land use Articles
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Agricultural land use and economic growth: environmental implications of the Kuznets curve
The expansion of agricultural land use has been associated with the loss of environmental amenities, such as biological diversity, ecosystem services, and aesthetic values. Here, the determinants of agricultural land use are examined, drawing on panel data from 121 countries over the period 1965–1987. The analysis finds that an inverted U curve (or "environmental Kuznets curve") describes the ...
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Public perceptions of hybrid poplar plantations: trees as an alternative crop
This paper describes the differences between expert and public perceptions of plantation forestry and calls for greater public participation in the development and establishment of plantations. The debate over the social acceptability of varying land-uses is essentially a debate over how land is valued and the effects of land-use change on local peoples. This study reports the findings from 31 ...
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Recycling of macronutrients from sea to land using mussel cultivation
The presence of diarrheic shellfish toxins (DST) has been the main obstacle to mussel cultivation in Sweden. Monitoring of DST concentrations in mussels by HPLC for 12 years has shown great geographical and seasonal differences. Furthermore, individual mussels on the same farming strip may differ by a factor as great as 16. DST levels are usually low in summer, rise in September, remain high in ...
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Feasibility and barriers to entry for small-scale CDM forest carbon projects: a case study from the northeastern peruvian amazon
The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol purports to support sustainable development in host developing countries whilst simultaneously achieving climate change mitigation. This paper uses a case study in Peru to analyze how existing legal and policy structures of the CDM influence its ability to meet these dual aims. It focuses on the CDM’s small-scale modalities, which have ...
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Soil nitrogen mineralization and microbial biomass relation, and nitrogen conservation in humid-tropics
The reciprocal relationship between microbial biomass C (MB-C) and net nitrification in the seasonally dry tropics can reduce nitrate (NO3–) leaching losses, and be regarded as a mechanism of N conservation. The objective of the present study was to determine the influence of high seasonally prolonged rainfall on water-filled pore space (WFPS), net-nitrification rates (NNR), net-ammonification ...
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An analysis of groundwater irrigation expansion in India
This paper suggest that groundwater irrigation expansion in India is driven mainly by the population pressure and not necessarily dependent on the change in surface water irrigation. However, in the districts irrigated by Groundwater only, our findings indicate that the marginal effect of groundwater on Gross Irrigated Area (GIA) is lower than that in the district endowed with both surface and ...
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Costs of land use for conservation in Central Europe and future agricultural policy
In Germany and other countries of Central Europe, biodiversity in the rural countryside is best conserved by applying traditional land-use methods, such as low input sheep and cattle grazing. These are very uneconomical according to conventional accounting and can only be carried out at present by benefitting heavily from the subsidy schemes of the CAP. Trade liberalisation demands the abolition ...
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Sustainable limits for golf course development in a tourist destination
This paper focuses on the sustainable limits of golf courses that could develop into a tourist destination. We consider that any future development for golf courses must be economically profitable and always committed to the environment. To this end we analyse the most important conditioning aspects: first, the economic profit, because the golf courses are business and second, two environmental ...
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Interactive Forestry Atlas of Cameroon (version 3.0)
The Interactive Forest Atlas of Cameroon is a living forest information system hosted in the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife (MINFOF) and supported by a joint team including members from MINFOF and the World Resources Institute (WRI). Built on a geographic information system (GIS) platform, the atlas provides unbiased and up-to-date information on the Cameroonian forest sector. One of its main ...
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An application of land suitability evaluation for FTDP: a fuzzy MCDM approach
The main objective of this paper is to carry out Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) to arrive at the best alternative by accounting for uncertainties and spatial variability in the various elements. The present paper focuses on addressing uncertainty in the process of land suitability evaluation for horticultural projects area (mountains area in Syria). In this context, both fuzzy AHP and ...
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Farm models and economic valuation in the context of multifunctionality: a review of approaches from France, Germany, The Netherlands and Portugal
Multifunctionality of Agriculture (MFA) is a concept that supports the recognition of complex interdependencies between different resources, production processes and outputs of agricultural land use. Political decision making within a sustainable development frame requires extensive information about these interrelationships in order to analyse the impact of implemented policies and to assess ...
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Detection of biotic responses to urbanization using fish assemblages from small streams of western Georgia, USA
We examined relationships between stream fish assemblages and land use alteration associated with urbanization in 15 lower Piedmont watersheds along an urbanization gradient north of Columbus, western Georgia. Based on land cover data from 2002 Landsat 7 TM imagery aerial photos, streams drained watersheds that were largely urban, developing (suburban), agricultural (pasture), managed pine ...
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Mapping of forest cover and assessment of ecosystems and ecosystem services related to local livelihoods
The municipality of Santa Cruz del Quiché, located in the Quiché Department of Guatemala, is characterized by degraded natural resources and a population highly vulnerable to climate change impacts. As part of the Partners for Resilience programme, Guatemalan Red Cross and Wetlands International conducted a study to map the forest cover and ecosystems of the Cucubá river ...
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Distribution of neotropical migratory bird species across an urbanizing landscape
Urbanization leads to long-term modification of landscapes by habitat loss, fragmentation, and the creation of new habitats. Species’ distributions respond to these modifications of habitat availability, but the combination of parameters and scale at which habitat alteration most strongly influences species distributions is poorly understood. We evaluated responses of neotropical migratory birds, ...
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RSB votes to approve low iLUC risk biomass criteria and compliance indicators
On June 1, 2015, the Roundtable on Sustainable Biomaterials (RSB) voted to pass the new Low iLUC Risk Biomass Criteria and Compliance Indicators standard. The standard was approved as an optional module for those undergoing RSB certification, and will be used to show that biomass is produced with low indirect land use change (iLUC), resulting in little impact on food production and biodiversity. ...
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Likely impacts of biofuel expansion on Midwest land and water resources
US ethanol production should exceed 12 billion gallons by 2010, and EISA 2007 mandates 36 billion gallons by 2022, diverting one-third of corn to ethanol and 13% of soybean production to biodiesel. Increased demand will ricochet through other agricultural sectors and alter production patterns and land use in the Corn Belt. This paper discusses effects of biofuel expansion on land and water ...
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Global transcriptomic profiling in barramundi Lates calcarcifer from rivers impacted by differing agricultural land‐uses
Most catchments discharging into the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) lagoon have elevated loads of suspended sediment, nutrients, and pesticides, including photosystem II inhibiting herbicides, associated with upstream agricultural land use. To investigate potential impacts of declining water quality on fish physiology, RNASeq was used to characterize and compare the hepatic transcriptomes of ...
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Funding for forests: the potential of public ballot measures
A variety of measures exist to prevent deforestation or forest conversion to other land uses. Some of these measures, such as purchasing land outright for conservation or purchasing conservation easements, are designed to permanently protect forests by precluding future residential or commercial development on the tract of land. But these approaches all require money. One approach to raising ...
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Information and the subsistence farmer's decision to deforest in Latin America
This paper investigates the role that information plays in the decision by subsistence farmers to deforest, and generates a body of evidence from three Latin American studies demonstrating that information about agricultural techniques and general agricultural education are important to tropical land-use decisions. Based on a growing body of literature, inadequately defined property rights ...
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Eight nonnative plants in western Oregon forests: Associations with environment and management
Nonnative plants have tremendous ecological and economic impacts on plant communities globally, but comprehensive data on the distribution and ecological relationships of individual species is often scarce or nonexistent. The objective of this study was to assess the influence of vegetation type, climate, topography, and management history on the distribution and abundance of eight selected ...
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