Perennial cereal rye (PC rye) is being developed at Lethbridge Research Centre as a new forage crop. The first Canadian cultivar of this crop (ACE-1), tested as LRC 96-1, will have the distinction of being the first North American cultivar of PC rye and the only perennial cereal crop specifically developed for forage production. PC rye was originally developed in Germany by crossing rye (Secale cereale L.) with a perennial wild rye (Secale montanum L.) and then backcrossing the F1 with Secale cereale L. while selecting for a perennial nature.

Recent decades have seen a proliferation of conservation programmes designed to encourage private landholders to protect and enhance biodiversity on their land. This paper reviews research emphasising the role of social context in shaping private land conservation (PLC) outcomes. We examine the potential for a collaborative policy-making process incorporating design and implementation of PLC programmes to reduce conflict between conservation agencies and landholders and increase community consensus around PLC issues.

Regional analysis of large wildfire potential given climate change scenarios is crucial to understanding areas most at risk in the future, yet wildfire models are not often developed and tested at this spatial scale. We fit three historical climate suitability models for large wildfires (i.e. ≥ 400 ha) in Colorado and Wyoming using topography and decadal climate averages corresponding to wildfire occurrence at the same temporal scale. The historical models classified points of known large wildfire occurrence with high accuracies.

This paper evaluates an innovative two-tiered model of collaborative planning designed to increase participation of First Nations in resource and environmental planning in British Columbia, Canada. Like a one-tiered model, the two-tiered model engages stakeholders in face-to-face negotiations to develop a consensus plan. However, to finalize an agreement, recommendations from the first tier are then sent to a second tier of negotiations that includes only two parties – First Nations and the provincial government.

A monitoring program of pesticides was implemented in the "ZV1" vulnerable zone (Directive 91/676/EEC) in Portugal, in order to assess the impact of intensive horticulture practices on groundwater contamination. The monitoring network comprised 23 sampling points sampled every 3 months during a 2-year period.

Rapid conversion of rural land to exurban development and the ensuing impacts on natural resources have been well-documented, but information about exurban landowners is lacking. To address this knowledge gap, we surveyed exurban landowners in six Wyoming counties and documented demographic characteristics, motivations, knowledge, and attitudes about natural resources and land management. The overall response rate was 55.6%. Generally, respondents were of retirement age, had lived in Wyoming for about 13 yr, and were raised in areas with a population

This study was conducted to determine the reproductive characteristics of Barbarea vulgaris under different disturbance regimes (mowing and tilling) in two different habitats: a levee and a wheat field. On the levee, 77 of the 114 individuals that had had their floral stalks removed by the first mowing produced new rosettes at the basal part of the stem during the same growing season. The plants that were mowed four times per year had a significantly greater survival rate than the plants that were mowed twice per year.

Up to 50% of nitrogen (N) fertilizer can remain in soil after crop harvest in dryland farming. Understanding the fate of this residual fertilizer N in soil is important for evaluating its overall use efficiency and environmental effect. Nitrogen-15 (¹⁵N)-labeled urea (165 kg N ha ⁻¹) was applied to winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) growing in three different fertilized soils (no fertilizer, No-F; inorganic nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium fertilization, NPK; and manure plus inorganic NPK fertilization, MNPK) from a long-term trial (19 years) on the south of the Loess Plateau, China.

The United States (US) and European Union (EU) share many general policy aims for rural areas, but they differ in the ways in which they try to achieve these aims. The principal difference lies in the role envisioned by agriculture in overall rural development. EU policies treat agriculture as a provider of public goods, and many of its 'rural' programmes target agriculture. In the US, very few Federal rural development programs are focused solely on agriculture.

Using environmental indices (EIs) to rank applications for enrollment in conservation programs is becoming common practice. However, there is little guidance on how it should be done. The indices adopted by existing programs have often been linear, using weighted averages of environmental parameters without explicit consideration of whether they represent a reliable preference ordering on environmental states. Our article investigates society's weights for addressing multiple resource concerns and how functional forms of EIs can influence program outcomes.

Research on the impacts of wildfire and invasive plants in rangelands has focused on biophysical rather than human dimensions of these environmental processes. We offer a synthetic perspective on economic and social aspects of wildfire and invasive plants in American deserts, focusing on the Great Basin because greater research attention has been given to the effects of cheatgrass expansion than to other desert wildfire/invasion cycles.