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MDPI AG, a publisher of open-access scientific journals, was spun off from the Molecular Diversity Preservation International organization. It was formally registered by Shu-Kun Lin and Dietrich Rordorf in May 2010 in Basel, Switzerland, and maintains editorial offices in China, Spain and Serbia. MDPI relies primarily on article processing charges to cover the costs of editorial quality control and production of articles. Over 280 universities and institutes have joined the MDPI Institutional Open Access Program; authors from these organizations pay reduced article processing charges. MDPI is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics, the International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers, and the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA).
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Displaying 1446 - 1450 of 1524Assessment of the Coordination Ability of Sustainable Social-Ecological Systems Development Based on a Set Pair Analysis: A Case Study in Yanchi County, China
Sandy desertification is one of the most severe ecological problems in the world. Essentially, it is land degradation caused by discordance in the Social-Ecological Systems (SES). The ability to coordinate SES is a principal characteristic of regional sustainable development and a key factor in desertification control. This paper directly and comprehensively evaluates the ability to coordinate SES in the desertification reversal process. Assessment indicators and standards for SES have been established using statistical data and materials from government agencies.
Sustainability of Smallholder Agriculture in Semi-Arid Areas under Land Set-aside Programs: A Case Study from China’s Loess Plateau
This article analyzes agricultural sustainability in the context of land degradation, rural poverty and social inequality, taking China’s Loess Hills as an example. The analysis attempts to understand the multi-dimensionality of sustainability at the farm level and its relationship with physical-socio-economic-infrastructural-technological framework conditions in the context of the land set-aside program viz. the Grain for Green Project (GGP).
A Fifty-Year Sustainability Assessment of Italian Agro-Forest Districts
As cropland management and land use shifted towards more intensive practices, global land degradation increased drastically. Understanding relationships between ecological and socioeconomic drivers of soil and landscape degradation within these landscapes in economically dynamic contexts such as the Mediterranean region, requires multi-target and multi-scalar approaches covering long-term periods. This study provides an original approach for identifying desertification risk drivers and sustainable land management strategies within Italian agro-forest districts.
Does Land Tenure Security Promote Manure Use by Farm Households in Vietnam?
Facing widespread poverty and land degradation, Vietnam started a land reform in 1993 as part of its renovation policy package known as “Doi Moi”. This paper examines the impacts of improved land tenure security, via this land reform, on manure use by farm households. As manure potentially improves soil fertility by adding organic matter and nutrients to the soil surface, it might contribute to improving soil productive capacity and reversing land degradation.
Walkability, Land Use and Physical Activity
Physical activity (PA) promotes healthy life and contributes to sustainable development. In this paper, we rely on the Utah Household Travel Survey data and analyze the determinants of PA in terms of neighborhood land use, accessibility to transportation, and socio-demographic status in Salt Lake County, Utah, United States using four-component walkability indices at various geographic scales. We find that PA is associated with neighborhood land use and social demographic status, including the compact design of the neighborhood.