures, and main crops. Our analysis examined the spatial pattern of ratios between classes of the groups and their correlation with the agricultural extent of crops and pastures within administrative units of the Amazon, by country, and census/survey dates. Significant correlations were found between all ratios and the fraction of agricultural lands of each administrative unit, with the exception of planted to natural pastures ratio and pasture lands extent. Brazil and Peru in most cases have significant correlations for all ratios analyzed even for specific census and survey dates. Results suggested improvements, and potential applications of the database for carbon, water, climate, and land use change studies are discussed. The database presented here provides an Amazon-wide improved data set on agricultural dynamics with expanded temporal and spatial coverage. Key Points Agricultural census database covers Amazon basin municipalities from 1950 to 2012Harmonized database groups crops and pastures by cropping system, C3/C4, and main crops

Thermal Band Analysis of Agricultural Land Use and its Effects on Bioclimatic Comfort: The Case of Pasinler

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Avdan, Uǧur; Demircioglu Yildiz, Nalan; Dagliyar, Ayse; Yigit Avdan, Zehra; Yilmaz, Sevgi

2014-05-01

Resolving the problems that arise due to the land use are not suitable for the purpose in the rural and urban areas most suitable for land use of parameters to be determined. Unintended and unplanned developments in the use of agricultural land in our country caused increases the losses by soil erosion. In this study, Thermal Band analysis is made in Pasinler city center with the aim of identifying bioclimatic comfort values of the different agricultural area. Satellite images can be applied for assessing the thermal urban environment as well as for defining heat islands in agricultural areas. In this context, temperature map is tried to be produced with land surface temperature (LST) analysis made on Landsat TM5 satellite image. The Landsat 5 images was obtained from USGS for the study area. Using Landsat bands of the study area was mapped by supervised classification with the maximum likelihood classification algorithm of ERDAS imagine 2011 software. Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) image was produced by using Landsat images. The digital number of the Landsat thermal infrared band (10.40 - 12.50 µm) is converted to the spectral radiance. The surface emissivity was calculated by using NDVI. The spatial pattern of land surface temperature in the study area is taken to characterize their local effects on agricultural land. Areas having bioclimatic comfort and ecologically urbanized, are interpreted with different graphical presentation technics. The obtained results are important because they create data bases for sustainable urban planning and provide a direction for planners and governors. As a result of rapid changes in land use, rural ecosystems and quality of life are deteriorated and decreased. In the presence of increased building density, for the comfortable living of people natural and cultural resources should be analyzed in detail. For that reason, optimal land use planning should be made in rural area.

Compounding Effects of Agricultural Land Use and Water Use in Free-Flowing Rivers: Confounding Issues for Environmental Flows

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hardie, Scott A.; Bobbi, Chris J.

2018-03-01

Defining the ecological impacts of water extraction from free-flowing river systems in altered landscapes is challenging as multiple stressors (e.g., flow regime alteration, increased sedimentation) may have simultaneous effects and attributing causality is problematic. This multiple-stressor context has been acknowledged in environmental flows science, but is often neglected when it comes to examining flow-ecology relationships, and setting and implementing environmental flows. We examined the impacts of land and water use on rivers in the upper Ringarooma River catchment in Tasmania (south-east Australia), which contains intensively irrigated agriculture, to support implementation of a water management plan. Temporal and spatial and trends in river condition were assessed using benthic macroinvertebrates as bioindicators. Relationships between macroinvertebrate community structure and environmental variables were examined using univariate and multivariate analyses, focusing on the impacts of agricultural land use and water use. Structural changes in macroinvertebrate communities in rivers in the catchment indicated temporal and spatial declines in the ecological condition of some stretches of river associated with agricultural land and water use. Moreover, water extraction appeared to exacerbate impairment associated with agricultural land use (e.g., reduced macroinvertebrate density, more flow-avoiding taxa). The findings of our catchment-specific bioassessments will underpin decision-making during the implementation of the Ringarooma water management plan, and highlight the need to consider compounding impacts of land and water use in environmental flows and water planning in agricultural landscapes.

Compounding Effects of Agricultural Land Use and Water Use in Free-Flowing Rivers: Confounding Issues for Environmental Flows.

PubMed

Hardie, Scott A; Bobbi, Chris J

2018-03-01

Defining the ecological impacts of water extraction from free-flowing river systems in altered landscapes is challenging as multiple stressors (e.g., flow regime alteration, increased sedimentation) may have simultaneous effects and attributing causality is problematic. This multiple-stressor context has been acknowledged in environmental flows science, but is often neglected when it comes to examining flow-ecology relationships, and setting and implementing environmental flows. We examined the impacts of land and water use on rivers in the upper Ringarooma River catchment in Tasmania (south-east Australia), which contains intensively irrigated agriculture, to support implementation of a water management plan. Temporal and spatial and trends in river condition were assessed using benthic macroinvertebrates as bioindicators. Relationships between macroinvertebrate community structure and environmental variables were examined using univariate and multivariate analyses, focusing on the impacts of agricultural land use and water use. Structural changes in macroinvertebrate communities in rivers in the catchment indicated temporal and spatial declines in the ecological condition of some stretches of river associated with agricultural land and water use. Moreover, water extraction appeared to exacerbate impairment associated with agricultural land use (e.g., reduced macroinvertebrate density, more flow-avoiding taxa). The findings of our catchment-specific bioassessments will underpin decision-making during the implementation of the Ringarooma water management plan, and highlight the need to consider compounding impacts of land and water use in environmental flows and water planning in agricultural landscapes.

Landscape evolution and agricultural land salinization in coastal area: A conceptual model.

PubMed

Bless, Aplena Elen; Colin, François; Crabit, Armand; Devaux, Nicolas; Philippon, Olivier; Follain, Stéphane

2018-06-01

Soil salinization is a major threat to agricultural lands. Among salt-affected lands, coastal areas could be considered as highly complex systems, where salinization degradation due to anthropogenic pressure and climate-induced changes could significantly alter system functioning. For such complex systems, conceptual models can be used as evaluation tools in a preliminary step to identify the main evolutionary processes responsible for soil and water salinization. This study aimed to propose a conceptual model for water fluxes in a coastal area affected by salinity, which can help to identify the relationships between agricultural landscape evolution and actual salinity. First, we conducted field investigations from 2012 to 2016, mainly based on both soil (EC 1/5 ) and water (EC w ) electrical conductivity survey. This allowed us to characterize spatial structures for EC 1/5 and EC w and to identify the river as a preponderant factor in land salinization. Subsequently, we proposed and used a conceptual model for water fluxes and conducted a time analysis (1962-2012) for three of its main constitutive elements, namely climate, river, and land systems. When integrated within the conceptual model framework, it appeared that the evolution of all constitutive elements since 1962 was responsible for the disruption of system equilibrium, favoring overall salt accumulation in the soil root zone. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Interfacing geographic information systems and remote sensing for rural land-use analysis

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Nellis, M. Duane; Lulla, Kamlesh; Jensen, John

1990-01-01

Recent advances in computer-based geographic information systems (GISs) are briefly reviewed, with an emphasis on the incorporation of remote-sensing data in GISs for rural applications. Topics addressed include sampling procedures for rural land-use analyses; GIS-based mapping of agricultural land use and productivity; remote sensing of land use and agricultural, forest, rangeland, and water resources; monitoring the dynamics of irrigation agriculture; GIS methods for detecting changes in land use over time; and the development of land-use modeling strategies.

Spatio-temporal analysis of agricultural land-use intensity across the Western Siberian grain belt.

PubMed

Kühling, Insa; Broll, Gabriele; Trautz, Dieter

2016-02-15

The Western Siberian grain belt covers 1millionkm² in Asiatic Russia and is of global importance for agriculture. Massive land-use changes took place in that region after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the state farm system. Decreasing land-use intensity (LUI) in post-Soviet Western Siberia was observed on grassland due to declining livestock whilst on cropland trends of land abandonment reversed in the early 2000s. Recultivation of abandoned cropland as well as increasing fertilizer inputs and narrowing crop rotations led to increasing LUI on cropland during the last two decades. Beyond that general trend, no information is available about spatial distribution and magnitude but a crucial precondition for the development of strategies for sustainable land management. To quantify changes and patterns in LUI, we developed an intensity index that reflects the impacts of land-based agricultural production. Based on subnational yearly statistical data, we calculated two separate input-orientated indices for cropland and grassland, respectively. The indices were applied on two spatial scale: at seven provinces covering the Western Siberian grain belt (Altay Kray, Chelyabinsk, Kurgan, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Sverdlovsk and Tyumen) and at all districts of the central province Tyumen. The spatio-temporal analysis clearly showed opposite trends for the two land-use types: decreasing intensity on grassland (-0.015 LUI units per year) and intensification on cropland (+0.014 LUI units per year). Furthermore, a spatial concentration towards intensity centres occurred during transition from a planned to a market economy. A principal component analysis enabled the individual calculations of both land-use types to be combined and revealed a strong link between biophysical conditions and LUI. The findings clearly showed the need for having a different strategy for future sustainable land management for grassland (predominantly used by livestock of households

GIS Applications in Land Management: The Loss of High Quality Land to Development in Central Mississippi from 1987–2002

PubMed Central

Twumasi, Yaw A.; Merem, Edmund C.

2005-01-01

The socio-economic trends and history of Central Mississippi reveal a major rural influence based upon a dependence on agricultural activities as part of the economic engine driving the state’s economy. Yet, in the last several years, the amount of agricultural land in the counties continues to decline. Similar changes in other variables associated with agricultural land use and the continuity of farming in the state have also been changing. Indeed, under the pressure of urban growth, some farmers are forced to use less productive soils or have abandoned the agricultural business. Considering the gravity of the problem and the implications for sustainable development, public concern has increased in the state of Mississippi that urbanization and other factors may be eroding potential farmland. Given the effects of the current trends on the future capacity to produce food items, there are concerns that the growing incidence of farmland loss may also erode the basis for sustainable use of agricultural land, biodiversity and protection of the state’s ecological treasures. Notwithstanding the gravity of these trends, no major effort in the literature has aimed at documenting the incidence of agricultural land loss and the linkages to urbanization in the region of Central Mississippi. What changes have taken place in the size of agricultural land within the counties and what factors are responsible for it? This paper examines the issue of farmland loss in Central Mississippi with a focus at the county level between 1987 and 2002 from a temporal-spatial perspective. In terms of methodology, the paper uses a mixed scale approach based upon the existing literature. Data were drawn from the United States Census databases of Population and Agriculture. This information is analyzed with basic descriptive statistics and GIS with particular attention to the spatial trends at the county level. Results indicate that the counties under consideration have experienced

LiDAR Applications in Resource Geology and Benefits for Land Management

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mikulovsky, R. P.; De La Fuente, J. A.

2013-12-01

The US Forest Service (US Department of Agriculture) manages a broad range of geologic resources and hazards on National Forests and Grass Lands throughout the United States. Resources include rock and earth materials, groundwater, caves and paleontological resources, minerals, energy resources, and unique geologic areas. Hazards include landslides, floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and naturally hazardous materials (e.g., asbestos, radon). Forest Service Geologists who address these issues are Resource Geologists. They have been exploring LiDAR as a revolutionary tool to efficiently manage all of these hazards and resources. However, most LiDAR applications for management have focused on timber and fuels management, rather than landforms. This study shows the applications and preliminary results of using LiDAR for managing geologic resources and hazards on public lands. Applications shown include calculating sediment budgets, mapping and monitoring landslides, mapping and characterizing borrow pits or mines, determining landslide potential, mapping faults, and characterizing groundwater dependent ecosystems. LiDAR can be used to model potential locations of groundwater dependent ecosystems with threatened or endangered plant species such as Howellia aquatilis. This difficult to locate species typically exists on the Mendocino National Forest within sag ponds on landslide benches. LiDAR metrics of known sites are used to model potential habitat. Thus LiDAR can link the disciplines of geology, hydrology, botany, archaeology and others for enhanced land management. As LiDAR acquisition costs decrease and it becomes more accessible, land management organizations will find a wealth of applications with potential far-reaching benefits for managing geologic resources and hazards.

Does climatic variability influence agricultural land prices under differing uses? The Texas High Plains case

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

The Texas High Plains faces projections of increasing temperature and declining precipitation in the future on account of its semi-arid climate. This research evaluated the impact of climatic variability on agricultural land prices under different land uses in the Texas High Plains, employing the Ri...

Adaptation with climate uncertainty: An examination of agricultural land use in the United States

USGS Publications Warehouse

Mu, Jianhong E.; McCarl, Bruce A.; Sleeter, Benjamin M.; Abatzoglou, John T.; Zhang, Hongliang

2018-01-01

This paper examines adaptation responses to climate change through adjustment of agricultural land use. The climate drivers we examine are changes in long-term climate normals (e.g., 10-year moving averages) and changes in inter-annual climate variability. Using US county level data over 1982 to 2012 from Census of Agriculture, we find that impacts of long-term climate normals are as important as that of inter-annual climate variability. Projecting into the future, we find projected climate change will lead to an expansion in crop land share across the northern and interior western United States with decreases in the south. We also find that grazing land share increases in southern regions and Inland Pacific Northwest and declines in the northern areas. However, the extent to which the adaptation potential would be is dependent on the climate model, emission scenario and time horizon under consideration.

Land-use impacts on water resources and protected areas: applications of state-and-transition simulation modeling of future scenarios

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wilson, T. S.; Sleeter, B. M.; Sherba, J.; Cameron, D.

2014-12-01

Human land use will increasingly contribute to habitat losses and water shortages in California, given future population projections and associated demand for agricultural land. Understanding how land-use change may impact future water use and where existing protected areas may be threatened by land-use conversion will be important if effective, sustainable management approaches are to be implemented. We used a state-and-transition simulation modeling (STSM) framework to simulate spatially-explicit (1 km2) historical (1992-2010) and future (2011-2060) land-use change for 52 California counties within the Mediterranean California ecoregion. Historical land use change estimates were derived from the Farmland Mapping and Monitoring Program (FMMP) dataset and attributed with county-level agricultural water-use data from the California Department of Water Resources (CDWR). Six future alternative land-use scenarios were developed and modeled using the historical land-use change estimates and land-use projections based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Special Report on Emission Scenarios (SRES) A2 and B1 scenarios. Resulting spatial land-use scenario outputs were combined based on scenario agreement and a land conversion threat index developed to evaluate vulnerability of existing protected areas. Modeled scenario output of county-level agricultural water use data were also summarized, enabling examination of alternative water use futures. We present results of two separate applications of STSM of land-use change, demonstrating the utility of STSM in analyzing land-use related impacts on water resources as well as potential threats to existing protected land. Exploring a range of alternative, yet plausible, land-use change impacts will help to better inform resource management and mitigation strategies.

LAND COVER MAPPING IN AN AGRICULTURAL SETTING USING MULTISEASONAL THEMATIC MAPPER DATA

EPA Science Inventory

A multiseasonal Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) data set consisting of five image dates from a single year was used to characterize agricultural and related land cover in the Willamette River Basin (WRB) of western Oregon. Image registration was accomplished using an automated grou...

Commercial Pesticides Applicator Manual: Agriculture - Plant.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fitzwater, W. D.; And Others

This training manual provides information needed to meet the minimum EPA standards for certification as a commercial applicator of pesticides in the agriculture-plant pest control category. The text discusses identification and control of insects, diseases, nematodes, and weeds of agricultural crops. Proper use of application equipment and safety…

Drought Impacts on Agricultural Production and Land Fallowing in California's Central Valley in 2015

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Rosevelt, Carolyn; Melton, Forrest S.; Johnson, Lee; Guzman, Alberto; Verdin, James P.; Thenkabail, Prasad S.; Mueller, Rick; Jones, Jeanine; Willis, Patrick

2016-01-01

The ongoing drought in California substantially reduced surface water supplies for millions of acres of irrigated farmland in California's Central Valley. Rapid assessment of drought impacts on agricultural production can aid water managers in assessing mitigation options, and guide decision making with respect to mitigation of drought impacts. Satellite remote sensing offers an efficient way to provide quantitative assessments of drought impacts on agricultural production and increases in fallow acreage associated with reductions in water supply. A key advantage of satellite-based assessments is that they can provide a measure of land fallowing that is consistent across both space and time. We describe an approach for monthly and seasonal mapping of uncultivated agricultural acreage developed as part of a joint effort by USGS, USDA, NASA, and the California Department of Water Resources to provide timely assessments of land fallowing during drought events. This effort has used the Central Valley of California as a pilot region for development and testing of an operational approach. To provide quantitative measures of uncultivated agricultural acreage from satellite data early in the season, we developed a decision tree algorithm and applied it to time-series data from Landsat TM (Thematic Mapper), ETM+ (Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus), OLI (Operational Land Imager), and MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer). Our effort has been focused on development of indicators of drought impacts in the March-August timeframe based on measures of crop development patterns relative to a reference period with average or above average rainfall. To assess the accuracy of the algorithms, monthly ground validation surveys were conducted across 650 fields from March-September in 2014 and 2015. We present the algorithm along with updated results from the accuracy assessment, and data and maps of land fallowing in the Central Valley in 2015.

The potential for agricultural land use change to reduce flood risk in a large watershed

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

Effects of agricultural land management practices on surface runoff are evident at local scales, but evidence for watershed-scale impacts is limited. In this study, we used the Soil and Water Assessment Tool model to assess changes in downstream flood risks under different land uses for the large, ...

Evapotranspiration measurements in rainfed and irrigated cropland illustrate trade-offs in land and water management in Southern Amazonia's agricultural frontier

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lathuilliere, M. J.; Dalmagro, H. J.; Black, T. A.; Arruda, P. H. Z. D.; Hawthorne, I.; Couto, E. G.; Johnson, M. S.

2017-12-01

Southern Amazonia, Brazil, is home to a rapidly expanding agricultural frontier in which tropical forest and savanna landscapes have been increasingly replaced by agricultural land since the 1990s. One important impact of deforestation is the reduction in water vapour transferred to the atmosphere via evapotranspiration (ET) from rainfed agriculture landscapes compared to natural vegetation, leading to a reduction in regional precipitation recycling. Here, we discuss land and water management choices for future agricultural production in Southern Amazonia and their potential effects on the atmospheric water cycle. We illustrate these choices by presenting ET measurements on an agricultural landscape by eddy covariance (EC) between September 2015 and February 2017. Measurements were made for two fields adjacent to one micrometeorological EC tower: (1) one rainfed field containing a succession of soybean, maize, brachiara and soybean, and (2) one irrigated field with a succession of soybean, rice, beans, and soybean. Over the time period, total ET in the rainfed and irrigated fields was 1266 ± 294 mm and 1415 ± 180 mm, respectively for a total precipitation of 3099 mm. The main difference in ET between the fields was attributed to the application of 118 mm of surface water irrigated for bean production in the irrigated field between June and September 2016. In the rainfed field, soybean ET was 332 ± 82 mm (2015-2016) and 423 ± 99 mm (2016-2017) for 824 mm and 1124 mm of precipitation, respectively. In the irrigated field, soybean ET was 271 ± 38 mm (2015) and 404 ± 60 mm (2016-2017) with supplemental irrigation added in 2015. Our results illustrate how supplemental irrigation can favour early soybean planting while transferring additional water vapour to the atmosphere at levels similar to natural vegetation. We conclude by discussing our results in the context of future land and water trade-offs for agricultural intensification in Brazil's "arc-of-deforestation".

