Measuring the Impact of Land Degradation on Agricultural Output: The Case of the Volgograd Region (Russia)

2021 ◽  
pp. 85-94
Author(s):  
Oleg A. Makarov ◽  
Nikita R. Kryuchkov ◽  
Anton S. Strokov
Keyword(s):  
Land Degradation ◽  
Agricultural Output ◽  
Volgograd Region ◽  
The Impact

scholarly journals Analyzing Factors Affecting the Sustainability of Land Management Practices in Mecha Woreda, Northwestern Ethiopia

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (13) ◽  
pp. 7007
Author(s):  
Habtamu Nebere ◽  
Degefa Tolossa ◽  
Amare Bantider
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Land Management ◽  
Land Degradation ◽  
Quantitative Data ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Factors Affecting ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
Household Heads ◽  
The Impact

In Ethiopia, the practice of land management started three decades ago in order to address the problem of land degradation and to further boost agricultural production. However, the impact of land management practices in curbing land degradation problems and improving the productivity of the agricultural sector is insignificant. Various empirical works have previously identified the determinants of the adoption rate of land management practices. However, the sustainability of land management practices after adoption, and the various factors that control the sustainability of implemented land management practices, are not well addressed. This study analyzed the factors affecting the sustainability of land management practices after implementation in Mecha Woreda, northwestern Ethiopia. The study used 378 sample respondents, selected by a systematic random sampling technique. Binary logistic regression was used to analyze the quantitative data, while the qualitative data were qualitatively and concurrently analyzed with the quantitative data. The sustained supply of fodder from the implemented land management practices, as well as improved cattle breed, increases the sustainability of the implemented land management practices. While lack of agreement in the community, lack of enforcing community bylaws, open cattle grazing, lack of benefits of implemented land management practices, acting as barrier for farming practices, poor participation of household heads during planning and decision-making processes, as well as the lack of short-term benefits, reduce the sustainability of the implemented land management practices. Thus, it is better to allow for the full participation of household heads in planning and decision-making processes to bring practical and visible results in land management practices. In addition, recognizing short-term benefits to compensate the land lost in constructing land management structures must be the strategy in land management practices. Finally, reducing the number of cattle and practicing stall feeding is helpful both for the sustainability of land management practices and the productivity of cattle. In line with this, fast-growing fodder grass species have to be introduced for household heads to grow on land management structures and communal grazing fields for stall feeding.

The Risk of Water Erosion on the Foothills of the Middle High Atlas (Morocco): Tagueleft Basin Case Study : خطر التعرية المائية على السفوح بالأطلس الكبير الأوسط (المغرب): دراسة حالة حوض تاكلفت

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rizki Mohamed
Keyword(s):  
Land Degradation ◽  
Local Development ◽  
Remote Sensing Data ◽  
Potential Method ◽  
Water Erosion ◽  
High Atlas ◽  
Negative Impacts ◽  
The Impact

The Tagueleft basin is geographically located in the northern edges of the Middle High Atlas, which is a geomorphological fragile area. The impact of human activity has accelerated water erosion in this mountains area. This is reflected in dynamic and unstable foothills, a decrease in forests density and degradation in the production of the land. On the other hand, land degradation due to human overexploitation of natural resources has increased land degradation in the area. The interest in the risk of erosion on the foothills in the area under study comes in the context of our contribution to clarify the role of geomatical and geomorphological approaches in explaining and identifying the mechanisms responsible for current foothills dynamism through water erosion and its negative impacts on the environment and local development. The aim of the study was to use the EPM (Erosion Potential Méthod) which is formulated by Slobodan Gavrilovic for erosion in mountainous areas and to test the reliability of its results based on fieldwork and remote sensing data. The results of the erosion assessment and its quantification by applying the coefficient (W) for the theoretical model in the area under study have shown that erosion is very important and it touches on wide areas as it appears through the domain classification of the distribution erosion in Tagueleft basin.

