11 Books found
Springer-Verlag GmbH Books
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A Biomass Future for the North American Great Plains
The Great Plains of North America is a major global breadbasket but its agriculture is stressed by drought, heat spells, damaging winds, soil erosion and declining ground water resources. The great inter-annual variability in crop production and declining rural populations weaken an economy already highly dependent upon government support. The region’s ecological fragility and economic weakness is attributed by many to removal of its original ...
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Cash Crop Halophytes Recent Studies
The last decade has witnessed a sharp increase in losses of arable land from salinisation. In Europe this is especially hard for the farmers in the Mediterranean countries where irrigation farming is very common and many fields have reached a soil salinity level which prevents farmers from raising common crops. This is a world wide problem in dry and semi-dry tropical regions. The losses in soil fertility in certain regions is so severe that ...
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The Aral Sea Encyclopedia
The situation of the Aral Sea is known as one of the worst man-made environmental crises of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Many have seen the satellite photos evidencing the startling shrinkage and deterioration of the sea, as it was a few decades ago and how it appears today. Whereas the Aral Sea was the world’s fourth-largest inland body of water in 1960, it has now shrunk to a small fraction of that within three increasingly saline ...
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Water Requirements for Irrigation and the Environment
Irrigated agriculture produces about 40% of all food and fibre on about 16% of all cropped land. As such, irrigated agriculture is a productive user of resources; both in terms of yield per cropped area and in yield per volume of water consumed. Many irrigation projects, however, use (divert or withdraw) much more water than consumed by the crop. The non-consumed fraction of the water may cause a variety of undesirable effects ranging from ...
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Policy Reforms and Agriculture Development in Central Asia
The Central Asian republics – Kazakhstan, the Krygyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan – are transitioning from centrally planned economies to market-oriented systems. This volume addresses the process and policy reforms these countries face and how the reforms may impact agricultural development in a region that has experienced varying degrees of economic growth over the fifteen years since independence. It offers expert policy ...
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Crop Field Response to Deficit Irrigation
With limited water resources to divert for agriculture, innovations aimed at increasing efficient use of irrigation water must be developed. Among the means to survive the consequences of water scarcity and yet to sustain high crop production under irrigated agriculture with decreasing share of water, deficient irrigation programs are highly valued and their adoption is widely promoted. However, to ensure that the same level of crop yields ...
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Environment in the 21st Century and New Development Patterns
Economic growth after World War II was made possible through dramatic increases in the use of material resources and energy. It is apparent that current development patterns followed by industrialized countries are causing serious environmental problems and that they are neither ecologically nor socially sustainable. In recent years, many Asian developing countries, which have suffered from poverty for decades, are experiencing high rates ...
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Salinity: Environment - Plants - Molecules
This book addresses the responses of plants to salinity. Although salinity is a common environmental factor for marine organisms, for the majority of land plants high soil salinity is an environmental constraint that limits growth, productivity, and normal plant functions. Salinity is particularly widespread in arid/semiarid climates where crop production depends on irrigation. A comprehensive approach is taken in this book. After discussing ...
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Sustainability of Irrigated Agriculture
Irrigated agriculture and the use of water resources in agriculture face the challenges of sustainable development. Research has advanced our knowledge of water use by crops, soil-water-solutes interactions, and the engineering and managerial tools needed to mobilize, convey, distribute, control and apply water for agricultural production. However, the achievements booked in user practice have revealed the need for new developments in the ...
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The Inter-Relationship Between Irrigation, Drainage and the Environment in the Aral Sea Basin
The irrigated area in the Aral Sea basin totals about 7.5 million ha. Part of the water supplied to this area is consumed by the irrigated crops; the remainder drains into the groundwater basin, downstream depressions, or back into the rivers. But the water accumulates salts and chemicals during its period of use, causing environmental problems which this book discusses. The natural discharge capacity of the groundwater basin is ...
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Towards the Rational Use of High Salinity Tolerant Plants
The Symposium on high salinity tolerant plants, held at the University of Al Ain in December 1990, dealt primarily with plants tolerating salinity levels exceeding that of ocean water and which at the same time are promising for utilization in agriculture or forestry. These plants could be very useful for a country like the UAE where fresh water resources are very scarce and the groundwater available at some places is already very salty. ...