African land ecology: opportunities and constraints for agricultural development.

PubMed

Voortman, Roelf L; Sonneveld, Ben G J S; Keyzer, Michiel A

2003-08-01

Compared to other continents, the economic growth performance of Sub-Saharan Africa has been poor over the last four decades. Likewise, progress in agricultural development has been limited and the Green Revolution left Africa almost untouched. The question raised in the literature is whether the poor performance is a question of poor policies or of an unfavorable biophysical environment (policy versus destiny). This paper, with a broad perspective, analyzes adaptation of current land use to environmental conditions in Africa and compares the physical resource base of Africa with Asia. In doing so, we search for unifying principles that can have operational consequences for agricultural development. We argue that some specificities of the natural resource base, namely local homogeneity and spatial diversity of the predominant Basement Complex soils, imply that simple fertilizer strategies may not produce the yield increases obtained elsewhere.

Productivity ranges of sustainable biomass potentials from non-agricultural land

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Schueler, Vivian; Fuss, Sabine; Steckel, Jan Christoph; Weddige, Ulf; Beringer, Tim

2016-07-01

Land is under pressure from a number of demands, including the need for increased supplies of bioenergy. While bioenergy is an important ingredient in many pathways compatible with reaching the 2 °C target, areas where cultivation of the biomass feedstock would be most productive appear to co-host other important ecosystems services. We categorize global geo-data on land availability into productivity deciles, and provide a geographically explicit assessment of potentials that are concurrent with EU sustainability criteria. The deciles unambiguously classify the global productivity range of potential land currently not in agricultural production for biomass cultivation. Results show that 53 exajoule (EJ) sustainable biomass potential are available from 167 million hectares (Mha) with a productivity above 10 tons of dry matter per hectare and year (tD Mha-1 a-1), while additional 33 EJ are available on 264 Mha with yields between 4 and 10 tD M ha-1 a-1: some regions lose less of their highly productive potentials to sustainability concerns than others and regional contributions to bioenergy potentials shift when less productive land is considered. Challenges to limit developments to the exploitation of sustainable potentials arise in Latin America, Africa and Developing Asia, while new opportunities emerge for Transition Economies and OECD countries to cultivate marginal land.

Intensive rice agriculture deteriorates the quality of shallow groundwater in a typical agricultural catchment in subtropical central China.

PubMed

Wang, Yi; Li, Yuyuan; Li, Yong; Liu, Feng; Liu, Xinliang; Gong, Dianlin; Ma, Qiumei; Li, Wei; Wu, Jinshui

2015-09-01

High nitrogen (N) concentrations in rural domestic water supplies have been attributed to excessive agricultural N leaching into shallow groundwater systems; therefore, it is important to determine the impact of agriculture (e.g., rice production) on groundwater quality. To understand the impact of agricultural land use on the N concentrations in the shallow groundwater in subtropical central China, a large observation program was established to observe ammonium-N (NH4-N), nitrate-N (NO3-N), and total N (TN) concentrations in 161 groundwater observation wells from April 2010 to November 2012. The results indicated that the median values of NH4-N, NO3-N, and TN concentrations in the groundwater were 0.15, 0.39, and 1.38 mg N L(-1), respectively. A total of 36.3 % of the water samples were categorized as NH4-N pollution, and only a small portion of the samples were categorized as NO3-N pollution, based on the Chinese Environmental Quality Standards for Groundwater of GB/T 14848-93 (General Administration of Quality Supervision of China, 1993). These results indicated of moderate groundwater NH4-N pollution, which was mainly attributed to intensive rice agriculture with great N fertilizer application rates in the catchment. In addition, tea and vegetable fields showed higher groundwater NO3-N and TN concentrations than other agricultural land use types. The factorial correspondence analysis (FCA) suggested that the flooded agricultural land use types (e.g., single-rice and double-rice) had potential to impose NH4-N pollution, particularly in the soil exhausting season during from July to October. And, the great N fertilizer application rates could lead to a worse NO3-N and TN pollution in shallow groundwater. Hence, to protect groundwater quality and minimize NH4-N pollution, managing optimal fertilizer application and applying appropriate agricultural land use types should be implemented in the region.

Land Use and Land Cover Change Modeling Using Remote Sensing and Soft Computing Approach to Assess Sugarcane Expansion Impacts in Tropical Agriculture

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Vicente, L. E.; Koga-Vicente, A.; Friedel, M. J.; Victoria, D.; Zullo, J., Jr.; Gomes, D.; Bayma-Silva, G.

2014-12-01

Agriculture is related with land-use/cover changes (LUCC) over large areas and, in recent years, increase in demand of ethanol fuel has been influence in expansion of areas occupied with corn and sugar cane, raw material for ethanol production. Nevertheless, there´s a concern regarding the impacts on food security, such as, decrease in areas planted with food crops. Considering that the LUCC is highly dynamic, the use of Remote Sensing is a tool for monitoring changes quickly and precisely in order to provide information for agricultural planning. In this work, Remote Sensing techniques were used to monitor the LUCC occurred in municipalities of São Paulo state- Brazil related with sugarcane crops expansion in order to (i) evaluate and quantify the previous land cover in areas of sugarcane crop expansion, and (ii) provide information to elaborate a future land cover scenario based on Self Organizing Map (SOM) approach. The land cover classification procedure was based on Landsat 5 TM images, obtained from the Global Land Survey. The Landsat images were then segmented into homogeneous objects, with represent areas on the ground with similar spatial and spectral characteristics. These objects are related to the distinct land cover types that occur in each municipality. The segmentation procedure resulted in polygons over the three time periods along twenty years (1990-2010). The land cover for each object was visually identified, based on its shape, texture and spectral characteristics. Land cover types considered were: sugarcane plantations, pasture lands, natural cover, forest plantation, permanent crop, short cycle crop, water bodies and urban areas. SOM technique was used to estimate the values for the future land cover scenarios for the selected municipalities, using the information of land change provided by the remote sensing and data from official sources.

Shifts in allochthonous input and autochthonous production in streams along an agricultural land-use gradient

Treesearch

Elizabeth Hagen; Matthew McTammany; Jackson Webster; Ernest Benfield

2010-01-01

Relative contributions of allochthonous inputs and autochthonous production vary depending on terrestrial land use and biome. Terrestrially derived organic matter and in-stream primary production were measured in 12 headwater streams along an agricultural land-use gradient. Streams were examined to see how carbon (C) supply shifts from forested streams receiving...

Extreme temperature trends in major cropping systems and their relation to agricultural land use change

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mueller, N. D.; Butler, E. E.; McKinnon, K. A.; Rhines, A. N.; Tingley, M.; Siebert, S.; Holbrook, N. M.; Huybers, P. J.

2015-12-01

High temperature extremes during the growing season can reduce agricultural production. At the same time, agricultural practices can modify temperatures by altering the surface energy budget. Here we investigate growing season climate trends in major cropping systems and their relationship with agricultural land use change. In the US Midwest, 100-year trends exhibit a transition towards more favorable conditions, with cooler summer temperature extremes and increased precipitation. Statistically significant correspondence is found between the cooling pattern and trends in cropland intensification, as well as with trends towards greater irrigated land over a small subset of the domain. Land conversion to cropland, often considered an important influence on historical temperatures, is not significantly associated with cooling. We suggest that cooling is primarily associated with agricultural intensification increasing the potential for evapotranspiration, consistent with our finding that cooling trends are greatest for the highest temperature percentiles, and that increased evapotranspiration generally leads to greater precipitation. Temperatures over rainfed croplands show no cooling trend during drought conditions, consistent with evapotranspiration requiring adequate soil moisture, and implying that modern drought events feature greater warming as baseline cooler temperatures revert to historically high extremes. Preliminary results indicate these relationships between temperature extremes, irrigation, and intensification are also observed in other major summer cropping systems, including northeast China, Argentina, and the Canadian Prairies.

Aligning land use with land potential

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

Current agricultural land use is dominated by an emphasis on provisioning services by applying energy-intensive inputs through relatively uniform production systems across variable landscapes. This approach to agricultural land use is not sustainable. Integrated agricultural systems (IAS) are uphe...

Evaluating the impacts of agricultural land management practices on water resources: A probabilistic hydrologic modeling approach.

PubMed

Prada, A F; Chu, M L; Guzman, J A; Moriasi, D N

2017-05-15

Evaluating the effectiveness of agricultural land management practices in minimizing environmental impacts using models is challenged by the presence of inherent uncertainties during the model development stage. One issue faced during the model development stage is the uncertainty involved in model parameterization. Using a single optimized set of parameters (one snapshot) to represent baseline conditions of the system limits the applicability and robustness of the model to properly represent future or alternative scenarios. The objective of this study was to develop a framework that facilitates model parameter selection while evaluating uncertainty to assess the impacts of land management practices at the watershed scale. The model framework was applied to the Lake Creek watershed located in southwestern Oklahoma, USA. A two-step probabilistic approach was implemented to parameterize the Agricultural Policy/Environmental eXtender (APEX) model using global uncertainty and sensitivity analysis to estimate the full spectrum of total monthly water yield (WYLD) and total monthly Nitrogen loads (N) in the watershed under different land management practices. Twenty-seven models were found to represent the baseline scenario in which uncertainty of up to 29% and 400% in WYLD and N, respectively, is plausible. Changing the land cover to pasture manifested the highest decrease in N to up to 30% for a full pasture coverage while changing to full winter wheat cover can increase the N up to 11%. The methodology developed in this study was able to quantify the full spectrum of system responses, the uncertainty associated with them, and the most important parameters that drive their variability. Results from this study can be used to develop strategic decisions on the risks and tradeoffs associated with different management alternatives that aim to increase productivity while also minimizing their environmental impacts. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Law No. 87-19 determining the means of exploitation of agricultural land owned by the State and setting the rights and duties of producers, 8 December 1987.

PubMed

1988-01-01

A 1987 law of Algeria determining the means of exploitation of agricultural land owned by the State and setting the rights and duties of producers marks a new departure because it creates a situation in which the right to ownership of the land resources of the socialist state (DAS) is to be shared. The state retains ownership but grants the "right of permanent usufruct" of these lands to groups of farmers which are made up of at least three producers who participate directly and in person in the activities of the farm. Payment will be exacted from the beneficiary group at rates fixed by decree, with the beneficiaries having the obligation to farm the land in an "optimum" manner. The State grants agricultural producers the right to full ownership of all other types of farm property other than the land itself. This right is conceded subject to certain obligations. Property acquired subsequent to the introduction of this reform belongs to the respective group of farmers, and not all the state lands are subject to distribution. The State will continue to operate farms attached to research or training centers as well as certain pilot farms. It will also retain such small plots of land as remain after the general distribution, allocating them subsequently on an individual basis. In the distribution of land, priority is to be given to regular workers on the former DAS estates as well as to applicants with technical agricultural qualifications, notably young people who have graduated from the agricultural training colleges or centers. The producer members of the collective groups will have the right to leave property to their heirs or to pass on their right after five years have elapsed from the setting up of the collective group, but they can pass on their rights only to other workers in the agricultural sector or to young people with technical agricultural qualifications. No one may interfere in the administration and management of the farms set up under the new law, but

Soil respiration and carbon loss relationship with temperature and land use conversion in freeze-thaw agricultural area.

PubMed

Ouyang, Wei; Lai, Xuehui; Li, Xia; Liu, Heying; Lin, Chunye; Hao, Fanghua

2015-11-15

Soil respiration (Rs) was hypothesized to have a special response pattern to soil temperature and land use conversion in the freeze-thaw area. The Rs differences of eight types of land use conversions during agricultural development were observed and the impacts of Rs on soil organic carbon (SOC) loss were assessed. The land use conversions during last three decades were categorized into eight types, and the 141 SOC sampling sites were grouped by conversion type. The typical soil sampling sites were subsequently selected for monitoring of soil temperature and Rs of each land use conversion types. The Rs correlations with temperature at difference depths and different conversion types were identified with statistical analysis. The empirical mean error model and the biophysical theoretical model with Arrhenius equation about the Rs sensitivity to temperature were both analyzed and shared the similar patterns. The temperature dependence of soil respiration (Q10) analysis further demonstrated that the averaged value of eight types of land use in this freeze-thaw agricultural area ranged from 1.15 to 1.73, which was lower than the other cold areas. The temperature dependence analysis demonstrated that the Rs in the top layer of natural land covers was more sensitive to temperature and experienced a large vertical difference. The natural land covers exhibited smaller Rs and the farmlands had the bigger value due to tillage practices. The positive relationships between SOC loss and Rs were identified, which demonstrated that Rs was the key chain for SOC loss during land use conversion. The spatial-vertical distributions of SOC concentration with the 1.5-km grid sampling showed that the more SOC loss in the farmland, which was coincided with the higher Rs in farmlands. The analysis of Rs dynamics provided an innovative explanation for SOC loss in the freeze-thaw agricultural area. The analysis of Rs dynamics provided an innovative explanation for SOC loss in the freeze

7 CFR 3550.72 - Community land trusts.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-01-01

... 7 Agriculture 15 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Community land trusts. 3550.72 Section 3550.72... trusts. Eligible dwellings located on land owned by a community land trust may be financed if: (a) The... land trust on the property or applicant are: (1) Reviewed and accepted by RHS before loan closing; and...

Afforestation of marginal agricultural land in the lower Mississippi River Alluvial Valley, U.S.A.

Treesearch

John A. Stanturf; Callie J. Schweitzer; Emile S. Gardiner

1998-01-01

Afforestation of marginal agricultural land in the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley (LMAV) relies on native species, planted mostly in single-species plantations. Hard mast species such as oak and pecan are favored for their value to wildlife, especially on public land. Successful afforestation requires an understanding of site variation within floodplains and...

Reconstructing land use history from Landsat time-series. Case study of a swidden agriculture system in Brazil

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dutrieux, Loïc P.; Jakovac, Catarina C.; Latifah, Siti H.; Kooistra, Lammert

2016-05-01

We developed a method to reconstruct land use history from Landsat images time-series. The method uses a breakpoint detection framework derived from the econometrics field and applicable to time-series regression models. The Breaks For Additive Season and Trend (BFAST) framework is used for defining the time-series regression models which may contain trend and phenology, hence appropriately modelling vegetation intra and inter-annual dynamics. All available Landsat data are used for a selected study area, and the time-series are partitioned into segments delimited by breakpoints. Segments can be associated to land use regimes, while the breakpoints then correspond to shifts in land use regimes. In order to further characterize these shifts, we classified the unlabelled breakpoints returned by the algorithm into their corresponding processes. We used a Random Forest classifier, trained from a set of visually interpreted time-series profiles to infer the processes and assign labels to the breakpoints. The whole approach was applied to quantifying the number of cultivation cycles in a swidden agriculture system in Brazil (state of Amazonas). Number and frequency of cultivation cycles is of particular ecological relevance in these systems since they largely affect the capacity of the forest to regenerate after land abandonment. We applied the method to a Landsat time-series of Normalized Difference Moisture Index (NDMI) spanning the 1984-2015 period and derived from it the number of cultivation cycles during that period at the individual field scale level. Agricultural fields boundaries used to apply the method were derived using a multi-temporal segmentation approach. We validated the number of cultivation cycles predicted by the method against in-situ information collected from farmers interviews, resulting in a Normalized Residual Mean Squared Error (NRMSE) of 0.25. Overall the method performed well, producing maps with coherent spatial patterns. We identified

Microcomputer Applications in Agriculture.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hilgenberg, Gene; And Others

This curriculum guide is intended to assist persons teaching a course in microcomputer applications in agriculture. (These applications are designed to be used on Apple IIe or TRS-80 microcomputers.) Addressed in the individual units of instruction are the following topics: microcomputer operating procedures; procedures for evaluating and…

Gender and Agricultural Science: Evidence from Two Surveys of Land-Grant Scientists.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Buttel, Frederick H.; Goldberger, Jessica R.

2002-01-01

Analysis of surveys of land-grant agricultural scientists in 1979 and 1996 found significant gender differences in postdoctoral work experience, academic rank, employment of graduate students, book publication, and links with private industry. Gender differences were found in attitudes toward biotechnology and university-industry links, but not in…

Impacts of Biofuel-Induced Agricultural Land Use Changes on Watershed Hydrology and Water Quality

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lin, Z.; Zheng, H.

2015-12-01

The US Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) of 2007 has contributed to widespread changes in agricultural land uses. The impact of these land use changes on regional water resources could also be significant. Agricultural land use changes were evaluated for the Red River of the North Basin (RRNB), an international river basin shared by the US and Canada. The influence of the land use changes on spring snowmelt flooding and downstream water quality was also assessed using watershed modeling. The planting areas for corn and soybean in the basin increased by 62% and 18%, while those for spring wheat, forest, and pasture decreased by 30%, 18%, and 50%, from 2006 to 2013. Although the magnitude of spring snowmelt peak flows in the Red River did not change from pre-EISA to post-EISA, our uncertainty analysis of the normalized hydrographs revealed that the downstream streamflows had a greater variability under the post-EISA land use scenario, which may lead to greater uncertainty in predicting spring snowmelt floods in the Red River. Hydrological simulation also showed that the sediment and nutrient loads at the basin's outlet in the US and Canada border increased under the post-EISA land use scenario, on average sediment increasing by 2.6%, TP by 14.1%, nitrate nitrogen by 5.9%, and TN by 9.1%. Potential impacts of the future biofuel crop scenarios on watershed hydrology and water quality in the RRNB were also simulated through integrated economic-hydrologic modeling.

The impact of agricultural land use on stream chemistry in the Middle Hills of the Himalayas, Nepal

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Collins, Robert; Jenkins, Alan

1996-11-01

The chemistry of streams draining agricultural and forested catchments in the Middle Hills of Nepal is described. Differences between mean streamwater chemistry are attributable to the effects of the terraced agriculture and land management practices. The agricultural catchments were found to exhibit higher mean concentrations of base cations (Na, Mg, K), bicarbonate, acid anions (SO 4, Cl), metals (Al, Fe) and nutrients (NO 3, PO 4). Increased base cations apparently result from tillage practices exposing fresh soil material to weathering. Increased acid anions result from inputs of inorganic fertiliser, notably ammonium sulphate, and from an apparent increase in evapotranspiration from the flooded terraces in the agricultural catchments. Increased metal concentrations may be promoted by increased weathering and erosion rates, and this is further supported by observations of dramatically higher turbidity in the streamwater draining the agricultural catchments. Higher levels of nutrients are the direct result of fertiliser input but concentrations are generally low from all catchments as a result of denitrification, indicating that eutrophication downstream is not a likely consequence of land use change. The major dynamics of water chemistry occur during the monsoon, which is also the main season for agricultural production. Mean wet season concentrations of base cations tend to be lower than in the dry season at all catchments as higher flow dilutes the relatively constant weathering input. Ammonium concentrations are higher from the agricultural catchments in the wet season as a result of direct washout of fertiliser. Detailed monitoring through storm periods at one agricultural catchment indicates that the chemistry responds very rapidly to changing flow, with cations decreasing and acid anions increasing followed by equally rapid recovery as flow recedes. Bicarbonate concentrations also decline markedly but are still sufficiently high to maintain pH near

A spatially-explicit data driven approach to assess the effect of agricultural land occupation on species groups

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Elshout, P.; van Zelm, R.; Karuppiah, R.; Laurenzi, I.; Huijbregts, M.