Evaluating the role of soil physical properties on simulated land-atmosphere interactions over South Africa using coupled atmosphere-hydrological modeling

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhenyu Zhang ◽  
Patrick Laux ◽  
Joël Arnault ◽  
Jianhui Wei ◽  
Jussi Baade ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Physical Properties ◽  
Land Degradation ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Soil Physical Properties ◽  
Near Surface ◽  
Soil Database ◽  
Global Soil ◽  
The Impact

<p>Land degradation with its direct impact on vegetation, surface soil layers and land surface albedo, has great relevance with the climate system. Assessing the climatic and ecological effects induced by land degradation requires a precise understanding of the interaction between the land surface and atmosphere. In coupled land-atmosphere modeling, the low boundary conditions impact the thermal and hydraulic exchanges at the land surface, therefore regulates the overlying atmosphere by land-atmosphere feedback processes. However, those land-atmosphere interactions are not convincingly represented in coupled land-atmosphere modeling applications. It is partly due to an approximate representation of hydrological processes in land surface modeling. Another source of uncertainties relates to the generalization of soil physical properties in the modeling system. This study focuses on the role of the prescribed physical properties of soil in high-resolution land surface-atmosphere simulations over South Africa. The model used here is the hydrologically-enhanced Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF-Hydro) model. Four commonly used global soil datasets obtained from UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) soil database, Harmonized World Soil Database (HWSD), Global Soil Dataset for Earth System Model (GSDE), and SoilGrids dataset, are incorporated within the WRF-Hydro experiments for investigating the impact of soil information on land-atmosphere interactions. The simulation results of near-surface temperature, skin temperature, and surface energy fluxes are presented and compared to observational-based reference dataset. It is found that simulated soil moisture is largely influenced by soil texture features, which affects its feedback to the atmosphere.</p>

scholarly journals Quantifying the impact of land degradation on crop production: the case of Senegal

Solid Earth ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. G. J. S. Sonneveld ◽  
M. A. Keyzer ◽  
D. Ndiaye
Keyword(s):  
Land Degradation ◽  
Crop Production ◽  
Crop Yields ◽  
Fertilizer Application ◽  
Yield Reduction ◽  
Sufficient Information ◽  
Persistent Problem ◽  
Confounding Variables ◽  
A Site ◽  
The Impact

Abstract. Land degradation has been a persistent problem in Senegal for more than a century and by now has become a serious impediment to long-term development. In this paper, we quantify the impact of land degradation on crop yields using the results of a nationwide land degradation assessment. For this, the study needs to address two issues. First, the land degradation assessment comprises qualitative expert judgements that have to be converted into more objective, quantitative terms. We propose a land degradation index and assess its plausibility. Second, observational data on soils, land use, and rainfall do not provide sufficient information to isolate the impact of land degradation. We, therefore, design a pseudo-experiment that for sites with otherwise similar circumstances compares the yield of a site with and one without land degradation. This pairing exercise is conducted under a gradual refining of the classification of circumstances, until a more or less stable response to land degradation is obtained. In this way, we hope to have controlled sufficiently for confounding variables that will bias the estimation of the impact of land degradation on crop yields. A small number of shared characteristics reveal tendencies of "severe" land degradation levels being associated with declining yields as compared to similar sites with "low" degradation levels. However, as we zoom in at more detail some exceptions come to the fore, in particular in areas without fertilizer application. Yet, our overall conclusion is that yield reduction is associated with higher levels of land degradation, irrespective of whether fertilizer is being applied or not.

scholarly journals Innovative Geospatial and Cartographic Approaches to Identification, Analysis, and Visualisation of Land Degradation

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 1-2
Author(s):  
Tomáš Řezník ◽  
Milan Konečný ◽  
Karel Charvát
Keyword(s):  
Water Pollution ◽  
Land Degradation ◽  
Pollution Prevention ◽  
Montreal Protocol ◽  
Research Centre ◽  
Soil Biodiversity ◽  
Research And Innovation ◽  
Innovation Project ◽  
Visualization Techniques ◽  
The Impact

