This paper considers farmers' willingness to pay (WTP) to conserve an endangered Irish farmland bird, the corncrake (Crex crex). An Irish National Farm Survey is used to produce individual farm-level WTP estimates for the year 2006. These figures are then aggregated to obtain a total value figure for the farming community of corncrake conservation in Ireland.
This paper reviews water-borne soil erosion in Australia in the context of current environmental policy needs. Sustainability has emerged as a central tenet of environmental policy in Australia and water-borne hillslope soil erosion rates are used as one of the indicators of agricultural sustainability in State of the Environment reporting. We review attempts to quantify hillslope erosion rates over Australia and we identify areas at risk of exceeding natural baseline rates. We also review historical definitions of sustainable, or ‘tolerable’ erosion rates, and how to set these rates.
Soil enzymes are widely used as indicators of soil quality because they are sensitive to various land management practices. In particular, enzyme kinetic behaviour and the derived kinetic parameters (Vₘₐₓ and Kₘ) can be indirectly influenced by changes of soil structure, organic matter quantity and quality due to the addition of organic amendments to the soil. When measuring enzyme kinetics, the calculation of the specificity constant (Kₐ), i.e.: the ratio Vₘₐₓ to Kₘ, is advisable to obtain additional information on the whole catalytic process.
Declining urban tree canopy cover in the United States underscores the importance of elucidating factors that influence the distribution of urban trees. This is particularly relevant as most urban trees are located on private property while their canopies maintain ecosystem services that constitute public goods. Thus, municipalities establish institutions in the form of canopy cover goals and various policies to incentivize private actions to meet those goals.
Eco-environmental vulnerability assessment is crucial for environmental and resource management. However, evaluation of eco-environmental vulnerability over large areas is a difficult and complex process because it is affected by many variables including hydro-meteorology, topography, land resources, and human activities. The Thua Thien â Hue Province and its largest river system, the Perfume River, are vital to the social-economic development of the north central coastal region of Vietnam, but there is no zoning system for environmental protection in this region.
This paper presents the design of a localization scheme in wireless sensor networks (WSN) for cattle monitoring applications in grazing fields. No additional hardware was required for distance estimation since they were performed using the link quality indication (LQI), which is a standard feature of the ZigBee protocol. The ratiometric vector iteration (RVI) algorithm was implemented and modified to work with LQI measurements instead of the usual received signal strength indication (RSSI).
Global grain production has increased dramatically during the past 50years, mainly as a consequence of intensified land management and introduction of new technologies. For the future, a strong increase in grain demand is expected, which may be fulfilled by further agricultural intensification rather than expansion of agricultural area. Little is known, however, about the global potential for intensification and its constraints.
Higher irrigation quota for conventional farming causes substantial conflicts between water supply and demand in agriculture, and wind erosion near soil surface is one of the major causes of farmland degradation and desertification in arid areas. This research investigated the effect of the amounts of irrigation in combination with tillage practices on soil evaporation (E), water consumption (ET) characteristics, and grain yield performance and water use efficiency (WUE) for wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) intercropped with maize (Zea mays L.) in strip planting in an Oasis region.
Woody encroachment is one of the several factors aggravating rangeland degradation in arid and semiarid areas. The goal of this study is to improve our understanding about the relationship between woody encroachment and its potential drivers by analyzing the temporal and spatial pattern of land-cover changes in the lower Omo region of southern Ethiopia. We used a combination of multi-temporal images, as well as climatic and demographic data for the analysis.
The U.S. South's wood supply chain has undergone major changes over the past two decades in terms of forestland ownership and forest industry structure. Recent interest in producing energy from wood has raised questions about how a vibrant wood-energy market will impact the traditional southern wood supply chain. By using a survey of consulting foresters, this study examined how harvest tract size, forest ownership, and forest industry structure have changed within the U.S. South and how foresters expect the wood-energy market to impact the wood supply chain in the future.
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