2013-12-01

Change of vegetation cover and increased land use intensity can directly affect the natural habitat and the wildlife it houses. The actual impact of agricultural land use is region specific as crops are grown under various climatic conditions and ways of cultivation and refining. Furthermore, growing a specific crop in a tropical region may require clearance of rainforest while the same crop may replace natural grasslands in temperate regions. Within life cycle impact assessment (LCIA), methods to address impacts of land use on a global scale are still in need of development. We aim to extend existing methods to improve the robustness of LCIA by allowing spatial differentiation of agricultural land use impacts. The goal of this study is to develop characterization factors for the direct impact of land use on biodiversity, which results from the replacement of natural habitat with farmland. The characterization factor expresses the change in species richness under crop cultivation compared to the species richness in the natural situation over a certain area. A second goal was to identify the differences in impacts caused by cultivation of different crop types, sensitivity of different taxonomic groups, and differences in natural land cover. Empirical data on species richness were collected from literature for both natural reference situations and agricultural land use situations. Reference situations were selected on an ecoregion or biome basis. We calculated characterization factors for four crop groups (oil palm, low crops, cereals, and perennial grasses), four species groups (arthropods, birds, mammals, vascular plants), and six biomes.

Long-term effects of land application of class B biosolids on the soil microbial populations, pathogens, and activity.

PubMed

Zerzghi, Huruy; Gerba, Charles P; Brooks, John P; Pepper, Ian L

2010-01-01

This study evaluated the influence of 20 annual land applications of Class B biosolids on the soil microbial community. The potential benefits and hazards of land application were evaluated by analysis of surface soil samples collected following the 20th land application of biosolids. The study was initiated in 1986 at the University of Arizona Marana Agricultural Center, 21 miles north of Tucson, AZ. The final application of biosolids was in March 2005, followed by growth of cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) from April through November 2005. Surface soil samples (0-30 cm) were collected monthly from March 2005, 2 wk after the final biosolids application, through December 2005, and analyzed for soil microbial numbers. December samples were analyzed for additional soil microbial properties. Data show that land application of Class B biosolids had no significant long-term effect on indigenous soil microbial numbers including bacteria, actinomycetes, and fungi compared to unamended control plots. Importantly, no bacterial or viral pathogens were detected in soil samples collected from biosolid amended plots in December (10 mo after the last land application) demonstrating that pathogens introduced via Class B biosolids only survived in soil transiently. However, plots that received biosolids had significantly higher microbial activity or potential for microbial transformations, including nitrification, sulfur oxidation, and dehydrogenase activity, than control plots and plots receiving inorganic fertilizers. Overall, the 20 annual land applications showed no long-term adverse effects, and therefore, this study documents that land application of biosolids at this particular site was sustainable throughout the 20-yr period, with respect to soil microbial properties.

Water quality and agricultural practices: the case study of southern Massaciuccoli reclaimed land (Tuscany, Italy)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Pistocchi, Chiara; Baneschi, Ilaria; Basile, Paolo; Cannavò, Silvia; Guidi, Massimo; Risaliti, Rosalba; Rossetto, Rudy; Sabbatini, Tiziana; Silvestri, Nicola; Bonari, Enrico

2010-05-01

Owing to increasing anthropogenic impacts, lagoons and wetlands are being exposed to environmental degradation. Therefore, the sustainable management of these environmental resources is a fundamental issue to maintain either the ecosystems and the human activity. The Massaciuccoli Lake is a coastal lake of fresh to brackish water surrounded by a marsh, which drains a total catchment of about 114 km2. Large part of the basin has been reclaimed since 1930 by means of pumping stations forcing water from the drained areas into the lake. The system is characterized by: high complexity of the hydrological setting; subsidence of the peaty soils in the reclaimed area (2 to 3 m in 70 years), that left the lake perched; reclaimed land currently devoted mainly to conventional agriculture (e.g.: maize monoculture) along with some industrial sites, two sewage treatment plants and some relevant urban settlements; social conflicts among different land users because of the impact on water quality and quantity. The interaction between such a fragile natural system and human activities leads to an altered ecological status mainly due to eutrophication and water salinisation. Hence, the present work aims at identifying and assessing the sources of nutrients (phosphorous in particular) into the lake, and characterising land use and some socio-economic aspects focusing on agricultural systems, in order to set up suitable mitigation measures. Water quantity and quality in the most intensively cultivated sub-catchment, placed 0.5 to 3 m under m.s.l. were monitored in order to underlain the interaction between water and its nutrient load. Questionnaires and interviews to farmers were conducted to obtain information about agricultural practices, farm management, risks and constraints for farming activities. The available information about the natural system and land use were collected and organised in a GIS system: a conceptual model of surface water hydrodinamics was build up and 14

From jhum to broom: Agricultural land-use change and food security implications on the Meghalaya Plateau, India.

PubMed

Behera, Rabi Narayan; Nayak, Debendra Kumar; Andersen, Peter; Måren, Inger Elisabeth

2016-02-01

Human population growth in the developing world drives land-use changes, impacting food security. In India, the dramatic change in demographic dynamics over the past century has reduced traditional agricultural land-use through increasing commercialization. Here, we analyze the magnitude and implications for the farming system by the introduction of cash-cropping, replacing the traditional slash and burn rotations (jhum), of the tribal people on the Meghalaya Plateau, northeast India, by means of agricultural census data and field surveys conducted in seven villages. Land-use change has brought major alterations in hill agricultural practices, enhanced cash-cropping, promoted mono-cropping, changed food consumption patterns, underpinned the emergence of a new food system, and exposed farmers and consumers to the precariousness of the market, all of which have both long- and short-term food security implications. We found dietary diversity to be higher under jhum compared to any of the cash-crop systems, and higher under traditional cash-cropping than under modern cash-cropping.

Agricultural drainage and wetland management in Ontario.

PubMed

Walters, Dan; Shrubsole, Dan

2003-12-01

Land drainage is recognized as an integral part of agricultural activity throughout the world. However, the increase in agricultural production has resulted in the loss of wetland functions and values. Therefore, wetland management and agricultural drainage illustrate the conflict between economic development and natural values. This research assesses the approval process for agricultural land drainage in Ontario, Canada, to determine how the benefits of increased agricultural production are balanced against the loss of wetland values. A permit review of drainage applications was conducted from 1978 to 1997 in Zorra Township, Ontario, Canada. Data collection also included the document reviews, interviews with government agencies and wetland evaluation files. The selected criteria include efficiency, equity, consistency and adequacy. The results indicate that while the process is efficient, fundamental problems remain with the bargaining process.

Parcels versus pixels: modeling agricultural land use across broad geographic regions using parcel-based field boundaries

USGS Publications Warehouse

Sohl, Terry L.; Dornbierer, Jordan; Wika, Steve; Sayler, Kristi L.; Quenzer, Robert

2017-01-01

Land use and land cover (LULC) change occurs at a local level within contiguous ownership and management units (parcels), yet LULC models primarily use pixel-based spatial frameworks. The few parcel-based models being used overwhelmingly focus on small geographic areas, limiting the ability to assess LULC change impacts at regional to national scales. We developed a modified version of the Forecasting Scenarios of land use change model to project parcel-based agricultural change across a large region in the United States Great Plains. A scenario representing an agricultural biofuel scenario was modeled from 2012 to 2030, using real parcel boundaries based on contiguous ownership and land management units. The resulting LULC projection provides a vastly improved representation of landscape pattern over existing pixel-based models, while simultaneously providing an unprecedented combination of thematic detail and broad geographic extent. The conceptual approach is practical and scalable, with potential use for national-scale projections.

[Spatial-temporal pattern of sustainable intensification of agricultural land-use in Shandong Province, China.

PubMed

Niu, Shan Dong; Lyu, Xiao; Shi, Yang Yang

2018-02-01

Under the theoretical framework of sustainable intensification of agricultural land-use (SIALU), We used material flow analysis (MFA) method to establish evaluation index system for SIALU by utilizing data in 2000, 2005, 2010 and 2015 to quantify the level of SIALU of 17 cities in Shandong Province, and analyzed the variation in input-output of resources factors of agricultural land, spatial distribution of resource productivity and environmental economic efficiency, in order to reveal spatial-temporal differentiation of SIALU. Results showed that the direct material input to agricultural lands decreased, whereas hidden flow, stock and pollutant emissions increased gradually from 2000 to 2015. The material productivity of all cities in the province showed that the coastal areas in the peninsula were relatively lower than the southern region, and the level of material productivity in the northwest region was relatively higher. Environmental economic efficiency was gradually enhanced, and the western region was relatively higher than coastal area of the peninsula. During the period examined here, the spatial pattern of SIALU of various cities showed clustered distribution change, with the western region tending to gradually increase and the eastern region tending to gradually reduce. The dynamics of SIALU among different regions were divided into six grades: Northwestern Shandong > Northern Shandong > Southwestern Shandong > Southern Shandong > Central Shandong > Coastal areas of Shandong Peninsula.

Topographic changes detection through Structure-from-Motion in agricultural lands affected by erosion processes

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Prosdocimi, Massimo; Pradetto Sordo, Nicoletta; Burguet, Maria; Di Prima, Simone; Terol Esparza, Enric; Tarolli, Paolo; Cerdà, Artemi

2016-04-01

Throughout the world, soil erosion by water is a serious problem, especially in semi-arid and semi-humid areas (Cerdà et al., 2009; Cerdan et al., 2010; García-Ruiz, 2010). Although soil erosion by water consists of physical processes that vary significantly in severity and frequency according to when and where they occur, they are also strongly influenced by anthropic factors such as land-use changes on large scales and unsustainable farming practices (Boardman et al., 1990; Cerdà 1994; Montgomery, 2007). Tillage operations, combined with weather conditions, are recognized to primarily influence soil erosion rates. If, on one hand, tillage operations cause uniform changes based on the tool used, on the other, weather conditions, such as rainfalls, produce more random changes, less easily traceable (Snapir et al., 2014). Within this context, remote-sensing technologies can facilitate the detection and quantification of these topographic changes. In particular, a real opportunity and challenge is offered by the low-cost and flexible photogrammetric technique, called 'Structure-from-Motion' (SfM), combined with the use of smartphones (Micheletti et al., 2014; Prosdocimi et al., 2015). This represents a significant advance compared with more expensive technologies and applications (e.g. Terrestrial Laser Scanner - TLS) (Tarolli, 2014). This work wants to test the Structure from Motion to obtain high-resolution topography for the detection of topographic changes in agricultural lands affected by erosion processes. Two case studies were selected: i) a tilled plot characterized by bare soil and affected by rill erosion located in the hilly countryside of Marche region (central Italy), and ii) a Mediterranean vineyard located within the province of Valencia (south eastern Spain) where rainfall simulation experiments were carried out. Extensive photosets were obtained by using one standalone reflex digital camera and one smartphone built-in digital camera. Digital

Spatially quantifying and attributing 17 years of land cover change to examine post-agricultural forest transition in Hawai`i

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lucas, M.; Trauernicht, C.; Carlson, K. M.; Miura, T.; Giambelluca, T. W.; Chen, Q.

2017-12-01

The past decades in Hawaii have seen large scale land use change and land cover shifts. However, much these dynamics are only described anecdotally or studied at a single locale, with little information on the extent, rate, or direction of change. This lack of data hinders any effort to assess, plan, and prioritize land management. To improve assessments of statewide vegetation and land cover change, this project developed high resolution, sub-pixel, percent cover maps of forest, grassland and bare earth at annual time steps from 1999 to 2016. Vegetation cover was quantified using archived LANDSAT imagery and a custom remote-sensing algorithm developed in the Google Earth Engine platform. A statistical trend analysis of annual maps of the these three proportional land covers were then used to detect land cover transitions across the archipelago. The aim of this work focused on quantifying the total area of change, annual rates of change and final vegetation cover outcomes statewide. Additionally these findings were attributed to past and current land uses and management history by compiling spatial datasets of development, agriculture, forest restoration sites and burned areas statewide. Results indicated that nearly 10% of the state's land surfaces are suspected to have transitioned between the three cover classes during the study period. Total statewide net change resulted in a gain in forest cover with largest areas of change occurring in unmanaged areas, current and past pastoral land, commercial forestry and abandoned cultivated land. The fastest annual rates of change were forest increases that occurred in restoration areas and commercial forestry. These findings indicate that Hawaii is going through a forest transition, primarily driven by agricultural abandonment with likely feedbacks from invasive species, but also influenced by the establishment of forestry production on former agricultural lands that show potential for native forest restoration. These

"Left High and Dry": Federal Land Policies and Pima Agriculture, 1860-1910

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dejong, David H.

2009-01-01

The Akimel O'odham, or "River People" (Pima), have lived in the middle Gila River Valley for centuries, irrigating and cultivating the same land as their Huhugam ancestors did for millennia. Continuing their irrigated agricultural economy bequeathed to them by their Huhugam ancestors, the Pima leveraged a favorable geopolitical setting into a…

The impact of land use on biological activity of agriculture soils. An State-of-the-Art

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Morugán-Coronado, Alicia; Cerdà, Artemi; García-Orenes, Fuensanta

2014-05-01

112 (1), 18-26 Morugán-Coronado, A., García-Orenes, F., Mataix-Solera, J., Arcenegui, V., Mataix-Beneyto, J. 2013. Application of soil quality indices to assess the status of agricultural soils irrigated with treated wastewaters. Solid Earth 4 (1), 119-127 2013 Pampulha ME, Oliveira A (2006) Impact of an herbicide combination of bromoxynil and prosulfuron on soil microorganisms. Current Microbiology 53: 238-243. Paz-Ferreiro, J., Fu., S. 2013. Biological indices for soil quality evaluation: perspectives and limitations. Land degradation & development. DOI: 10.1002/ldr.2262 Vasconcellos, R. L. F., Bonfim, J. A., Baretta, D., Cardoso, E.J.B.N. 2013. Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and glomalin-related soil protein as potential indicators of soil quality in a recuperation gradient of the Atlantic forest in brazil. Land degradation & development. DOI: 10.1002/ldr.2228

Integrated services to support detection, prevention and planning of the agricultural-forest-rural land against fires

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Scipioni, A.; Tagliaferri, F.

2009-04-01

Objective of the document is to define lines of development and distribution of the services to support detection, prevention and planning of the agricultural-forest-rural land against fire. The services will be a valid support on hand of the Regional and National Administrations involved in the agricultural-forest-rural activities (Ministry of Agricultural and Forestry Policies, National Forest Police, ecc..), through the employment of the SIAN "National Agricultural Informative System", that is the integrated national information system for the entire agriculture, forestry and fisheries Administration. The services proposals would be distributed through the GIS (Geographic Information Systems) of the SIAN: the GIS database is a single nation-wide digital graphic database consisting of: - Ortophotos: Aerial images of approz. 45 km2 each with ground resolution of 50 cm; - Cadastral maps: Land maps; - Thematic layers: Land use and crops identification The GIS services can take full advantage of the benefits of SIAN architectural model designed for best integration and interoperability with other Central and Local P.A. bodies whose main items are: - Integration of information from different sources; - Maintainance of the internal coeherence of any integrated information; - Flexibility with respect to technical or organizational changes The "innovative "services described below could be useful to support the development of institutional tasks of public Agencies and Administrations (es. Regions or Civil Protection agencies) according to than previewed from the D.Lgs. 173/98. Services of support to the management of the phenomenon of wildland fires The activities outlined in below figure, don't have a linear and defined temporal sequence, but a dynamic and time integration. It guarantees not only the integrated use of the various information, but also the value of every product, for level of accuracy, coherence and timeliness of the information. Description of four main

The agroecological matrix as alternative to the land-sparing/agriculture intensification model.

PubMed

Perfecto, Ivette; Vandermeer, John

2010-03-30

Among the myriad complications involved in the current food crisis, the relationship between agriculture and the rest of nature is one of the most important yet remains only incompletely analyzed. Particularly in tropical areas, agriculture is frequently seen as the antithesis of the natural world, where the problem is framed as one of minimizing land devoted to agriculture so as to devote more to conservation of biodiversity and other ecosystem services. In particular, the "forest transition model" projects an overly optimistic vision of a future where increased agricultural intensification (to produce more per hectare) and/or increased rural-to-urban migration (to reduce the rural population that cuts forest for agriculture) suggests a near future of much tropical aforestation and higher agricultural production. Reviewing recent developments in ecological theory (showing the importance of migration between fragments and local extinction rates) coupled with empirical evidence, we argue that there is little to suggest that the forest transition model is useful for tropical areas, at least under current sociopolitical structures. A model that incorporates the agricultural matrix as an integral component of conservation programs is proposed. Furthermore, we suggest that this model will be most successful within a framework of small-scale agroecological production.

Environmental modelling of use of treated organic waste on agricultural land: a comparison of existing models for life cycle assessment of waste systems.

PubMed

Hansen, Trine Lund; Christensen, Thomas Højlund; Schmidt, Sonia

2006-04-01

Modelling of environmental impacts from the application of treated organic municipal solid waste (MSW) in agriculture differs widely between different models for environmental assessment of waste systems. In this comparative study five models were examined concerning quantification and impact assessment of environmental effects from land application of treated organic MSW: DST (Decision Support Tool, USA), IWM (Integrated Waste Management, U.K.), THE IFEU PROJECT (Germany), ORWARE (ORganic WAste REsearch, Sweden) and EASEWASTE (Environmental Assessment of Solid Waste Systems and Technologies, Denmark). DST and IWM are life cycle inventory (LCI) models, thus not performing actual impact assessment. The DST model includes only one water emission (biological oxygen demand) from compost leaching in the results and IWM considers only air emissions from avoided production of commercial fertilizers. THE IFEU PROJECT, ORWARE and EASEWASTE are life cycle assessment (LCA) models containing more detailed land application modules. A case study estimating the environmental impacts from land application of 1 ton of composted source sorted organic household waste was performed to compare the results from the different models and investigate the origin of any difference in type or magnitude of the results. The contributions from the LCI models were limited and did not depend on waste composition or local agricultural conditions. The three LCA models use the same overall approach for quantifying the impacts of the system. However, due to slightly different assumptions, quantification methods and environmental impact assessment, the obtained results varied clearly between the models. Furthermore, local conditions (e.g. soil type, farm type, climate and legal regulation) and waste composition strongly influenced the results of the environmental assessment.

Impact of the Spatial Arrangement of Agricultural Land Use on Ecosystems Services and Peri-Urban Livelihoods at the Landscape Scale.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Inkoom, J. N.; Fürst, C.