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> Land degradation has increasingly been recognised as a serious environmental problem throughout the whole world. Six major threats may be identified that place soil fertility at risk, namely, soil erosion, loss of organic matter, soil biodiversity, soil compaction, soil salinity, and soil pollution. Several of those risks could be effectively identified, analysed, visualised and consequently limited by approaches originating from the geospatial domain.</p><p>The China – European Union research and innovation project “SIEUSOIL” (SIno-EU Soil Observatory for Intelligent Land Use Management), funded between 2019 and 2022, as well as the European Big Data flagship research and innovation project “DataBio” (Data-Driven Bioeconomy), funded between 2017 and 2019, aim at the above mentioned challenges of land degradation from innovative geospatial perspectives.</p><p>Such innovative approaches include local geological, geomorphological, climate, yield maps as well as global soil maps provided commonly by the European Commission (Directorate General Joint Research Centre) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Among the data inputs there are farm machinery tracking and interpreted satellite images. The second level of activities consists of selected standards and specification of ontologies for the integration and sharing of soil related data, facilitating their reuse and understanding. The resulting ontology and other selected models provide the basis for the integration, publication, and querying of the source datasets using Linked data as a federated layer. Besides offering an integrated view of the datasets, this layer also enables new insights through the discovery of links.</p><p>From the cartographic perspective, several visualization techniques are deployed; from static maps to interactive visualisations. The main focus of visualization techniques is therefore given to the interactivity through utilizing the concept of Multiple Coordinated Views (also known as visual analytics tools) and dynamic queries to emphasize the impact of changes of various phenomena in space and time. For instance, see Figure 1 on monitoring of machinery fleet movement and especially its spatiotemporal changes that can bring new insights into the consequences of human decisions from many areas. Economic reasons are related to economic evidence for a farmer, including fuel consumption, efficiency of trajectory, etc. to revenue authority or subsidies management. On the other hand, ecologic motivations aim to decrease of environmental burden caused e.g. by high CO<sub>2</sub> emissions due to a lack of movement optimisation, water pollution by nitrogen due to excessive fertilisation, etc.</p><p>The outcomes of the above mentioned research are intended as a feedback to (inter)national policies within the environmental domain including the Montreal Protocol (on substances that deplete the Ozone Layer), European Common Agricultural Policy, Nitrates Directive, Air Quality Framework Directive, Water Framework Directive, the Chinese Water Pollution Prevention Law, etc.</p>

scholarly journals Impacts of Urbanization on Land Use Pattern and Environment: A Case Study of Ajmer City, Rajasthan

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-91
Author(s):  
Bhanu Priya Chouhan ◽  
Monika Kannan
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Urban Growth ◽  
Land Degradation ◽  
Satellite Images ◽  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Population Pressure ◽  
Geographical Information ◽  
Land Use Patterns ◽  
Use Patterns ◽  
The Impact

The world is undergoing the largest wave of urban growth in history. More than half of the world’s population now lives in towns and cities, and by 2030 this number will swell to about 5 billion. ‘Urbanization has the potential to usher in a new era of wellbeing, resource efficiency and economic growth. But due to increased population the pressure of demand also increases in urban areas’ (Drakakis-Smith, David, 1996). The loss of agricultural land to other land uses occasioned by urban growth is an issue of growing concern worldwide, particularly in the developing countries like India. This paper is an attempt to assess the impact of urbanization on land use and land cover patterns in Ajmer city. Recent trends indicate that the rural urban migration and religious significance of the place attracting thousands of tourists every year, have immensely contributed in the increasing population of city and is causing change in land use patterns. This accelerating urban sprawl has led to shrinking of the agricultural land and land holdings. Due to increased rate of urbanization, the agricultural areas have been transformed into residential and industrial areas (Retnaraj D,1994). There are several key factors which cause increase in population here such as Smart City Projects, potential for employment, higher education, more comfortable and quality housing, better health facilities, high living standard etc. Population pressure not only directly increases the demand for food, but also indirectly reduces its supply through building development, environmental degradation and marginalization of food production (Aldington T, 1997). Also, there are several issues which are associated with continuous increase in population i.e. land degradation, pollution, poverty, slums, unaffordable housing etc. Pollution, formulation of slums, transportation congestion, environmental hazards, land degradation and crime are some of the major impacts of urbanization on Ajmer city. This study involves mapping of land use patterns by analyzing data and satellite imagery taken at different time periods. The satellite images of year 2000 and 2017 are used. The change detection techniques are used with the help of Geographical Information System software like ERDAS and ArcGIS. The supervised classification of all the three satellite images is done by ERDAS software to demarcate and analyze land use change.

scholarly journals THE IMPACT OF THE RURAL POPULATION ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SOCIAL SPHERE IN MUNICIPALITIES

2018 ◽  
pp. 57-61
Author(s):  
Z. M. Khasheva ◽  
J. A. Berger
Keyword(s):  
Russian Federation ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Social Needs ◽  
Rural Settlements ◽  
Factors Affecting ◽  
Social Sphere ◽  
Volgograd Region ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Russian Federation ◽  
The Impact

This article focuses on direct and indirect factors affecting the development and functioning of the social sphere in rural settlements. The high role and importance of the actions of local governments in meeting the social needs of the population is noted. The author considers the criteria related to the organization of social facilities in municipalities. Analysis of the performance of the population in the municipal areas. The comparison of population size and density in different regions of the Russian Federation is carried out. Changes in the socio-economic situation of the population due to the impact of various factors are evaluated. The statistics of change of number of rural settlements of the Volgograd region are resulted.

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