Farmers’ perceptions of crop pest severity in Nigeria are associated with landscape, agronomic and socio-economic factors
Insect pests are a major cause of crop yield losses around the world and pest management plays a critical role in providing food security and farming income. This study links Nigerian farmers’ perceptions of pest severity to the landscape, agronomic, biophysical, and socio-economic context in which agricultural production takes place. A farm household survey was conducted during 2012–2013, collecting data on household characteristics, cropping systems, pest severity and pest management from 805 households in 12 states of Nigeria.
Estimation of specific yield using water table fluctuations and cropped area in a hardrock aquifer system of Rajasthan, India
Assessment of specific yields is important for effective groundwater management in semi-arid hardrock aquifers, especially in India with its unsustainable groundwater usage rates. The Dharta watershed in the Udaipur district of Rajasthan is one such hardrock area in India where the groundwater extraction rate is a concern.
The use of Earth Observation for wetland inventory, assessment and monitoring
The use of Earth Observation (EO) provides Contracting Parties to the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands with new approaches to ensure the wise use and conservation of wetlands at the national and global levels. EO has many applications including the inventory, assessment
and monitoring of wetlands. As technology advances, previous limitations of EO will be reduced, and it is anticipated that the use of EO in the management of wetlands will increase. This Ramsar Technical Report aims to provide practitioners with an overview and illustration,
Global-scale comparisons of human land use: developing shared terminology for land-use practices for global change
Human land-use practices have been highly variable over the course of the Holocene, a diversity evident in the differentiated effects of human activity on land cover. Historically, agriculture was one of the most significant forms of land use, but even mobile hunter-gatherers transformed land cover through landscape-scale burning (Bliege Bird 2008). Livestock-keeping, plowing, irrigation, and the production of metal, ceramics, and bricks, have also been drivers of historical change.
Gender-equitable pathways to achieving sustainable agricultural intensification
Women play an increasingly greater role in agriculture. Ensuring that they have opportunities—equal to those of men—to participate in transforming agriculture is a prerequisite for sustainable intensification. Increased gender equity in agriculture is both a practical and a social justice issue: practical because women are responsible for much of the production by smallholders; and social justice because in many cases they currently do not have rights over land and water resources, nor full access to markets, and often they do not even control the crops they produce.
State spaces of resistance: industrial tree plantations and the struggle for land in Laos
Land grabbing has transformed rural environments across the global South, generating resistance or political reactions “from below”. In authoritarian countries like Laos, where resource investments are coercively developed and insulated from political dissent, resistance appears absent at first glance. Yet, it is occurring under the radar, largely outside transnational activist networks. In this article, we examine how resistance can protect access to rural lands in contexts where it is heavily repressed.
River deltas: scaling up community-driven approaches to sustainable intensification
The residents of the Ganges and Mekong River deltas face serious challenges from rising sea levels, saltwater intrusion, pollution from upstream sources, growing populations, and infrastructure that no longer works as planned. In both deltas, scientists working for nearly two decades with communities, local governments and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have demonstrated the potential to overcome these challenges and substantially improve people’s livelihoods.
Gender-equitable pathways to achieving sustainable agricultural intensification
Women play an increasingly greater role in agriculture. Ensuring that they have opportunities—equal to those of men—to participate in transforming agriculture is a prerequisite for sustainable intensification. Increased gender equity in agriculture is both a practical and a social justice issue: practical because women are responsible for much of the production by smallholders; and social justice because in many cases they currently do not have rights over land and water resources, nor full access to markets, and often they do not even control the crops they produce.
River deltas: scaling up community-driven approaches to sustainable intensification
The residents of the Ganges and Mekong River deltas face serious challenges from rising sea levels, saltwater intrusion, pollution from upstream sources, growing populations, and infrastructure that no longer works as planned. In both deltas, scientists working for nearly two decades with communities, local governments and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have demonstrated the potential to overcome these challenges and substantially improve people’s livelihoods.
Indonesia's forest conversion moratorium assessed with an agent-based model of Land-Use Change and Ecosystem Services (LUCES)
Modeling for Management: A Case Study of the Cañete watershed, Peru
Introduction The Cañete River watershed located in the central Peruvian Andes, is undergoing hydrological changes due to global rising temperatures, landuse changes and increased water supply demand. At the river’s source in the ice-covered mountains at 5,800 m.a.s.l., changes in the landscape are evident given the ever receding snow covered ground. According to aerial photographs of the snowcap mountains, out of the 16 snow peaks that existed in 1962, only 11 remained in 1990 (Cementos Lima S.A.).