2014-12-01

The relationship between agricultural land uses (ALU) and their impact on ecosystems services (ES) including biodiversity conservation is complex. This complexity has been augmented by isolated research on the impact of ALU on the landscape's capacity to provide ES in most climatically vulnerable areas of Sub-Saharan Africa. Though a considerable number of studies emphasise the nexus between specific land use types and their impact on ES, a sufficient modelling basis for an empirical consideration of spatial interactions between different agricultural land uses at the landscape scale within peri-urban areas in Sub-Saharan Africa is consistently missing. The need to assess and address significant issues regarding size, shape, spatial location, and interactivity of different land use patches in assessing land use interactions and their impact on ecosystem service provision necessitated this investigation. To formulate a methodology to correspond to this complexity, ES obtained from a characteristically agricultural and urbanizing landscapes were mapped using analytical hierarchical processes and management expert approaches. Further, landscape metrics and mean enrichment factor approaches are explored as neighbourhood assessment tools aimed at assessing the mutual impact gradient of agricultural and adjacent urban land uses on ES provision. Implementation is undertaken in GISCAME using a 2012 rapideye image classification and primary data collected on selected ES from local farmers within the VEA catchment of Upper East, Ghana. The outcome aims to provide the understanding of expected trade-offs and synergies varying ALU could pose to current and potential ES provision within urbanizing landscapes. Policy implications for observed trade-offs and synergies of ALU interaction on ES, rural livelihoods, and food security are communicated to farmers and decision makers. Keywords: Agricultural land use, neighbourhood interaction, ecosystems services, livelihoods, GISCAME.

Performing and updating an inventory of Oregon's expanding irrigated agricultural lands utilizing remote sensing technology

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Hall, M. J.

1981-01-01

An inventory technique based upon using remote sensing technology, interpreting both high altitude aerial photography and LANDSAT multispectral scanner imagery, is discussed. It is noted that once the final land use inventory maps of irrigated agricultural lands are available and approximately scaled they may be overlaid directly onto either multispectral scanner or return beam vidicon prints, thereby providing an inexpensive updating procedure.

Development and application of a mechanistic model to estimate emission of nitrous oxide from UK agriculture

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Brown, L.; Syed, B.; Jarvis, S. C.; Sneath, R. W.; Phillips, V. R.; Goulding, K. W. T.; Li, C.

A mechanistic model of N 2O emission from agricultural soil (DeNitrification-DeComposition—DNDC) was modified for application to the UK, and was used as the basis of an inventory of N 2O emission from UK agriculture in 1990. UK-specific input data were added to DNDC's database and the ability to simulate daily C and N inputs from grazing animals and applied animal waste was added to the model. The UK version of the model, UK-DNDC, simulated emissions from 18 different crop types on the 3 areally dominant soils in each county. Validation of the model at the field scale showed that predictions matched observations well. Emission factors for the inventory were calculated from estimates of N 2O emission from UK-DNDC, in order to maintain direct comparability with the IPCC approach. These, along with activity data, were included in a transparent spreadsheet format. Using UK-DNDC, the estimate of N 2O-N emission from UK current agricultural practice in 1990 was 50.9 Gg. This total comprised 31.7 Gg from the soil sector, 5.9 Gg from animals and 13.2 Gg from the indirect sector. The range of this estimate (using the range of soil organic C for each soil used) was 30.5-62.5 Gg N. Estimates of emissions in each sector were compared to those calculated using the IPCC default methodology. Emissions from the soil and indirect sectors were smaller with the UK-DNDC approach than with the IPCC methodology, while emissions from the animal sector were larger. The model runs suggested a relatively large emission from agricultural land that was not attributable to current agricultural practices (33.8 Gg in total, 27.4 Gg from the soil sector). This 'background' component is partly the result of historical agricultural land use. It is not normally included in inventories of emission, but would increase the total emission of N 2O-N from agricultural land in 1990 to 78.3 Gg.

LUMINATE: Linking agricultural land use, local water quality and Gulf of Mexico hypoxia

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

In this paper, we discuss the importance of developing integrated assessment models to support the design and implementation of policies to address water quality problems associated with agricultural pollution. We describe a new modelling system, LUMINATE, which links land use decisions made at the...

Monodisperse atomizers for agricultural aviation applications

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Christensen, L. S.; Steely, S. L.

1980-01-01

Conceptual designs of two monodisperse spray nozzles are described and the rationale used in each design is discussed. The nozzles were designed to eliminate present problems in agricultural aviation applications, such as ineffective plant coverage, drift due to small droplets present in the spray being dispersed, and nonuniform swath coverages. Monodisperse atomization techniques are reviewed and a synopsis of the information obtained concerning agricultural aviation spray applications is presented.

Has the conversion of natural wetlands to agricultural land increased the incidence and severity of damaging freezes in south Florida?

USGS Publications Warehouse

Marshall, C.H.; Pielke, R.A.; Steyaert, L.T.

2004-01-01

On several occasions, winter freezes have wrought severe destruction on Florida agriculture. A series of devastating freezes around the turn of the twentieth century, and again during the 1980s, were related to anomalies in the large-scale flow of the ocean–atmosphere system. During the twentieth century, substantial areas of wetlands in south Florida were drained and converted to agricultural land for winter fresh vegetable and sugarcane production. During this time, much of the citrus industry also was relocated to those areas to escape the risk of freeze farther to the north. The purpose of this paper is to present a modeling study designed to investigate whether the conversion of the wetlands to agriculture itself could have resulted in or exacerbated the severity of recent freezes in those agricultural areas of south Florida.For three recent freeze events, a pair of simulations was undertaken with the Regional Atmospheric Modeling System. One member of each pair employed land surface properties that represent pre-1900s (near natural) land cover, whereas the other member of each pair employed data that represent near-current land-use patterns as derived from analysis of Landsat data valid for 1992/93. These two different land cover datasets capture well the conversion of wetlands to agriculture in south Florida during the twentieth century. Use of current land surface properties resulted in colder simulated minimum temperatures and temperatures that remained below freezing for a longer period at locations of key agricultural production centers in south Florida that were once natural wetlands. Examination of time series of the surface energy budget from one of the cases reveals that when natural land cover is used, a persistent moisture flux from the underlying wetlands during the nighttime hours served to prevent the development of below-freezing temperatures at those same locations. When the model results were subjected to an important sensitivity factor

Land use effects on green water fluxes from agricultural production in Mato Grosso, Brazil

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lathuilliere, M. J.; Johnson, M. S.; Donner, S. D.

2010-12-01

The blue water/green water paradigm is increasingly used to differentiate between subsequent routing of precipitation once it reaches the soil. “Blue” water is that which infiltrates deep in the soil to become streams and aquifers, while “green” water is that which remains in the soil and is either evaporated (non-productive green water) or transpired by plants (productive green water). This differentiation in the fate of precipitation has provided a new way of thinking about water resources, especially in agriculture for which better use of productive green water may help to relieve stresses from irrigation (blue water). The state of Mato Grosso, Brazil, presents a unique case for the study of green water fluxes due to an expanding agricultural land base planted primarily to soybean, maize, sugar cane, and cotton. These products are highly dependent on green water resources in Mato Grosso where crops are almost entirely rain-fed. We estimate the change in green water fluxes from agricultural expansion for the 2000-2008 period in the state of Mato Grosso based on agricultural production data from the Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatísticas and a modified Penman-Monteith equation. Initial results for seven municipalities suggest an increase in agricultural green water fluxes, ranging from 1-10% per year, due primarily to increases in cropped areas. Further research is underway to elucidate the role of green water flux variations from land use practices on the regional water cycle.

Land quality, sustainable development and environmental degradation in agricultural districts: A computational approach based on entropy indexes

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Zambon, Ilaria, E-mail: ilaria.zambon@unitus.it; Colantoni, Andrea; Carlucci, Margherita

Land Degradation (LD) in socio-environmental systems negatively impacts sustainable development paths. This study proposes a framework to LD evaluation based on indicators of diversification in the spatial distribution of sensitive land. We hypothesize that conditions for spatial heterogeneity in a composite index of land sensitivity are more frequently associated to areas prone to LD than spatial homogeneity. Spatial heterogeneity is supposed to be associated with degraded areas that act as hotspots for future degradation processes. A diachronic analysis (1960–2010) was performed at the Italian agricultural district scale to identify environmental factors associated with spatial heterogeneity in the degree of landmore » sensitivity to degradation based on the Environmentally Sensitive Area Index (ESAI). In 1960, diversification in the level of land sensitivity measured using two common indexes of entropy (Shannon's diversity and Pielou's evenness) increased significantly with the ESAI, indicating a high level of land sensitivity to degradation. In 2010, surface area classified as “critical” to LD was the highest in districts with diversification in the spatial distribution of ESAI values, confirming the hypothesis formulated above. Entropy indexes, based on observed alignment with the concept of LD, constitute a valuable base to inform mitigation strategies against desertification. - Highlights: • Spatial heterogeneity is supposed to be associated with degraded areas. • Entropy indexes can inform mitigation strategies against desertification. • Assessing spatial diversification in the degree of land sensitivity to degradation. • Mediterranean rural areas have an evident diversity in agricultural systems. • A diachronic analysis carried out at the Italian agricultural district scale.« less

Simulating the Effects of Irrigation over the U.S. in a Land Surface Model Based on Satellite Derived Agricultural Data

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Ozdogan, Mutlu; Rodell, Matthew; Beaudoing, Hiroko Kato; Toll, David L.

2009-01-01

A novel method is introduced for integrating satellite derived irrigation data and high-resolution crop type information into a land surface model (LSM). The objective is to improve the simulation of land surface states and fluxes through better representation of agricultural land use. Ultimately, this scheme could enable numerical weather prediction (NWP) models to capture land-atmosphere feedbacks in managed lands more accurately and thus improve forecast skill. Here we show that application of the new irrigation scheme over the continental US significantly influences the surface water and energy balances by modulating the partitioning of water between the surface and the atmosphere. In our experiment, irrigation caused a 12% increase in evapotranspiration (QLE) and an equivalent reduction in the sensible heat flux (QH) averaged over all irrigated areas in the continental US during the 2003 growing season. Local effects were more extreme: irrigation shifted more than 100 W/m from QH to QLE in many locations in California, eastern Idaho, southern Washington, and southern Colorado during peak crop growth. In these cases, the changes in ground heat flux (QG), net radiation (RNET), evapotranspiration (ET), runoff (R), and soil moisture (SM) were more than 3 W/m(sup 2), 20 W/m(sup 2), 5 mm/day, 0.3 mm/day, and 100 mm, respectively. These results are highly relevant to continental- to global-scale water and energy cycle studies that, to date, have struggled to quantify the effects of agricultural management practices such as irrigation. Based on the results presented here, we expect that better representation of managed lands will lead to improved weather and climate forecasting skill when the new irrigation scheme is incorporated into NWP models such as NOAA's Global Forecast System (GFS).

Potential Land Mapping for Agricultural Extentification in Mengwi Sub-district to Support Food Balance in Badung Regency, Indonesia

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Made Trigunasih, Ni; Lanya, Indayati; Ratna Adi, I. G. P.; Hutauruk, Jeremia; Feronika

2017-12-01

The availability of agricultural land for food crops, especially in Bali, is rapidly declining every year. The availability of rice fields in Badung regency, especially in Mengwi Sub-district until 2040 is no longer exist, this means that Mengwi Sub-district has lost the rice fields. The existence of land conversion will affect food availability for the country, so there will be food deficit. The food balance in Badung Regency in 2015 with Cultivation Index (IP) and initial productivity in each Sub-district showed a food deficit of 32,843.44 tons, then after increasing IP of 2,5 the productivity in Kecamatan Petang and Kuta at 7 tons / ha, and Abiansemal, Mengwi and North Kuta Sub-districts with 8 tons / ha which indicate a surplus in 2020 and 2030 respectively of 25,155.19 tons, and 3,401.79 tons. But in 2040 and 2050 there was a food deficiency of 18,434.78 tons and 11,824.82 tons respectively. Considering that productivity improvement efforts cannot rely solely on intensification approaches, but also need to be done with extensification or expansion of agricultural areas to support food production. This research was conducted in Mengwi Sub-district, Badung Regency. Mengwi Sub-district consists of 20 villages. The objectives of this research are: (1) to map potential land that can be converted to agricultural land of food crops, and (2) to know the amount of food demand to supply food balance in Badung Regency in 2040. Research methodology includes (1) preliminary study, (2) interpretation of satellite images, (3) mapping and measurement of land area, and (4) calculation of additional food availability. The results indicate that the potential land that can be converted to agricultural land for food crops is 132 ha, consists of 128.51 ha of mixed plantation and 3.49 ha of bare land/bush. The result of additional land produced 1601.73 tons of rice that increased the food availability in Mengwi Sub-district to 45425.7 tons. The addition of surplus in 2040 in Mengwi

Drought Impacts on Agricultural Production and Land Fallowing in California's Central Valley in 2015

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rosevelt, C.; Melton, F. S.; Johnson, L.; Guzman, A.; Verdin, J. P.; Thenkabail, P. S.; Mueller, R.; Jones, J.; Willis, P.

2015-12-01

The ongoing drought in California substantially reduced surface water supplies for millions of acres of irrigated farmland in California's Central Valley. Rapid assessment of drought impacts on agricultural production can aid water managers in assessing mitigation options, and guide decision making with respect to mitigation of drought impacts. Satellite remote sensing offers an efficient way to provide quantitative assessments of drought impacts on agricultural production and increases in fallow acreage associated with reductions in water supply. A key advantage of satellite-based assessments is that they can provide a measure of land fallowing that is consistent across both space and time. We describe an approach for monthly and seasonal mapping of uncultivated agricultural acreage developed as part of a joint effort by USGS, USDA, NASA, and the California Department of Water Resources to provide timely assessments of land fallowing during drought events. This effort has used the Central Valley of California as a pilot region for development and testing of an operational approach. To provide quantitative measures of uncultivated agricultural acreage from satellite data early in the season, we developed a decision tree algorithm and applied it to timeseries of data from Landsat TM, ETM+, OLI, and MODIS. Our effort has been focused on development of indicators of drought impacts in the March - August timeframe based on measures of crop development patterns relative to a reference period with average or above average rainfall. To assess the accuracy of the algorithms, monthly ground validation surveys were conducted across 650 fields from March - September in 2014 and 2015. We present the algorithm along with updated results from the accuracy assessment, and data and maps of land fallowing in the Central Valley in 2015.

Current Status and Future Potential of Energy Derived from Chinese Agricultural Land: A Review

PubMed Central

Mao, Chunlan; Feng, Yongzhong; Zhang, Tong; Xing, Zhenjie; Wang, Yanhong; Zou, Shuzhen; Yin, Dongxue; Han, Xinhui; Ren, Guangxin; Yang, Gaihe

2015-01-01

Energy crisis is receiving attention with regard to the global economy and environmental sustainable development. Developing new energy resources to optimize the energy supply structure has become an important measure to prevent energy shortage as well as achieving energy conservation and emission reduction in China. This study proposed the concept of energy agriculture and constructed an energy agricultural technical support system based on the analysis of energy supply and demand and China's foreign dependence on energy resources, combined with the function of agriculture in the energy field. Manufacturing technology equipment and agricultural and forestry energy, including crop or forestry plants and animal feces, were used in the system. The current status and future potential of China's marginal land resources, energy crop germplasm resources, and agricultural and forestry waste energy-oriented resources were analyzed. Developing the function of traditional agriculture in food production may promote China's social, economic, and environmental sustainable development and achieve energy saving and emission reduction. PMID:25874229

Current status and future potential of energy derived from Chinese agricultural land: a review.

PubMed

Zhai, Ningning; Mao, Chunlan; Feng, Yongzhong; Zhang, Tong; Xing, Zhenjie; Wang, Yanhong; Zou, Shuzhen; Yin, Dongxue; Han, Xinhui; Ren, Guangxin; Yang, Gaihe

2015-01-01

Energy crisis is receiving attention with regard to the global economy and environmental sustainable development. Developing new energy resources to optimize the energy supply structure has become an important measure to prevent energy shortage as well as achieving energy conservation and emission reduction in China. This study proposed the concept of energy agriculture and constructed an energy agricultural technical support system based on the analysis of energy supply and demand and China's foreign dependence on energy resources, combined with the function of agriculture in the energy field. Manufacturing technology equipment and agricultural and forestry energy, including crop or forestry plants and animal feces, were used in the system. The current status and future potential of China's marginal land resources, energy crop germplasm resources, and agricultural and forestry waste energy-oriented resources were analyzed. Developing the function of traditional agriculture in food production may promote China's social, economic, and environmental sustainable development and achieve energy saving and emission reduction.

Reduction of suspended solid and nutrient loss from agricultural lands by tailwater recovery systems

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

Best management practices are being implemented throughout the Lower Mississippi River Alluvial Valley with the aim of alleviating pressures placed on downstream aquatic systems by sediment and nutrient losses from agricultural land; however, research evaluating the performance of one practice, tail...

Major pollutants in soils of abandoned agricultural land contaminated by e-waste activities in Hong Kong.

PubMed

Lopez, Brenda Natalia; Man, Yu Bon; Zhao, Yin Ge; Zheng, Jin Shu; Leung, Anna Oi Wah; Yao, Jun; Wong, Ming Hung

2011-07-01

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH), polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB), polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) compounds and five heavy metals (cadmium, copper, chromium, lead, and zinc) were determined in soil samples collected from six sites of abandoned agricultural land affected by electronic-waste: e-waste dismantling workshop [EW (DW)], e-waste open burning site [EW (OBS)], e-waste storage [EW (S)], and agricultural (A) in the New Territories, Hong Kong. Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and heavy metals were detected in all soil samples. EW (DW) contained the highest concentrations of PAHs, Cr, Cu, and Zn, whereas EW (OBS) had the highest concentrations of PCBs, PBDEs, Cd, and Pb. PAH at EW (DW) and EW (OBS) and PCB concentrations at EW (OBS) exceeded the target values of the New Dutch list, whereas Cd, Cu, Cr, Pb, and Zn levels exceeded the Chinese legislation for the protection of agricultural production and safeguarding of human health, by 3-11 times at EW (OBS) and 5-8 times at EW (DW). Lead at EW (OBS) and EW (DW) and Cr at EW (DW) greatly exceeded the Canadian Soil Quality Guidelines by 46 and 20 times and 27 times, respectively. Concentrations of POPs and heavy metals at EW (DW) and EW (OBS) were significantly higher than at EW (S) and A. It was concluded that e-waste activities led to increases of toxic chemicals at these abandoned agricultural land, which would hinder the redevelopment of the land.

Nitrate Leaching From Intensive Forest Management on Abandonded Agricultural Land: Fifth-Year Results

Treesearch

Thomas M. Williams; Charles Gresham

2002-01-01

This report is on the fifth year results of a cooperative research project to examine water quality impacts of maximizing plantation growth on abandoned agricultural land, first reported after two years in the Ninth Southern Silvicultural Research Conference. The study, located on International Paper's Southland Experimental Forest at Bainbridge GA, examines...

