Ordenación de tierras
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Modeling vegetation heights from high resolution stereo aerial photography: An application for broad-scale rangeland monitoring
Vertical vegetation structure in rangeland ecosystems can be a valuable indicator for monitoring rangeland health or progress toward management objectives because of its importance for assessing riparian areas, post-fire recovery, wind erosion, and wildlife habitat. Federal land management agencies are directed to monitor and manage rangelands at landscapes scales, but traditional field methods for measuring vegetation heights are often too costly and time consuming to apply at these broad scales.
Precision, Repeatability, and Efficiency of Two Canopy-Cover Estimate Methods in Northern Great Plains Vegetation
Government agencies are subject to increasing public scrutiny of land management practices. Consequently, rigorous, yet efficient, monitoring protocols are needed to provide defensible quantitative data on the status and trends of rangeland vegetation. Rigor requires precise, repeatable measures, whereas efficiency requires the greatest possible information content for the amount of resources spent acquiring the information. We compared two methods--point frequency and visual estimate--of measuring canopy cover of individual plant species and groups of species (forbs vs.
Post‐fire habitat use of the golden‐backed tree‐rat (Mesembriomys macrurus) in the northwest Kimberley, Western Australia
Fire regimes are changing throughout the world. Changed fire patterns across northern Australian savannas have been proposed as a factor contributing to recent declines of small‐ and medium‐sized mammals. Despite this, few studies have examined the mechanisms that underpin how species use habitat in fire‐affected landscapes. We determined the habitats and resources important to the declining golden‐backed tree‐rat (Mesembriomys macrurus) in landscapes partially burnt by recent intense fire.
Changes in soil characteristics and grass layer condition in relation to land management systems in the semi-arid savannas of Swaziland
Analytical assessment of sustainable development concept
Generally, sustainability dimension is related to a context, timing and scale. Although the context of sustainability can be various – either general or more specific, the timing is oriented to the long-term, but the scale has a global nature. The main purpose of the paper is to assess analytically the sustainable development concept.
Corn Belt Assessment of Cover Crop Management and Preferences
Surveying end-users about their use of technologies and preferences provides information for researchers and educators to develop relevant research and educational programs. A mail survey was sent to Corn Belt farmers during 2006 to quantify cover crop management and preferences. Results indicated that the dominant cereal cover crops in Indiana and Illinois are winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) and cereal rye (Secale cereale L.), cereal rye and oat (Avena sativa L.) in Iowa, and oat in Minnesota.
Constraints of philanthropy on determining the distribution of biodiversity conservation funding
Caught between ongoing habitat destruction and funding shortfalls, conservation organizations are using systematic planning approaches to identify places that offer the highest biodiversity return per dollar invested. However, available tools do not account for the landscape of funding for conservation or quantify the constraints this landscape imposes on conservation outcomes.
Roosting behaviour and habitat selection of Pteropus giganteus reveal potential links to Nipah virus epidemiology
Flying foxes Pteropus spp. play a key role in forest regeneration as seed dispersers and are also the reservoir of many viruses, including Nipah virus in Bangladesh. Little is known about their habitat requirements, particularly in South Asia. Identifying Pteropus habitat preferences could assist in understanding the risk of zoonotic disease transmission broadly and, in Bangladesh, could help explain the spatial distribution of human Nipah virus cases.
Reversing scattered tree decline on farms: implications of landholder perceptions and practice in the Lachlan catchment, New South Wales
Scattered trees are declining rapidly on Australian farms, a process that threatens landscape sustainability. Addressing this decline requires, in part, understanding how landholders perceive and manage scattered trees. We explored this via a quantitative survey of landholders in the Lachlan catchment of New South Wales. Although landholders are typically aware that scattered trees are declining more rapidly than other trees on the land they manage, they are less likely to actively encourage their regeneration compared to other trees.
Shifting cultivation in peatlands
Transboundary haze pollution from smoke from land preparation fires has become a perennial problem in Indonesia, especially in the last 10 years during the dry season. Most of that smoke originates from illegal land preparation fires for oil palm and industrial forest plantation as well as from shifting cultivation, which is usually blamed for the smoke.
Livestock water productivity: implications for sub-Saharan Africa
Water is essential for agriculture including livestock. Given increasing global concern that access to agricultural water will constrain food production and that livestock production uses and degrades too much water, there is compelling need for better understanding of the nature of livestock-water interactions. Inappropriate animal management along with poor cropping practices often contributes to widespread and severe depletion, degradation and contamination of water.