Bayesian spatial modelling and the significance of agricultural land use to scrub typhus infection in Taiwan.

PubMed

Wardrop, Nicola A; Kuo, Chi-Chien; Wang, Hsi-Chieh; Clements, Archie C A; Lee, Pei-Fen; Atkinson, Peter M

2013-11-01

Scrub typhus is transmitted by the larval stage of trombiculid mites. Environmental factors, including land cover and land use, are known to influence breeding and survival of trombiculid mites and, thus, also the spatial heterogeneity of scrub typhus risk. Here, a spatially autoregressive modelling framework was applied to scrub typhus incidence data from Taiwan, covering the period 2003 to 2011, to provide increased understanding of the spatial pattern of scrub typhus risk and the environmental and socioeconomic factors contributing to this pattern. A clear spatial pattern in scrub typhus incidence was observed within Taiwan, and incidence was found to be significantly correlated with several land cover classes, temperature, elevation, normalized difference vegetation index, rainfall, population density, average income and the proportion of the population that work in agriculture. The final multivariate regression model included statistically significant correlations between scrub typhus incidence and average income (negatively correlated), the proportion of land that contained mosaics of cropland and vegetation (positively correlated) and elevation (positively correlated). These results highlight the importance of land cover on scrub typhus incidence: mosaics of cropland and vegetation represent a transitional land cover type which can provide favourable habitats for rodents and, therefore, trombiculid mites. In Taiwan, these transitional land cover areas tend to occur in less populated and mountainous areas, following the frontier establishment and subsequent partial abandonment of agricultural cultivation, due to demographic and socioeconomic changes. Future land use policy decision-making should ensure that potential public health outcomes, such as modified risk of scrub typhus, are considered.

7 CFR 636.1 - Applicability.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-01-01

... AGRICULTURE LONG TERM CONTRACTING WILDLIFE HABITAT INCENTIVE PROGRAM § 636.1 Applicability. (a) The purpose of the Wildlife Habitat Incentive Program (WHIP) is to help participants develop fish and wildlife habitat on private agricultural land, nonindustrial private forest land (NIPF), and Indian land. (b) The...

7 CFR 636.1 - Applicability.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-01-01

... AGRICULTURE LONG TERM CONTRACTING WILDLIFE HABITAT INCENTIVES PROGRAM § 636.1 Applicability. (a) The purpose of the Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program (WHIP) is to help participants develop fish and wildlife habitat on private agricultural land, nonindustrial private forest land, and Indian land. (b) The...

7 CFR 636.1 - Applicability.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-01-01

... AGRICULTURE LONG TERM CONTRACTING WILDLIFE HABITAT INCENTIVE PROGRAM § 636.1 Applicability. (a) The purpose of the Wildlife Habitat Incentive Program (WHIP) is to help participants develop fish and wildlife habitat on private agricultural land, nonindustrial private forest land (NIPF), and Indian land. (b) The...

7 CFR 636.1 - Applicability.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-01-01

... AGRICULTURE LONG TERM CONTRACTING WILDLIFE HABITAT INCENTIVE PROGRAM § 636.1 Applicability. (a) The purpose of the Wildlife Habitat Incentive Program (WHIP) is to help participants develop fish and wildlife habitat on private agricultural land, nonindustrial private forest land (NIPF), and Indian land. (b) The...

7 CFR 636.1 - Applicability.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-01-01

... AGRICULTURE LONG TERM CONTRACTING WILDLIFE HABITAT INCENTIVE PROGRAM § 636.1 Applicability. (a) The purpose of the Wildlife Habitat Incentive Program (WHIP) is to help participants develop fish and wildlife habitat on private agricultural land, nonindustrial private forest land (NIPF), and Indian land. (b) The...

Nonlinear and Synchronous Dissolved Organic Matter Dynamics in Streams Across an Agriculture Land Use and Climate Setting

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Xenopoulos, M. A.; Vogt, R. J.

2014-12-01

There is now increasing evidence that non-linearity is a common response in ecological systems to pressures caused by human activities. There is also increasing evidence that exogenous environmental drivers, such as climate, induce spatial and temporal synchrony in a wide range of ecological variables. Using Moran's I and Pearson's correlation, we quantified the synchrony of dissolved organic carbon concentration (DOC) and quality (DOM; e.g., specific UV absorbance, Fluorescence Index, PARAFAC), nutrients, discharge and temperature in 40 streams that span an agriculture gradient (0 to >70% cropland), over 10 years. We then used breakpoint regression, 2D-Kolmogorov-Smirnov test and significant zero crossings (SiZer) analyses to quantify the prevalence of nonlinearity and ecological thresholds (breakpoints) where applicable. There was a high degree of synchrony in DOM quality (r > 0.7) but not DOC (r < 0.4). The degree of synchrony was driven in part by the catchment's land use. With respect to the nonlinear analyses we found non-linearity in ~50% of bivariate datasets analyzed. Non-linearity was also driven in part by the catchment's land use. Breakpoints defined different DOM properties. Nonlinearity and synchronous behaviour in DOM are intimately linked to land use.

Balancing alternative land uses in conservation prioritization.

PubMed

Moilanen, Atte; Anderson, Barbara J; Eigenbrod, Felix; Heinemeyer, Andreas; Roy, David B; Gillings, Simon; Armsworth, Paul R; Gaston, Kevin J; Thomas, Chris D

2011-07-01

Pressure on ecosystems to provide various different and often conflicting services is immense and likely to increase. The impacts and success of conservation prioritization will be enhanced if the needs of competing land uses are recognized at the planning stage. We develop such methods and illustrate them with data about competing land uses in Great Britain, with the aim of developing a conservation priority ranking that balances between needs of biodiversity conservation, carbon storage, agricultural value, and urban development potential. While both carbon stocks and biodiversity are desirable features from the point of view of conservation, they compete with the needs of agriculture and urban development. In Britain the greatest conflicts exist between biodiversity and urban areas, while the largest carbon stocks occur mostly in Scotland in areas with low agricultural or urban pressure. In our application, we were able successfully to balance the spatial allocation of alternative land uses so that conflicts between them were much smaller than had they been developed separately. The proposed methods and software, Zonation, are applicable to structurally similar prioritization problems globally.

Water and Land Limitations to Future Agricultural Production in the Middle East

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Koch, J. A. M.; Wimmer, F.; Schaldach, R.

2015-12-01

Countries in the Middle East use a large fraction of their scarce water resources to produce cash crops, such as fruit and vegetables, for international markets. At the same time, these countries import large amounts of staple crops, such as cereals, required to meet the nutritional demand of their populations. This makes food security in the Middle East heavily dependent on world market prices for staple crops. Under these preconditions, increasing food demand due to population growth, urban expansion on fertile farmlands, and detrimental effects of a changing climate on the production of agricultural commodities present major challenges to countries in the Middle East that try to improve food security by increasing their self-sufficiency rate of staple crops.We applied the spatio-temporal land-use change model LandSHIFT.JR to simulate how an expansion of urban areas may affect the production of agricultural commodities in Jordan. We furthermore evaluated how climate change and changes in socio-economic conditions may influence crop production. The focus of our analysis was on potential future irrigated and rainfed production (crop yield and area demand) of fruit, vegetables, and cereals. Our simulation results show that the expansion of urban areas and the resulting displacement of agricultural areas does result in a slight decrease in crop yields. This leads to almost no additional irrigation water requirements due to the relocation of agricultural areas, i.e. there is the same amount of "crop per drop". However, taking into account projected changes in socio-economic conditions and climate conditions, a large volume of water would be required for cereal production in order to safeguard current self-sufficiency rates for staple crops. Irrigation water requirements are expected to double until 2025 and to triple until 2050. Irrigated crop yields are projected to decrease by about 25%, whereas there is no decrease in rainfed crop yields to be expected.

Impact of changes in labor resources and transfers of land use rights on agricultural non-point source pollution in Jiangsu Province, China.

PubMed

Lu, Hua; Xie, Hualin

2018-02-01

This study systematically explores the likely mechanisms driving the effect of the transfer of agricultural land use rights (ALURs) on agricultural non-point source pollution (ANSP) in the context of changing agricultural labor resources. It quantitatively estimates the direction and degree of this influence from a microeconomic perspective using data from rural households. The results reveal that economies of scale caused by ALURs transfers contribute to reducing both the ANSP and marginal costs of inputs. Changes in agricultural labor resources lead to reductions in agricultural labor supply and negatively impact on ANSP. Encouraging farmers to participate in ALURs transfers, therefore, helps to reduce ANSP. The government and related departments should implement policies that support farmers who decide to rent an entire village's land or the adjacent land to achieve economies of scale. Accelerating the development of small farm machinery that is suitable for smaller farm plots and the elderly can serve to reduce the use of chemical fertilizer and promote green production and sustainable agricultural development. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Application of remote sensing data to land use and land cover assessment in the Tubarao River coastal plain, Santa Catarina, Brazil

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1982-01-01

By means of aerial photography and MSS-LANDSAT data a land use/land cover classification was applied to the Tubarao River coastal plain. The following classes were identified: coal related areas, permanently flooded wetlands, periodically flooded wetlands, agricultural lands, bare soils, water bodies, urban areas, forestlands.

A spatial econometric analysis of land-use change with land cover trends data: an application to the Pacific Northwest

Treesearch

David J. Lewis; Ralph J. Alig

2014-01-01

This paper develops a plot-level spatial econometric land-use model and estimates it with U.S. Geological Survey Land Cover Trends (LCT) geographic information system panel data for the western halves of the states of Oregon and Washington. The discrete-choice framework we use models plot-scale choices of the three dominant land uses in this region: forest, agriculture...

Visualizing land-use and management complexity within biogeochemical cycles of an agricultural landscape

Treesearch

Kai Nils Nitzsche; Gernot Verch; Katrin Premke; Arthur Gessler; Zachary Kayler

2016-01-01

Crop fields are cultivated across continuities of soil, topography, and local climate that drive biological processes and nutrient cycling at the landscape scale; yet land management and agricultural research are often performed at the field scale, potentially neglecting the context of the surrounding landscape. Adding to this complexity is the overlap of ecosystems...

Optimization of land use of agricultural farms in Sumedang regency by using linear programming models

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zenis, F. M.; Supian, S.; Lesmana, E.

2018-03-01

Land is one of the most important assets for farmers in Sumedang Regency. Therefore, agricultural land should be used optimally. This study aims to obtain the optimal land use composition in order to obtain maximum income. The optimization method used in this research is Linear Programming Models. Based on the results of the analysis, the composition of land use for rice area of 135.314 hectares, corn area of 11.798 hectares, soy area of 2.290 hectares, and peanuts of 2.818 hectares with the value of farmers income of IDR 2.682.020.000.000,-/year. The results of this analysis can be used as a consideration in decisions making about cropping patterns by farmers.

Assessment of Spatio-temporal Barren-lands Expansion and Agricultural Adaptation due to Climate Change and Anthropogenic Activity: A Geospatial Approach in Hot Semi-arid Region of Maharashtra State, India

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Roy, A.; Inamdar, A. B.

2017-12-01

Major parts of Upper Godavari River Basin are intensely drought prone and climate vulnerable in Maharashtra State, India. The economy of the state depends on the agronomic productivity of this region. So, it is necessary to monitor and regulate the effects of climate change and anthropogenic activity on agricultural land in that region. This study investigates and maps the barren-lands and alteration of agricultural lands, their decadal deviations with the multi-temporal LANDSAT satellite images; and finally quantifies the agricultural adaptations. This work involves the utilization of remote sensing and GIS tools and modeling. First, climatic trend analysis is carried out with dataset obtained from India Meteorological Department. Then, multi-temporal LANDSAT images are classified (Level I, hybrid classification technique are followed) to determine the decadal Land Use Land Cover (LULC) changes and correlated with the agricultural water demand. Finally, various LANDSAT band analysis is conducted to determine irrigated and non-irrigated cropping area estimation and identifying the agricultural adaptations. The analysis of LANDSAT images shows that barren-lands are most increased class during the study period. The overall spatial extent of barren-lands are increased drastically during the study period. The geospatial study (class-to-class conversion study) shows that, most of the conversion of the barren-lands are from the agricultural land and reserve or open forests. The barren-lands are constantly increasing and the agricultural land is linearly decreasing. Hence, there is an inverse correlation between barren-lands and agricultural land. Moreover, there is a shift to non-irrigated and less water demanding crops, from more water demanding crops, which is a noticeable adaptation. The surface-water availability is highly dependent on rainfall and/or climatic conditions. It is changing either way in a random fashion based upon the quantity of rainfall occurred in

Uav for Geodata Acquisition in Agricultureal and Forestal Applications

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Reidelstürz, P.; Schrenk, L.; Littmann, W.

2011-09-01

of German Armed Forces in Neubiberg/Munich and the well-established precision farming company "Konsultationszentrum Liepen" to develop an applicable UAV for precision farming purposes. Currently Cis GmbH and Technologie Campus Freyung, with intense contact to the „flying robot"- team of DLR Oberpfaffenhofen, collaborate to optimize the existing UAV and to extend the applications from data aquisition for biomass diversity up to detect the water supply situation in agricultural fields, to support pest management systems as much as to check the possibilities to detect bark beetle attacks in european spruce in an early stage of attack (green attack phase) by constructing and integrating further payload modules with different sensors in the existing UAV airframe. Also effective data processing workflows are to be worked out. Actually in the existing UAV autopilotsystem "piccolo" (cloudcaptech) is integrated and also a replaceable payload module is available, carrying a VIS and a NIR camera to calculate maps of NDVI diversity as indicator of biomass diversity. Further modules with a 6 channel multispectral still camera and with a spectrometer are planned. The airframe's wingspan is about 3,45m weighting 4.2 kg, ready to fly. The hand launchable UAV can start from any place in agricultural regions. The wing is configured with flaps, allowing steep approaches and short landings using a „butterfly" brake configuration. In spite of the lightweight configuration the UAV yet proves its worth under windy baltic wether situations by collecting regular sharp images of fields under wind speed up to 15m/s (Beaufort 6 -7). In further projects the development of further payload modules and a user friendly flight planning tool is scheduled considering different payload - and airframe requirements for different precision farming purposes and forest applications. Data processing and workflow will be optimized. Cooperation with further partners to establish UAV systems in agricultural

Modeling the fate and transport of bacteria in agricultural and pasture lands using APEX

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

The Agricultural Policy/Environmental eXtender (APEX) model is a whole farm to small watershed scale continuous simulation model developed for evaluating various land management strategies. The current version, APEX0806, does not have the modeling capacity for fecal indicator bacteria fate and trans...

Assessing the effect of agricultural land abandonment on bird communities in southern-eastern Europe.

PubMed

Zakkak, Sylvia; Radovic, Andreja; Nikolov, Stoyan C; Shumka, Spase; Kakalis, Lefteris; Kati, Vassiliki

2015-12-01

Agricultural land abandonment is recognized as a major environmental threat in Europe, being particularly pronounced in south-eastern Europe, where knowledge on its effects is limited. Taking the Balkan Peninsula as a case study, we investigated agricultural abandonment impact on passerine communities at regional level. We set up a standard methodology for site selection (70 sites) and data collection, along a well-defined forest-encroachment gradient that reflects land abandonment in four countries: Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia and Greece. Regardless the different socio-economic and political histories in the Balkans that led to diverse land abandonment patterns in space and time, rural abandonment had a consistent negative effect on bird communities, while regional-level analysis revealed patterns that were hidden at local level. The general trends were an increase of forest-dwelling bird species at the expense of farmland birds, the decline of overall bird species richness, as well as the decline of Species of European Conservation Concern (SPECs) richness and abundance. Many farmland bird species declined with land abandonment, whereas few forest species benefited from the process. In conclusion, our results support CAP towards hampering rural land abandonment and preserving semi-open rural mosaics in remote upland areas, using a suite of management measures carefully tailored to local needs. The maintenance of traditional rural landscapes should be prioritized in the Balkans, through the timely identification of HNV farmland that is most prone to abandonment. We also suggest that coordinated transnational research is needed, for a better assessment of conservation options in remote rural landscapes at European scale, including the enhancement of wild grazers' populations as an alternative in areas where traditional land management is rather unlikely to be re-established. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Effects of agricultural land-management practices on water quality in northeastern Guilford County, North Carolina, 1985-90

USGS Publications Warehouse

Harned, Douglas A.

1995-01-01

The effects of selected agricultural land-management practices on water quality were assessed in a comparative study of four small basins in the Piedmont province of North Carolina. Agricultural practices, such as tillage and applications of fertilizer and pesticides, are major sources of sediment, nutrients, and pesticides in surface water, and of nutrients and pesticides in ground water. The four study basins included two adjacent row-crop fields, a mixed land-use basin, and a forested basin. One of the row-crop fields (7.4 acres) was farmed by using conservation land-management (CLM) practices, which included strip cropping, contour plowing, field borders, and grassed waterways. The other row-crop field (4.8 acres) was farmed by using standard land-management (SLM) practices, which included continuous cropping, straight-row plowing without regard to land topography, and poorly maintained waterways. The mixed land-use basin (665 acres) was monitored to compare water quality in surface water as SLM practices were converted to CLM practices during the project. The forested basin (44 acres) provided background surface-water hydrologic and chemical-quality conditions. Surface-water flow was reduced by 18 percent by CLM practices compared to surface-water flow from the SLM practices basin. The thickness of the unsaturated zone in the row-crop basins ranged from a few feet to 25 feet. Areas with thick unsaturated zones have a greater capacity to intercept and store nutrients and pesticides than do areas with thinner zones. Sediment concentrations and yields for the SLM practices basin were considerably higher than those for the other basins. The median sediment concentration in surface water for the SLM basin was 3.4 times that of the CLM basin, 8.2 times that of the mixed land-use basin, and 38.4 times that of the forested basin. The total sediment yield for the SLM basin was 2.3 times that observed for the CLM basin, 14.1 times that observed for the mixed land

Sensitivity of an Integrated Mesoscale Atmosphere and Agriculture Land Modeling System (WRF/CMAQ-EPIC) to MODIS Vegetation and Lightning Assimilation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ran, L.; Cooter, E. J.; Gilliam, R. C.; Foroutan, H.; Kang, D.; Appel, W.; Wong, D. C.; Pleim, J. E.; Benson, V.; Pouliot, G.

2017-12-01

The combined meteorology and air quality modeling system composed of the Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) model and Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model is an important decision support tool that is used in research and regulatory decisions related to emissions, meteorology, climate, and chemical transport. The Environmental Policy Integrated Climate (EPIC) is a cropping model which has long been used in a range of applications related to soil erosion, crop productivity, climate change, and water quality around the world. We have integrated WRF/CMAQ with EPIC using the Fertilizer Emission Scenario Tool for CMAQ (FEST-C) to estimate daily soil N information with fertilization for CMAQ bi-directional ammonia flux modeling. Driven by the weather and N deposition from WRF/CMAQ, FEST-C EPIC simulations are conducted on 22 different agricultural production systems ranging from managed grass lands (e.g. hay and alfalfa) to crop lands (e.g. corn grain and soybean) with rainfed and irrigated information across any defined conterminous United States (U.S.) CMAQ domain and grid resolution. In recent years, this integrated system has been enhanced and applied in many different air quality and ecosystem assessment projects related to land-water-atmosphere interactions. These enhancements have advanced this system to become a valuable tool for integrated assessments of air, land and water quality in light of social drivers and human and ecological outcomes. This presentation will focus on evaluating the sensitivity of precipitation and N deposition in the integrated system to MODIS vegetation input and lightning assimilation and their impacts on agricultural production and fertilization. We will describe the integrated modeling system and evaluate simulated precipitation and N deposition along with other weather information (e.g. temperature, humidity) for 2011 over the conterminous U.S. at 12 km grids from a coupled WRF/CMAQ with MODIS and lightning assimilation

Assessing the shelf life of cost-efficient conservation plans for species at risk across gradients of agricultural land use.

PubMed

Robillard, Cassandra M; Kerr, Jeremy T

2017-08-01

High costs of land in agricultural regions warrant spatial prioritization approaches to conservation that explicitly consider land prices to produce protected-area networks that accomplish targets efficiently. However, land-use changes in such regions and delays between plan design and implementation may render optimized plans obsolete before implementation occurs. To measure the shelf life of cost-efficient conservation plans, we simulated a land-acquisition and restoration initiative aimed at conserving species at risk in Canada's farmlands. We accounted for observed changes in land-acquisition costs and in agricultural intensity based on censuses of agriculture taken from 1986 to 2011. For each year of data, we mapped costs and areas of conservation priority designated using Marxan. We compared plans to test for changes through time in the arrangement of high-priority sites and in the total cost of each plan. For acquisition costs, we measured the savings from accounting for prices during site selection. Land-acquisition costs and land-use intensity generally rose over time independent of inflation (24-78%), although rates of change were heterogeneous through space and decreased in some areas. Accounting for spatial variation in land price lowered the cost of conservation plans by 1.73-13.9%, decreased the range of costs by 19-82%, and created unique solutions from which to choose. Despite the rise in plan costs over time, the high conservation priority of particular areas remained consistent. Delaying conservation in these critical areas may compromise what optimized conservation plans can achieve. In the case of Canadian farmland, rapid conservation action is cost-effective, even with moderate levels of uncertainty in how to implement restoration goals. © 2016 Society for Conservation Biology.

25 CFR 166.815 - How will the BIA determine the amount of damages to Indian agricultural land?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-04-01

... 25 Indians 1 2013-04-01 2013-04-01 false How will the BIA determine the amount of damages to Indian agricultural land? 166.815 Section 166.815 Indians BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS, DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR LAND AND WATER GRAZING PERMITS Trespass Penalties, Damages, and Costs § 166.815 How will the BIA...

25 CFR 166.815 - How will the BIA determine the amount of damages to Indian agricultural land?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-04-01

... 25 Indians 1 2014-04-01 2014-04-01 false How will the BIA determine the amount of damages to Indian agricultural land? 166.815 Section 166.815 Indians BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS, DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR LAND AND WATER GRAZING PERMITS Trespass Penalties, Damages, and Costs § 166.815 How will the BIA...

25 CFR 166.815 - How will the BIA determine the amount of damages to Indian agricultural land?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-04-01

... 25 Indians 1 2012-04-01 2011-04-01 true How will the BIA determine the amount of damages to Indian agricultural land? 166.815 Section 166.815 Indians BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS, DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR LAND AND WATER GRAZING PERMITS Trespass Penalties, Damages, and Costs § 166.815 How will the BIA determine...

25 CFR 166.815 - How will the BIA determine the amount of damages to Indian agricultural land?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-04-01

... 25 Indians 1 2011-04-01 2011-04-01 false How will the BIA determine the amount of damages to Indian agricultural land? 166.815 Section 166.815 Indians BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS, DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR LAND AND WATER GRAZING PERMITS Trespass Penalties, Damages, and Costs § 166.815 How will the BIA...

25 CFR 166.815 - How will the BIA determine the amount of damages to Indian agricultural land?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-04-01

... 25 Indians 1 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false How will the BIA determine the amount of damages to Indian agricultural land? 166.815 Section 166.815 Indians BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS, DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR LAND AND WATER GRAZING PERMITS Trespass Penalties, Damages, and Costs § 166.815 How will the BIA...

Data model for the collaboration between land administration systems and agricultural land parcel identification systems.

PubMed

Inan, Halil Ibrahim; Sagris, Valentina; Devos, Wim; Milenov, Pavel; van Oosterom, Peter; Zevenbergen, Jaap

2010-12-01

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the European Union (EU) has dramatically changed after 1992, and from then on the CAP focused on the management of direct income subsidies instead of production-based subsidies. For this focus, Member States (MS) are expected to establish Integrated Administration and Control System (IACS), including a Land Parcel Identification System (LPIS) as the spatial part of IACS. Different MS have chosen different solutions for their LPIS. Currently, some MS based their IACS/LPIS on data from their Land Administration Systems (LAS), and many others use purpose built special systems for their IACS/LPIS. The issue with these different IACS/LPIS is that they do not have standardized structures; rather, each represents a unique design in each MS, both in the case of LAS based or special systems. In this study, we aim at designing a core data model for those IACS/LPIS based on LAS. For this purpose, we make use of the ongoing standardization initiatives for LAS (Land Administration Domain Model: LADM) and IACS/LPIS (LPIS Core Model: LCM). The data model we propose in this study implies the collaboration between LADM and LCM and includes some extensions. Some basic issues with the collaboration model are discussed within this study: registration of farmers, land use rights and farming limitations, geometry/topology, temporal data management etc. For further explanation of the model structure, sample instance level diagrams illustrating some typical situations are also included. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Factors associated with succession of abandoned agricultural lands along the Lower Missouri River, U.S.A

USGS Publications Warehouse

Thogmartin, W.E.; Gallagher, M.; Young, N.; Rohweder, J.J.; Knutson, M.G.

2009-01-01

The 1993 flood of the Missouri River led to the abandonment of agriculture on considerable land in the floodplain. This abandonment led to a restoration opportunity for the U.S. Federal Government, purchasing those lands being sold by farmers. Restoration of this floodplain is complicated, however, by an imperfect understanding of its past environmental and vegetative conditions. We examined environmental conditions associated with the current placement of young forests and wet prairies as a guide to the potential successional trajectory for abandoned agricultural land subject to flooding. We used Bayesian mixed-effects logistic regression to examine the effects of flood frequency, soil drainage, distance from the main channel, and elevation on whether a site was in wet prairie or in forest. Study site was included as a random effect, controlling for site-specific differences not measured in our study. We found, after controlling for the effect of site, that early-successional forest sites were closer to the river and at a lower elevation but occurred on drier soils than wet prairie. In a regulated river such as the lower Missouri River, wet prairie sites are relatively isolated from the main channel compared to early-successional forest, despite occurring on relatively moister soils. The modeled results from this study may be used to predict the potential successional fate of the acquired agricultural lands, and along with information on wildlife assemblages associated with wet prairie and forest can be used to predict potential benefit of these acquisitions to wildlife conservation. ?? 2009 Society for Ecological Restoration International.

Research Needs for Carbon Management in Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Uses

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Negra, C.; Lovejoy, T.; Ojima, D. S.; Ashton, R.; Havemann, T.; Eaton, J.

2009-12-01

Improved management of terrestrial carbon in agriculture, forestry, and other land use sectors is a necessary part of climate change mitigation. It is likely that governments will agree in Copenhagen in December 2009 to incentives for improved management of some forms of terrestrial carbon, including maintaining existing terrestrial carbon (e.g., avoiding deforestation) and creating new terrestrial carbon (e.g., afforestation, soil management). To translate incentives into changes in land management and terrestrial carbon stocks, a robust technical and scientific information base is required. All terrestrial carbon pools (and other greenhouse gases from the terrestrial system) that interact with the atmosphere at timescales less than centuries, and all land uses, have documented mitigation potential, however, most activity has focused on above-ground forest biomass. Despite research advances in understanding emissions reduction and sequestration associated with different land management techniques, there has not yet been broad-scale implementation of land-based mitigation activity in croplands, peatlands, grasslands and other land uses. To maximize long-term global terrestrial carbon volumes, further development of relevant data, methodologies and technologies are needed to complement policy and financial incentives. The Terrestrial Carbon Group, in partnership with UN-REDD agencies, the World Bank and CGIAR institutions, is reviewing literature, convening leading experts and surveying key research institutions to develop a Roadmap for Terrestrial Carbon: Research Needs for Implementation of Carbon Management in Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Uses. This work will summarize the existing knowledge base for emissions reductions and sequestration through land management as well as the current availability of tools and methods for measurement and monitoring of terrestrial carbon. Preliminary findings indicate a number of areas for future work. Enhanced information

Antimicrobial compounds (triclosan and triclocarban) in sewage sludges, and their presence in runoff following land application.

PubMed

Healy, M G; Fenton, O; Cormican, M; Peyton, D P; Ordsmith, N; Kimber, K; Morrison, L

2017-08-01

The reuse of treated municipal sewage ('biosolids') on land is an effective method to divert waste away from landfill and to use an alternative, low cost method of fertilisation. While legislation has mainly focused on the control of nutrient and metal application rates to land, other potentially harmful emerging contaminants (ECs) may be present in biosolids. Up to 80% of municipal sewage sludge is reused in agriculture in Ireland, which is currently the highest rate of reuse in Europe. However, unlike other countries, no study has been conducted on the presence of ECs across a range of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) in this country. This study evaluated the concentrations of two ECs in sewage sludge, the antimicrobials triclosan (TCS) and triclocarban (TCC), and their presence in surface runoff following land application in controlled rainfall simulation studies. In 16 WWTPs, concentrations of TCS and TCC were 0.61 and 0.08µgg -1 , which is at the lower end of concentrations measured in other countries. The concentrations in runoff post land application were also mainly below the limits of detection (90ngL -1 for TCS, 6ngL -1 for TCC), indicating that runoff is not a significant pathway of entry into the environment. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Land cover change or land-use intensification: simulating land system change with a global-scale land change model.

PubMed

van Asselen, Sanneke; Verburg, Peter H

2013-12-01

Land-use change is both a cause and consequence of many biophysical and socioeconomic changes. The CLUMondo model provides an innovative approach for global land-use change modeling to support integrated assessments. Demands for goods and services are, in the model, supplied by a variety of land systems that are characterized by their land cover mosaic, the agricultural management intensity, and livestock. Land system changes are simulated by the model, driven by regional demand for goods and influenced by local factors that either constrain or promote land system conversion. A characteristic of the new model is the endogenous simulation of intensification of agricultural management versus expansion of arable land, and urban versus rural settlements expansion based on land availability in the neighborhood of the location. Model results for the OECD Environmental Outlook scenario show that allocation of increased agricultural production by either management intensification or area expansion varies both among and within world regions, providing useful insight into the land sparing versus land sharing debate. The land system approach allows the inclusion of different types of demand for goods and services from the land system as a driving factor of land system change. Simulation results are compared to observed changes over the 1970-2000 period and projections of other global and regional land change models. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

APPLYING ECOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES TO LAND-USE DECISION MAKING IN AGRICULTURAL WATERSHEDS

EPA Science Inventory

The Ecological Society of America on sustainable Land Use has put together a set of ecological principles and guidelines to help in land-use decision making. The practical application of these principles and the associated guidelines to planning efforts in real landscapes will r...

Application of near-infrared image processing in agricultural engineering

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chen, Ming-hong; Zhang, Guo-ping; Xia, Hongxing

2009-07-01

Recently, with development of computer technology, the application field of near-infrared image processing becomes much wider. In this paper the technical characteristic and development of modern NIR imaging and NIR spectroscopy analysis were introduced. It is concluded application and studying of the NIR imaging processing technique in the agricultural engineering in recent years, base on the application principle and developing characteristic of near-infrared image. The NIR imaging would be very useful in the nondestructive external and internal quality inspecting of agricultural products. It is important to detect stored-grain insects by the application of near-infrared spectroscopy. Computer vision detection base on the NIR imaging would be help to manage food logistics. Application of NIR imaging promoted quality management of agricultural products. In the further application research fields of NIR image in the agricultural engineering, Some advices and prospect were put forward.

Evaluation of land capability and suitability for irrigated agriculture in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, UAE, using an integrated AHP-GIS model

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Aldababseh, A.; Temimi, M.; Maghelal, P.; Branch, O.; Wulfmeyer, V.

2017-12-01

The rapid economic development and high population growth in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have impacted utilization and management of agricultural land. The development of large-scale agriculture in unsuitable areas can severely impact groundwater resources in the UAE. More than 60% of UAE's water resources are being utilized by the agriculture, forestry, and urban greenery sectors. However, the contribution of the agricultural sector to the national GDP is negligible. Several programs have been introduced by the government aimed at achieving sustainable agriculture whilst preserving valuable water resources. Local subsistence farming has declined considerably during the past few years, due to low soil moisture content, sandy soil texture, lack of arable land, natural climatic disruptions, water shortages, and declined rainfall. The limited production of food and the continuing rise in the food prices on a global and local level are expected to increase low-income households' vulnerability to food insecurity. This research aims at developing a suitability index for the evaluation and prioritization of areas in the UAE for large-scale agriculture. The AHP-GIS integrated model developed in this study facilitates a step by step aggregation of a large number of datasets representing the most important criteria, and the generation of agricultural suitability and land capability maps. To provide the necessary criteria to run the model, a comprehensive geospatial database was built, including climate conditions, water potential, soil capabilities, topography, and land management. A hieratical structure is built as a decomposition structure that includes all criteria and sub-criteria used to define land suitability based on literature review and experts' opinions. Pairwise comparisons matrix are used to calculate criteria' weights. The GIS Model Builder function is used to integrate all spatial processes to model land suitability. In order to preserve some flexibility

Evaluation of land capability and suitability for irrigated agriculture in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, UAE, using an integrated AHP-GIS model

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Aldababseh, Amal; Temimi, Marouane; Maghelal, Praveen; Branch, Oliver; Wulfmeyer, Volker

2017-12-01

The rapid economic development and high population growth in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have impacted utilization and management of agricultural land. The development of large-scale agriculture in unsuitable areas can severely impact groundwater resources in the UAE. More than 60% of UAE's water resources are being utilized by the agriculture, forestry, and urban greenery sectors. However, the contribution of the agricultural sector to the national GDP is negligible. Several programs have been introduced by the government aimed at achieving sustainable agriculture whilst preserving valuable water resources. Local subsistence farming has declined considerably during the past few years, due to low soil moisture content, sandy soil texture, lack of arable land, natural climatic disruptions, water shortages, and declined rainfall. The limited production of food and the continuing rise in the food prices on a global and local level are expected to increase low-income households' vulnerability to food insecurity. This research aims at developing a suitability index for the evaluation and prioritization of areas in the UAE for large-scale agriculture. The AHP-GIS integrated model developed in this study facilitates a step by step aggregation of a large number of datasets representing the most important criteria, and the generation of agricultural suitability and land capability maps. To provide the necessary criteria to run the model, a comprehensive geospatial database was built, including climate conditions, water potential, soil capabilities, topography, and land management. A hierarchical structure is built as a decomposition structure that includes all criteria and sub-criteria used to define land suitability based on literature review and experts' opinions. Pairwise comparisons matrix are used to calculate criteria' weights. The GIS Model Builder function is used to integrate all spatial processes to model land suitability. In order to preserve some flexibility

Application of Terrestrial Microwave Remote Sensing to Agricultural Drought Monitoring

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Crow, W. T.; Bolten, J. D.

2014-12-01

Root-zone soil moisture information is a valuable diagnostic for detecting the onset and severity of agricultural drought. Current attempts to globally monitor root-zone soil moisture are generally based on the application of soil water balance models driven by observed meteorological variables. Such systems, however, are prone to random error associated with: incorrect process model physics, poor parameter choices and noisy meteorological inputs. The presentation will describe attempts to remediate these sources of error via the assimilation of remotely-sensed surface soil moisture retrievals from satellite-based passive microwave sensors into a global soil water balance model. Results demonstrate the ability of satellite-based soil moisture retrieval products to significantly improve the global characterization of root-zone soil moisture - particularly in data-poor regions lacking adequate ground-based rain gage instrumentation. This success has lead to an on-going effort to implement an operational land data assimilation system at the United States Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agricultural Service (USDA FAS) to globally monitor variations in root-zone soil moisture availability via the integration of satellite-based precipitation and soil moisture information. Prospects for improving the performance of the USDA FAS system via the simultaneous assimilation of both passive and active-based soil moisture retrievals derived from the upcoming NASA Soil Moisture Active/Passive mission will also be discussed.

Implementation of Sentinel-2 Data in the M4Land System for the Generation of Continuous Information Products in Agriculture

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Klug, P.; Schlenz, F.; Hank, T.; Migdall, S.; Weiß, I.; Danner, M.; Bach, H.; Mauser, W.

2016-08-01

The analysis system developed in the frame of the M4Land project (Model based, Multi-temporal, Multi scale and Multi sensorial retrieval of continuous land management information) has proven its capabilities of classifying crop type and creating products on the intensity of agricultural production using optical remote sensing data from Landsat and RapidEye. In this study, Sentinel-2 data is used for the first time together with Landsat 7 ETM+ and 8 OLI data within the M4Land analysis system to derive continuously crop type and the agricultural intensity of fields in an area north of Munich, Germany and the year 2015.

Object-Based Retro-Classification Of A Agricultural Land Use: A Case Study Of Irrigated Croplands

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dubovyk, Olena; Conrad, Christopher; Khamzina, Asia; Menz, Gunter

2013-12-01

Availability of the historical crop maps is necessary for the assessment of land management practices and their effectiveness, as well as monitoring of environmental impacts of land uses. Lack of accurate current and past land-use information forestalls assessment of the occurred changes and their consequences and, thus, complicates knowledge-driven agrarian policy development. At the same time, lack of the sampling dataset for the past years often restrict mapping of historical land use. We proposed a methodology for a retro-assessment of several crops, based on multitemporal Landsat 5 TM imagery and a limited sampling dataset. The overall accuracy of the retro-map was 81% while accuracies for specific crop classes varied from 60% to 93%. If further elaborated, the developed method could be a useful tool for the generation of historical data on agricultural land use.

The accumulation of heavy metals in agricultural land and the associated potential ecological risks in Shenzhen, China.

PubMed

Wu, Jiansheng; Song, Jing; Li, Weifeng; Zheng, Maokun

2016-01-01

Accumulation of heavy metals in agricultural land and their ecological risks are key issues in soil security studies. This study investigated the concentrations of six heavy metals--copper (Cu), zinc (Zn), lead (Pb), nickel (Ni), and chromium (Cr) in Shenzhen's agricultural lands and examined the potential hazards and possible sources of these metals. Eighty-two samples from agricultural topsoil were collected. Potential ecological risk index was used to calculate the potential risk of heavy metals. Principal component analysis (PCA) was applied to explore pollution sources of the metals. Finally, Kriging was used to predict the spatial distribution of the metals' potential ecological risks. The concentrations of the heavy metals were higher than their background values. Most of them presented little potential ecological risk, except for the heavy metal cadmium (Cd). Four districts (Longgang, Longhua, Pingshan, and Dapeng) exhibited some degree of potential risk, which tended to have more industries and road networks. Three major sources of heavy metals included geochemical processes, industrial pollutants, and traffic pollution. The heavy metal Cd was the main contributor to the pollution in agricultural land during the study period. It also poses the potential hazard for the future. High potential risk is closely related to industrial pollution and transportation. Since the 1980s, the sources of heavy metals have evolved from parent rock weathering, erosion, degradation of organics, and mineralization to human disturbances resulting in chemical changes in the soil.

A Landsat-based inventory procedure for agriculture in California

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Wall, S. L.; Thomas, R. W.; Brown, C. E.; Bauer, E. H.

1982-01-01

Agriculture, which occupies a vital position in the economy of the State of California, depends crucially on the available water. The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) is, therefore, greatly concerned with the total water requirements for agricultural applications. In view of the limitations of an area-limited, single-date survey system, the DWR has been cooperating with NASA and the University of California in a study of the applicability of Landsat imagery and digital data as an aid in making decisions concerning the management of water resources. Attention is given to a statewide inventory of irrigated land, computer-assisted estimation and mapping of irrigated land, and a crop type analysis using Landsat digital data.

Quantify the Biophysical and Socioeconomic Drivers of Changes in Forest and Agricultural Land in South and Southeast Asia

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Xu, X.; Jain, A. K.; Calvin, K. V.

2017-12-01

Due to the rapid socioeconomic development and biophysical factors, South and Southeast Asia (SSEA) has become a hotspot region of land use and land cover changes (LULCCs) in past few decades. Uncovering the drivers of LULCC is crucial for improving the understanding of LULCC processes. Due to the differences from spatiotemporal scales, methods and data sources in previous studies, the quantitative relationships between the LULCC activities and biophysical and socioeconomic drivers at the regional scale of SSEA have not been established. Here we present a comprehensive estimation of the biophysical and socioeconomic drivers of the major LULCC activities in SSEA: changes in forest and agricultural land. We used the Climate Change Initiative land cover data developed by European Space Agency to reveal the dynamics of forest and agricultural land from 1992 to 2015. Then we synthesized 200 publications about LULCC drivers at different spatial scales in SSEA to identify the major drivers of these LULCC activities. Corresponding representative variables of the major drivers were collected. The geographically weighted regression was employed to assess the spatiotemporally heterogeneous drivers of LULCC. Moreover, we validated our results with some national level case studies in SSEA. The results showed that both biophysical conditions such as terrain, soil, and climate, and socioeconomic factors such as migration, poverty, and economy played important roles in driving the changes of forest and agricultural land. The major drivers varied in different locations and periods. Our study integrated the bottom-up knowledge from local scale case studies with the top-down estimation of LULCC drivers, therefore generated more accurate and credible results. The identified biophysical and socioeconomic components could be used to improve the LULCC modelling and projection.

43 CFR 3101.4 - Lands covered by application to close lands to mineral leasing.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-10-01

... lands to mineral leasing. 3101.4 Section 3101.4 Public Lands: Interior Regulations Relating to Public Lands (Continued) BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT, DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR MINERALS MANAGEMENT (3000) OIL AND GAS LEASING Issuance of Leases § 3101.4 Lands covered by application to close lands to mineral...

43 CFR 3101.4 - Lands covered by application to close lands to mineral leasing.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-10-01

... lands to mineral leasing. 3101.4 Section 3101.4 Public Lands: Interior Regulations Relating to Public Lands (Continued) BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT, DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR MINERALS MANAGEMENT (3000) OIL AND GAS LEASING Issuance of Leases § 3101.4 Lands covered by application to close lands to mineral...

43 CFR 3101.4 - Lands covered by application to close lands to mineral leasing.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-10-01

... lands to mineral leasing. 3101.4 Section 3101.4 Public Lands: Interior Regulations Relating to Public Lands (Continued) BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT, DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR MINERALS MANAGEMENT (3000) OIL AND GAS LEASING Issuance of Leases § 3101.4 Lands covered by application to close lands to mineral...

Crop residue stabilization and application to agricultural and degraded soils: A review.

PubMed

Medina, Jorge; Monreal, Carlos; Barea, José Miguel; Arriagada, César; Borie, Fernando; Cornejo, Pablo

2015-08-01

Agricultural activities produce vast amounts of organic residues including straw, unmarketable or culled fruit and vegetables, post-harvest or post-processing wastes, clippings and residuals from forestry or pruning operations, and animal manure. Improper disposal of these materials may produce undesirable environmental (e.g. odors or insect refuges) and health impacts. On the other hand, agricultural residues are of interest to various industries and sectors of the economy due to their energy content (i.e., for combustion), their potential use as feedstock to produce biofuels and/or fine chemicals, or as a soil amendments for polluted or degraded soils when composted. Our objective is review new biotechnologies that could be used to manage these residues for land application and remediation of contaminated and eroded soils. Bibliographic information is complemented through a comprehensive review of the physico-chemical fundamental mechanisms involved in the transformation and stabilization of organic matter by biotic and abiotic soil components. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Studies and Application of Remote Sensing Retrieval Method of Soil Moisture Content in Land Parcel Units in Irrigation Area

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhu, H.; Zhao, H. L.; Jiang, Y. Z.; Zang, W. B.

2018-05-01

Soil moisture is one of the important hydrological elements. Obtaining soil moisture accurately and effectively is of great significance for water resource management in irrigation area. During the process of soil moisture content retrieval with multiremote sensing data, multi- remote sensing data always brings multi-spatial scale problems which results in inconformity of soil moisture content retrieved by remote sensing in different spatial scale. In addition, agricultural water use management has suitable spatial scale of soil moisture information so as to satisfy the demands of dynamic management of water use and water demand in certain unit. We have proposed to use land parcel unit as the minimum unit to do soil moisture content research in agricultural water using area, according to soil characteristics, vegetation coverage characteristics in underlying layer, and hydrological characteristic into the basis of study unit division. We have proposed division method of land parcel units. Based on multi thermal infrared and near infrared remote sensing data, we calculate the ndvi and tvdi index and make a statistical model between the tvdi index and soil moisture of ground monitoring station. Then we move forward to study soil moisture remote sensing retrieval method on land parcel unit scale. And the method has been applied in Hetao irrigation area. Results show that compared with pixel scale the soil moisture content in land parcel unit scale has displayed stronger correlation with true value. Hence, remote sensing retrieval method of soil moisture content in land parcel unit scale has shown good applicability in Hetao irrigation area. We converted the research unit into the scale of land parcel unit. Using the land parcel units with unified crops and soil attributes as the research units more complies with the characteristics of agricultural water areas, avoids the problems such as decomposition of mixed pixels and excessive dependence on high-resolution data

Applications of satellite 'hyper-sensing' in Chinese agriculture: Challenges and opportunities

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Onojeghuo, Alex Okiemute; Blackburn, George Alan; Huang, Jingfeng; Kindred, Daniel; Huang, Wenjiang

2018-02-01

Ensuring adequate food supplies to a large and increasing population continues to be the key challenge for China. Given the increasing integration of China within global markets for agricultural products, this issue is of considerable significance for global food security. Over the last 50 years, China has increased the production of its staple crops mainly by increasing yield per unit land area. However, this has largely been achieved through inappropriate agricultural practices, which have caused environmental degradation, with deleterious consequences for future agricultural productivity. Hence, there is now a pressing need to intensify agriculture in China using practices that are environmentally and economically sustainable. Given the dynamic nature of crops over space and time, the use of remote sensing technology has proven to be a valuable asset providing end-users in many countries with information to guide sustainable agricultural practices. Recently, the field has experienced considerable technological advancements reflected in the availability of 'hyper-sensing' (high spectral, spatial and temporal) satellite imagery useful for monitoring, modelling and mapping of agricultural crops. However, there still remains a significant challenge in fully exploiting such technologies for addressing agricultural problems in China. This review paper evaluates the potential contributions of satellite 'hyper-sensing' to agriculture in China and identifies the opportunities and challenges for future work. We perform a critical evaluation of current capabilities in satellite 'hyper-sensing' in agriculture with an emphasis on Chinese sensors. Our analysis draws on a series of in-depth examples based on recent and on-going projects in China that are developing 'hyper-sensing' approaches for (i) measuring crop phenology parameters and predicting yields; (ii) specifying crop fertiliser requirements; (iii) optimising management responses to abiotic and biotic stress in crops

Estimating the effects of potential climate and land use changes on hydrologic processes of a large agriculture dominated watershed

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Neupane, Ram P.; Kumar, Sandeep

2015-10-01

Land use and climate are two major components that directly influence catchment hydrologic processes, and therefore better understanding of their effects is crucial for future land use planning and water resources management. We applied Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) to assess the effects of potential land use change and climate variability on hydrologic processes of large agriculture dominated Big Sioux River (BSR) watershed located in North Central region of USA. Future climate change scenarios were simulated using average output of temperature and precipitation data derived from Special Report on Emission Scenarios (SRES) (B1, A1B, and A2) for end-21st century. Land use change was modeled spatially based on historic long-term pattern of agricultural transformation in the basin, and included the expansion of corn (Zea mays L.) cultivation by 2, 5, and 10%. We estimated higher surface runoff in all land use scenarios with maximum increase of 4% while expanding 10% corn cultivation in the basin. Annual stream discharge was estimated higher with maximum increase of 72% in SRES-B1 attributed from higher groundwater contribution of 152% in the same scenario. We assessed increased precipitation during spring season but the summer precipitation decreased substantially in all climate change scenarios. Similar to decreased summer precipitation, discharge of the BSR also decreased potentially affecting agricultural production due to reduced future water availability during crop growing season in the basin. However, combined effects of potential land use change with climate variability enhanced for higher annual discharge of the BSR. Therefore, these estimations can be crucial for implications of future land use planning and water resources management of the basin.

Agricultural land management options after the Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents: The articulation of science, technology, and society.

PubMed

Vandenhove, Hildegarde; Turcanu, Catrinel

2016-10-01

The options adopted for recovery of agricultural land after the Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents are compared by examining their technical and socio-economic aspects. The analysis highlights commonalities such as the implementation of tillage and other types of countermeasures and differences in approach, such as preferences for topsoil removal in Fukushima and the application of K fertilizers in Chernobyl. This analysis shows that the recovery approach needs to be context-specific to best suit the physical, social, and political environment. The complex nature of the decision problem calls for a formal process for engaging stakeholders and the development of adequate decision support tools. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2016;12:662-666. © 2016 SETAC. © 2016 SETAC.

The role of country-to-region assignments in global integrated modeling of energy, agriculture, land use, and climate

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kyle, P.; Patel, P.; Calvin, K. V.

2014-12-01

Global integrated assessment models used for understanding the linkages between the future energy, agriculture, and climate systems typically represent between 8 and 30 geopolitical macro-regions, balancing the benefits of geographic resolution with the costs of additional data collection, processing, analysis, and computing resources. As these models are continually being improved and updated in order to address new questions for the research and policy communities, it is worth examining the consequences of the country-to-region mapping schemes used for model results. This study presents an application of a data processing system built for the GCAM integrated assessment model that allows any country-to-region assignments, with a minimum of four geopolitical regions and a maximum of 185. We test ten different mapping schemes, including the specific mappings used in existing major integrated assessment models. We also explore the impacts of clustering nations into regions according to the similarity of the structure of each nation's energy and agricultural sectors, as indicated by multivariate analysis. Scenarios examined include a reference scenario, a low-emissions scenario, and scenarios with agricultural and buildings sector climate change impacts. We find that at the global level, the major output variables (primary energy, agricultural land use) are surprisingly similar regardless of regional assignments, but at finer geographic scales, differences are pronounced. We suggest that enhancing geographic resolution is advantageous for analysis of climate impacts on the buildings and agricultural sectors, due to the spatial heterogeneity of these drivers.

Seasonal persistence of faecal indicator organisms in soil following dairy slurry application to land by surface broadcasting and shallow injection.

PubMed

Hodgson, Christopher J; Oliver, David M; Fish, Robert D; Bulmer, Nicholas M; Heathwaite, A Louise; Winter, Michael; Chadwick, David R

2016-12-01

Dairy farming generates large volumes of liquid manure (slurry), which is ultimately recycled to agricultural land as a valuable source of plant nutrients. Different methods of slurry application to land exist; some spread the slurry to the sward surface whereas others deliver the slurry under the sward and into the soil, thus helping to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agriculture. The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of two slurry application methods (surface broadcast versus shallow injection) on the survival of faecal indicator organisms (FIOs) delivered via dairy slurry to replicated grassland plots across contrasting seasons. A significant increase in FIO persistence (measured by the half-life of E. coli and intestinal enterococci) was observed when slurry was applied to grassland via shallow injection, and FIO decay rates were significantly higher for FIOs applied to grassland in spring relative to summer and autumn. Significant differences in the behaviour of E. coli and intestinal enterococci over time were also observed, with E. coli half-lives influenced more strongly by season of application relative to the intestinal enterococci population. While shallow injection of slurry can reduce agricultural GHG emissions to air it can also prolong the persistence of FIOs in soil, potentially increasing the risk of their subsequent transfer to water. Awareness of (and evidence for) the potential for 'pollution-swapping' is critical in order to guard against unintended environmental impacts of agricultural management decisions. Copyright © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

A multi-tracer approach to assess fingerprints of nitrate in an aquifer under agriculturally used land

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Pasten-Zapata, Ernesto; Ledesma-Ruiz, Rogelio; Ramirez, Aldo; Harter, Thomas; Mahlknecht, Jürgen

2014-05-01

To effectively manage groundwater quality it is essential to understand sources of contamination and underground processes. The objective of the study was to identify sources and fate of nitrate pollution occurring in an aquifer underneath a sub-humid to humid region in NE Mexico which provides 10% of national citrus production. Nitrate isotopes and halide ratios were applied to understand nitrate sources and transformations in relation to land use/land cover. It was found that the study area is subject to diverse nitrate sources including organic waste and wastewater, synthetic fertilizers and soil processes. Animal manure and sewage from septic tanks were the causes of groundwater nitrate pollution within orchards and vegetable agriculture. Dairy activities within a radius of 1,000m from a sampling point increased nitrate pollution. Leachates from septic tanks incited nitrate pollution in residential areas. Soil nitrogen and animal waste were the sources of nitrate in groundwater under shrubland and grassland. Partial denitrification processes were evidenced. The denitrification process helped to attenuate nitrate concentration in the agricultural lands and grassland particularly during summer months.

Estimating potential wind erosion of agricultural lands in northern China using the Revised Wind Erosion Equation (RWEQ) and GIS

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

Fine materials emissions from severe wind-induced soil erosion have multiple impacts on land degradation and environmental pollution in the agro-pastoral ecotone in northern China (APEC). Assessment of wind erosion for the agricultural land management systems in APEC are needed to determine which sy...

25 CFR 166.812 - What are the penalties, damages, and costs payable by trespassers on Indian agricultural land?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-04-01

... 25 Indians 1 2013-04-01 2013-04-01 false What are the penalties, damages, and costs payable by trespassers on Indian agricultural land? 166.812 Section 166.812 Indians BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS, DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR LAND AND WATER GRAZING PERMITS Trespass Penalties, Damages, and Costs § 166.812 What...

25 CFR 166.812 - What are the penalties, damages, and costs payable by trespassers on Indian agricultural land?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-04-01

... 25 Indians 1 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false What are the penalties, damages, and costs payable by trespassers on Indian agricultural land? 166.812 Section 166.812 Indians BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS, DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR LAND AND WATER GRAZING PERMITS Trespass Penalties, Damages, and Costs § 166.812 What...

25 CFR 166.812 - What are the penalties, damages, and costs payable by trespassers on Indian agricultural land?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-04-01

... 25 Indians 1 2011-04-01 2011-04-01 false What are the penalties, damages, and costs payable by trespassers on Indian agricultural land? 166.812 Section 166.812 Indians BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS, DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR LAND AND WATER GRAZING PERMITS Trespass Penalties, Damages, and Costs § 166.812 What...

25 CFR 166.812 - What are the penalties, damages, and costs payable by trespassers on Indian agricultural land?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-04-01

... 25 Indians 1 2014-04-01 2014-04-01 false What are the penalties, damages, and costs payable by trespassers on Indian agricultural land? 166.812 Section 166.812 Indians BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS, DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR LAND AND WATER GRAZING PERMITS Trespass Penalties, Damages, and Costs § 166.812 What...

25 CFR 166.812 - What are the penalties, damages, and costs payable by trespassers on Indian agricultural land?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-04-01

... 25 Indians 1 2012-04-01 2011-04-01 true What are the penalties, damages, and costs payable by trespassers on Indian agricultural land? 166.812 Section 166.812 Indians BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS, DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR LAND AND WATER GRAZING PERMITS Trespass Penalties, Damages, and Costs § 166.812 What...

Development of the Land-use and Agricultural Management Practice web-Service (LAMPS) for generating crop rotations in space and time

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

Agroecosystem models and conservation planning tools require spatially and temporally explicit input data about agricultural management operations. The Land-use and Agricultural Management Practices web-Service (LAMPS) provides crop rotation and management information for user-specified areas within...

43 CFR 3816.2 - Application to open lands to location.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-10-01

... 43 Public Lands: Interior 2 2013-10-01 2013-10-01 false Application to open lands to location... LOCATION Mineral Locations in Reclamation Withdrawals § 3816.2 Application to open lands to location. Application to open lands to location under the Act may be filed by a person, association or corporation...

43 CFR 3816.2 - Application to open lands to location.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-10-01

... 43 Public Lands: Interior 2 2012-10-01 2012-10-01 false Application to open lands to location... LOCATION Mineral Locations in Reclamation Withdrawals § 3816.2 Application to open lands to location. Application to open lands to location under the Act may be filed by a person, association or corporation...

Crop modeling applications in agricultural water management

USGS Publications Warehouse

Kisekka, Isaya; DeJonge, Kendall C.; Ma, Liwang; Paz, Joel; Douglas-Mankin, Kyle R.

2017-01-01

This article introduces the fourteen articles that comprise the “Crop Modeling and Decision Support for Optimizing Use of Limited Water” collection. This collection was developed from a special session on crop modeling applications in agricultural water management held at the 2016 ASABE Annual International Meeting (AIM) in Orlando, Florida. In addition, other authors who were not able to attend the 2016 ASABE AIM were also invited to submit papers. The articles summarized in this introductory article demonstrate a wide array of applications in which crop models can be used to optimize agricultural water management. The following section titles indicate the topics covered in this collection: (1) evapotranspiration modeling (one article), (2) model development and parameterization (two articles), (3) application of crop models for irrigation scheduling (five articles), (4) coordinated water and nutrient management (one article), (5) soil water management (two articles), (6) risk assessment of water-limited irrigation management (one article), and (7) regional assessments of climate impact (two articles). Changing weather and climate, increasing population, and groundwater depletion will continue to stimulate innovations in agricultural water management, and crop models will play an important role in helping to optimize water use in agriculture.

Trends in Global Agricultural Land Use: Implications for Environmental Health and Food Security.

PubMed

Ramankutty, Navin; Mehrabi, Zia; Waha, Katharina; Jarvis, Larissa; Kremen, Claire; Herrero, Mario; Rieseberg, Loren H

2018-04-29

The eighteenth-century Malthusian prediction of population growth outstripping food production has not yet come to bear. Unprecedented agricultural land expansions since 1700, and technological innovations that began in the 1930s, have enabled more calorie production per capita than was ever available before in history. This remarkable success, however, has come at a great cost. Agriculture is a major cause of global environmental degradation. Malnutrition persists among large sections of the population, and a new epidemic of obesity is on the rise. We review both the successes and failures of the global food system, addressing ongoing debates on pathways to environmental health and food security. To deal with these challenges, a new coordinated research program blending modern breeding with agro-ecological methods is needed. We call on plant biologists to lead this effort and help steer humanity toward a safe operating space for agriculture.

43 CFR 2625.2 - Applications in conflict with swamp-land claims.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-10-01

... 43 Public Lands: Interior 2 2012-10-01 2012-10-01 false Applications in conflict with swamp-land...) BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT, DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR LAND RESOURCE MANAGEMENT (2000) STATE GRANTS Swamp-land Grants § 2625.2 Applications in conflict with swamp-land claims. Applications adverse to the State...

43 CFR 2625.2 - Applications in conflict with swamp-land claims.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-10-01

... 43 Public Lands: Interior 2 2013-10-01 2013-10-01 false Applications in conflict with swamp-land...) BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT, DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR LAND RESOURCE MANAGEMENT (2000) STATE GRANTS Swamp-land Grants § 2625.2 Applications in conflict with swamp-land claims. Applications adverse to the State...

43 CFR 2625.2 - Applications in conflict with swamp-land claims.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-10-01

... 43 Public Lands: Interior 2 2014-10-01 2014-10-01 false Applications in conflict with swamp-land...) BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT, DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR LAND RESOURCE MANAGEMENT (2000) STATE GRANTS Swamp-land Grants § 2625.2 Applications in conflict with swamp-land claims. Applications adverse to the State...

43 CFR 2625.2 - Applications in conflict with swamp-land claims.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-10-01

... 43 Public Lands: Interior 2 2011-10-01 2011-10-01 false Applications in conflict with swamp-land...) BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT, DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR LAND RESOURCE MANAGEMENT (2000) STATE GRANTS Swamp-land Grants § 2625.2 Applications in conflict with swamp-land claims. Applications adverse to the State...

Estimation of Agricultural Pesticide Use in Drainage Basins Using Land Cover Maps and County Pesticide Data. National Water-Quality Assessment Program

DTIC Science & Technology

2005-01-01

National Water-Quality Assessment Program NCFAP National Center for Food and Agricultural Policy NLCD 92 National Land Cover Data 1992 NLCDe 92 enhanced...cropland acreage and state agricultural pesticide use in the early to mid-1990s reported by the National Center for Food and Agricultural Policy (NCFAP...Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS). [17]. The National Center for Food and Agricultural Policy (NCFAP) is a

Land Application of Biosolids

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Recycling biosolids through land application serves several purposes. It improves soil properties, such as texture and water holding capacity, which make conditions more favorable for root growth and increases the drought tolerance of vegetation.

[Physicochemical properties of Guanting Reservoir sediment and its land application].

PubMed

Su, De-Chun; Hu, Yu-Feng; Song, Chong-Wei; Wu, Fei-Long; Liu, Pei-Bin

2007-06-01

Surface sediment of Guanting Reservoir was dredged up and dewatered in field, and pollutant and physicochemical characterizations were mensurated. The stabilization and agricultural land use of the sediment was also studied in the field. Results showed that the sediments have a higher clay content, bulk density (1.89 g x cm(-3)) and lower porosity (23.8%), higher deoxidize material and available nitrogen, phosphorus concentration. Heavy metal and organochlorinated pesticides concentration was lower than the class II of national standard for soil. Stabilized the sediment with sand soil and straw could improve the physical property and decrease the concentration of deoxidize material and available nitrogen, phosphorus. Stabilized sediment could be a suitable medium for alfalfa, tree and corn growth and used for agricultural land.

Evaluation of current state of agricultural land using problem-oriented fuzzy indicators in GIS environment

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

Current state of agricultural lands is defined under influence of processes in soil, plants and atmosphere and is described by observation data, complicated models and subjective opinion of experts. Problem-oriented indicators summarize this information in useful form for decision of the same specif...

Agricultural land use and water quality in the upper St. Joseph River basin, Michigan

USGS Publications Warehouse

Cummings, T. Ray

1978-01-01

Land use in the upper St. Joseph River basin of south-central Michigan is primarily agricultural. In the 144-square-mile area, the chemical and physical characteristics of water are determined by the climate and soils, as well as by land conservation practices. Municipal waste discharges affect water quality at some locations, as do the larger lakes and ponds. Data indicate that mean discharge from the basin is 135 cubic feet per second. About half this flow is contributed to the St. Joseph River by three major tributaries: Beebe Creek (36 cubic feet per second); Sand Creek (24 cubic feet per second); and Soap Creek (13 cubic feet per second). Runoff from 21 drainage areas delineated for the investigation ranged from 0.22 to 4.07 cubic feet per second per square mile; both the higher and lower values are largely the result of naturally occurring inter- and intrabasin transfers of water.Suspended-sediment concentrations are low throughout the basin, rarely exceeding 100 milligrams per liter. Mean concentrations at four daily sampling stations on the major tributaries and on the St. Joseph River ranged from 9.7 milligrams per liter to 38 milligrams per liter. The maximum sediment yield was 182 pounds per acre per year. Deposition of sediment in five of the 21 areas resulted in a net loss of sediment transported, and thus “negative” yields.Nitrogen and phosphorus concentrations do not vary greatly from site to site. Mean concentrations of total nitrogen at downstream sites on Beebe, Sand, and Soap Creeks, and on the St. Joseph River ranged from 1.5 to 1.8 milligrams per liter. About 90 percent of all nitrogen, and 66 percent of all phosphorus, is transported in solution. Land used principally for agriculture has a mean total nitrogen yield of 4.9 pounds per acre per year and a mean total phosphorus yield of 0.13 pounds per year. A comparison of total nitrogen and total phosphorus yields with type of agricultural use showed few relationships; nitrogen yield

Quantifying the climate-change consequences of shifting land use between forest and agriculture.

PubMed

Kirschbaum, Miko U F; Saggar, Surinder; Tate, Kevin R; Thakur, Kailash P; Giltrap, Donna L

2013-11-01

Land-use change between forestry and agriculture can cause large net emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), and the respective land uses associated with forest and pasture lead to different on-going emission rates of methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) and different surface albedo. Here, we quantify the overall net radiative forcing and consequent temperature change from specified land-use changes. These different radiative agents cause radiative forcing of different magnitudes and with different time profiles. Carbon emission can be very high when forests are cleared. Upon reforestation, the former carbon stocks can be regained, but the rate of carbon sequestration is much slower than the rate of carbon loss from deforestation. A production forest may undergo repeated harvest and regrowth cycles, each involving periods of C emission and release. Agricultural land, especially grazed pastures, have much higher N2O emissions than forests because of their generally higher nitrogen status that can be further enhanced through intensification of the nitrogen cycle by animal excreta. Because of its longevity in the atmosphere, N2O concentrations build up nearly linearly over many decades. CH4 emissions can be very high from ruminant animals grazing on pastures. Because of its short atmospheric longevity, the CH4 concentration from a converted pasture accumulates for only a few decades before reaching a new equilibrium when emission of newly produced CH4 is balanced by the oxidation of previously emitted CH4. Albedo changes generally have the opposite radiative forcing from those of the GHGs and partly negate their radiative forcing. Overall and averaged over 100 years, CO2 is typically responsible for 50% of radiative forcing and CH4 and N2O for 25% each. Albedo changes can negate the radiative forcing by the three greenhouse gases by 20-25%. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Fate of triclosan in agricultural soils after biosolid applications

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

Triclosan (5-chloro-2-[2,4-dichloro-phenoxy]-phenol (TCS) is a bactericidal compound that is added to a wide variety of household and personal care products. The consumer use of these products releases TCS into urban wastewater and this compound ends up in the environment when agricultural land is ...

New Jersey Land-Use Planning Techniques and Legislation. Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin AE-338.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Schneider, Lee D.

In response to recent urban to rural migration trends and the development of rather piecemeal land use policies and practices by local, state, and Federal decision makers, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has established a regional project (NE-78) and this report reflects the first of three major project objectives (to describe and appraise…

Linking river nutrient concentrations to land use and rainfall in a paddy agriculture-urban area gradient watershed in southeast China.

PubMed

Xia, Yongqiu; Ti, Chaopu; She, Dongli; Yan, Xiaoyuan

2016-10-01

The effects of land use and land-use changes on river nutrient concentrations are not well understood, especially in the watersheds of developing countries that have a mixed land use of rice paddy fields and developing urban surfaces. Here, we present a three-year study of a paddy agricultural-urban area gradient watershed in southeast China. The annual anthropogenic nitrogen (N) input from the agricultural region to the urban region was high, yet the results showed that the monthly nutrient concentrations in the river were low in the rainy seasons. The nutrient concentrations decreased continuously as the river water passed through the traditional agriculture region (TAR; paddy rice and wheat rotation) and increased substantially in the city region (CR). The traditional agricultural reference region exported most of the nutrient loads at high flows (>1mmd(-1)), the intensified agricultural region (IAR, aquaculture and poultry farming) exported most of the nutrient loads at moderate flows (between 0.5 and 1mmd(-1)), and the CR reference area exported most of the nutrient loads under low to moderate flows. We developed a statistical model to link variations in the nutrient concentrations to the proportion of land-use types and rainfall. The statistical results showed that impervious surfaces, which we interpret as a proxy for urban activities including sewage disposal, were the most important drivers of nutrient concentrations, whereas water surfaces accounted for a substantial proportion of the nutrient sinks. Therefore, to efficiently reduce water pollution, sewage from urban areas must be addressed as a priority, although wetland restoration could also achieve substantial pollutant removal. Copyright © 2016. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Real options analysis for land use management: Methods, application, and implications for policy.

PubMed

Regan, Courtney M; Bryan, Brett A; Connor, Jeffery D; Meyer, Wayne S; Ostendorf, Bertram; Zhu, Zili; Bao, Chenming

2015-09-15

Discounted cash flow analysis, including net present value is an established way to value land use and management investments which accounts for the time-value of money. However, it provides a static view and assumes passive commitment to an investment strategy when real world land use and management investment decisions are characterised by uncertainty, irreversibility, change, and adaptation. Real options analysis has been proposed as a better valuation method under uncertainty and where the opportunity exists to delay investment decisions, pending more information. We briefly review the use of discounted cash flow methods in land use and management and discuss their benefits and limitations. We then provide an overview of real options analysis, describe the main analytical methods, and summarize its application to land use investment decisions. Real options analysis is largely underutilized in evaluating land use decisions, despite uncertainty in policy and economic drivers, the irreversibility and sunk costs involved. New simulation methods offer the potential for overcoming current technical challenges to implementation as demonstrated with a real options simulation model used to evaluate an agricultural land use decision in South Australia. We conclude that considering option values in future policy design will provide a more realistic assessment of landholder investment decision making and provide insights for improved policy performance. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Impacts of Climate Change and Land use Changes on Land Surface Radiation and Energy Budgets

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

Land surface radiation and energy budgets are critical to address a variety of scientific and application issues related to climate trends, weather predictions, hydrologic and biogeophysical modeling, and the monitoring of ecosystem health and agricultural crops. This is an introductory paper to t...

Gemas: Geochemical mapping of the agricultural and grasing land soils of Europe

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Reimann, Clemens; Fabian, Karl; Birke, Manfred; Demetriades, Alecos; Matschullat, Jörg; Gemas Project Team

2017-04-01

Geochemical Mapping of Agricultural and grazing land Soil (GEMAS) is a cooperative project between the Geochemistry Expert Group of EuroGeoSurveys and Eurometaux. During 2008 and until early 2009, a total of 2108 samples of agricultural (ploughed land, 0-20 cm, Ap-samples) and 2023 samples of grazing land (0-10 cm, Gr samples)) soil were collected at a density of 1 site/2500 km2 each from 33 European countries, covering an area of 5,600,000 km2. All samples were analysed for 52 chemical elements following an aqua regia extraction, 42 elements by XRF (total), and soil properties, like CEC, TOC, pH (CaCl2), following tight external quality control procedures. In addition, the Ap soil samples were analysed for 57 elements in a mobile metal ion (MMI®) extraction, Pb isotopes, magnetic susceptibility and total C, N and S. The results demonstrate that robust geochemical maps of Europe can be constructed based on low density sampling, the two independent sample materials, Ap and Gr, show very comparable distribution patterns across Europe. At the European scale, element distribution patterns are governed by natural processes, most often a combination of geology and climate. The geochemical maps reflect most of the known metal mining districts in Europe. In addition, a number of new anomalies emerge that may indicate mineral potential. The size of some anomalies is such that they can only be detected when mapping at the continental scale. For some elements completely new geological settings are detected. An anthropogenic impact at a much more local scale is discernible in the immediate vicinity of some major European cities (e.g., London, Paris) and some metal smelters. The impact of agriculture is visible for Cu (vineyard soils) and for some further elements only in the mobile metal ion (MMI) extraction. For several trace elements deficiency issues are a larger threat to plant, animal and finally human health at the European scale than toxicity. Taking the famous step

Combined impacts of land use and soil property changes on soil erosion in a mollisol area under long-term agricultural development.

PubMed

Ouyang, Wei; Wu, Yuyang; Hao, Zengchao; Zhang, Qi; Bu, Qingwei; Gao, Xiang

2018-02-01

Soil erosion exhibits special characteristics in the process of agricultural development. Understanding the combined impacts of land use and soil property changes on soil erosion, especially in the area under long-term agricultural cultivations, is vital to watershed agricultural and soil management. This study investigated the temporal-spatial patterns of the soil erosion based on a modified version of Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) and conducted a soil erosion contribution analysis. The land use data were interpreted from Landsat series images, and soil properties were obtained from field sampling, laboratory tests and SPAW (Soil-Plant-Atmosphere-Water) model calculations. Over a long period of agricultural development, the average erosion modulus decreased from 187.7tkm -2 a -1 in 1979 to 158.4tkm -2 a -1 in 2014. The land use types were transformed mainly in the reclamation of paddy fields and the shrinking of wetlands on a large scale. Most of the soils were converted to loam from silty or clay loam and the saturated hydraulic conductivity (K s ) of most soil types decreased by 1.11% to 43.6%. The rapidly increasing area of 49.8km 2 of paddy fields together with the moderate decrease of 14.0km 2 of forests, as well as K s values explained 87.4% of the total variance in soil erosion. Although changes in soil physical and water characteristics indicated that soil erosion loads should have become higher, the upsurge in paddy fields played an important role in mitigating soil erosion in this study area. These results demonstrated that land use changes had more significant impacts than soil property changes on soil erosion. This study suggested that rational measures should be taken to extend paddy fields and control the dry land farming. These findings will benefit watershed agricultural targeting and management. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Co-benefits, trade-offs, barriers and policies for greenhouse gas mitigation in the agriculture, forestry and other land use (AFOLU) sector.

PubMed

Bustamante, Mercedes; Robledo-Abad, Carmenza; Harper, Richard; Mbow, Cheikh; Ravindranat, Nijavalli H; Sperling, Frank; Haberl, Helmut; Pinto, Alexandre de Siqueira; Smith, Pete

2014-10-01

The agriculture, forestry and other land use (AFOLU) sector is responsible for approximately 25% of anthropogenic GHG emissions mainly from deforestation and agricultural emissions from livestock, soil and nutrient management. Mitigation from the sector is thus extremely important in meeting emission reduction targets. The sector offers a variety of cost-competitive mitigation options with most analyses indicating a decline in emissions largely due to decreasing deforestation rates. Sustainability criteria are needed to guide development and implementation of AFOLU mitigation measures with particular focus on multifunctional systems that allow the delivery of multiple services from land. It is striking that almost all of the positive and negative impacts, opportunities and barriers are context specific, precluding generic statements about which AFOLU mitigation measures have the greatest promise at a global scale. This finding underlines the importance of considering each mitigation strategy on a case-by-case basis, systemic effects when implementing mitigation options on the national scale, and suggests that policies need to be flexible enough to allow such assessments. National and international agricultural and forest (climate) policies have the potential to alter the opportunity costs of specific land uses in ways that increase opportunities or barriers for attaining climate change mitigation goals. Policies governing practices in agriculture and in forest conservation and management need to account for both effective mitigation and adaptation and can help to orient practices in agriculture and in forestry towards global sharing of innovative technologies for the efficient use of land resources. Different policy instruments, especially economic incentives and regulatory approaches, are currently being applied however, for its successful implementation it is critical to understand how land-use decisions are made and how new social, political and economic forces

Estimation of phosphorous loss from agricultural land in the Heartland region of the U.S.A. using the APEX model

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

Accurate phosphorus (P) loss estimation from agricultural land is important for development of best management practices and protection of water quality. The Agricultural Policy/Environmental Extender (APEX) model is a powerful simulation model designed to simulate edge-of-field water, sediment, an...

Spatial Modeling of Agricultural Land-Use Change at Global Scale

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Meiyappan, Prasanth; Dalton, Michael; O'Neill, Brian C.; Jain, Atul K.

2013-12-01

regions, and (2) the impacts of various driving factors on shaping the cropland and pastureland patterns over the 20th century. Specifically, we focus on the causes of changes in land-use patterns in certain key regions of the world, such as the abandonment of cropland in the eastern US and a subsequent expansion to the mid-west US. This presentation will focus on the scientific basis behind the developed framework and motivations behind selecting specific statistical techniques to implement the scientific theory. Specifically, we will highlight the application of recently developed statistical techniques that are highly efficient in dealing with problems such as spatial autocorrelation and multicollinearity that are common in land-change studies. However, these statistical techniques have largely been confined to medical literature. We will present the validation results and an example application of the developed framework within an IAM. The presented framework provides a benchmark for long-term spatial modeling of land use that will benefit the IAM, land use and the Earth system modeling communities.

An Initial Analysis of LANDSAT-4 Thematic Mapper Data for the Discrimination of Agricultural, Forested Wetland, and Urban Land Covers

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Quattrochi, D. A.

1984-01-01

An initial analysis of LANDSAT 4 Thematic Mapper (TM) data for the discrimination of agricultural, forested wetland, and urban land covers is conducted using a scene of data collected over Arkansas and Tennessee. A classification of agricultural lands derived from multitemporal LANDSAT Multispectral Scanner (MSS) data is compared with a classification of TM data for the same area. Results from this comparative analysis show that the multitemporal MSS classification produced an overall accuracy of 80.91% while the TM classification yields an overall classification accuracy of 97.06% correct.