Agronomic Management of Straw and Its Energy Use in a Long-Term Sustainability Perspective

Author(s):  
Massimo Monteleone ◽  
Mitra Kami Delivand ◽  
Pasquale Garofalo ◽  
Anna Rita Bernadette Cammerino
Plant Disease ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 103 (4) ◽  
pp. 601-618 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Gulya ◽  
Robert Harveson ◽  
Febina Mathew ◽  
Charles Block ◽  
Sue Thompson ◽  
...  

Between 2002 and 2015, a comprehensive survey of sunflower fields across seven Midwestern U.S. states was conducted 12 times and continues to be conducted every other year. The surveyors collected data on yield, agronomic management factors, disease, insect, weed, and bird damage. All surveyors were volunteers and came from universities (extension and research staff), USDA-ARS, and seed and chemical companies. In the 12 years the survey was conducted, data from 2,267 fields were collected. The results are presented annually at the National Sunflower Association Research Forum and are used to set sunflower research priorities. While 10 diseases are surveyed annually, we focus this article on the importance, findings, implications, and impacts of the five most important: downy mildew, Phomopsis stem canker, rust, Rhizopus head rot, and Sclerotinia head rot. This survey is unique among field crops in both scope and scale, and this manuscript discusses salient and clandestine benefits of intense and long-term disease surveys.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Md. Mahmudul Alam ◽  
Wahid Murad

This study investigates the short-term and long-term impacts of economic growth, trade openness and technological progress on renewable energy use in Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. Based on a panel data set of 25 OECD countries for 43 years, we used the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach and the related intermediate estimators, including pooled mean group (PMG), mean group (MG) and dynamic fixed effect (DFE) to achieve the objective. The estimated ARDL model has also been checked for robustness using the two substitute single equation estimators, these being the dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS) and fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS). Empirical results reveal that economic growth, trade openness and technological progress significantly influence renewable energy use over the long-term in OECD countries. While the long-term nature of dynamics of the variables is found to be similar across 25 OECD countries, their short-term dynamics are found to be mixed in nature. This is attributed to varying levels of trade openness and technological progress in OECD countries. Since this is a pioneer study that investigates the issue, the findings are completely new and they make a significant contribution to renewable energy literature as well as relevant policy development.


2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ante Busic-Sontic ◽  
Cameron Brick

Large, one-time investments in green energy installations effectively reduce domestic energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. Despite long-term economic benefits for households, the rate of green investments often remains moderate unless supported by financial subsidies. Beyond financial considerations, green investments may also be driven by individual psychological factors. The current study uses data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (N = 3,468) to analyse whether the household decision to invest in green energy installations is linked to the Big Five personality traits. Personality traits and domestic investments in solar and other alternative energy systems had weak indirect associations through environmental concern but not through risk preferences. Openness to Experience and Neuroticism showed a weak positive relationship with green energy installations through the environmental concern channel, whereas Extraversion had a weak negative link. Based on these findings, persuasive messaging for green investments may be more effective when it focuses on environmental concern rather than reduced risk in countries like Germany, where long-standing financial subsidies decreased the risk in green investments.


Author(s):  
Jeff Morales

California has started construction on the first true high-speed rail system in the United States. In this chapter, the CEO of the California High-Speed Rail Authority describes how the state's historic investment in new high-speed rail infrastructure will benefit Californians. Benefits include job creation, statewide modernization of existing local rail lines, short and long-term reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, preservation of agricultural land and environmentally sensitive habitats, advanced clean and green construction practices and technologies, a commitment to 100% renewable energy use, and assistance to partner cities on transit-oriented planning for high-speed rail station areas.


1992 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 298-298
Author(s):  
Geerat J. Vermeij

Individual organisms compete for resources. Among competitive dominants, per-capita energy use has generally increased through time. This increase has had a ripple effect on all other species by increasing the number of competitive and predatory encounters among individuals. Species unable to cope with such biological rigors have become restricted to environments where resource supply is low and where encounters with enemies are few. Among species that hold their own in biologically rigorous habitats, construction materials that are cheap to produce and that enable individuals to grow and respond quickly have generally been favored over those that exact a high cost in energy and time. Extinction interrupts but does not reverse or fundamentally alter these long-term between-clade evolutionary trends. The availability of resources to organisms, as well as the opportunity for evolutionary change, depends on extrinsic events and factors as well as on the competitive abilities of organisms.Those who have raised methodological and theoretical objections against this economic interpretation of the history of life deny the overriding importance of organisms as agents of natural selection, emphasize the random nature of extinction, deny the existence of long-term trends, favor a larger role for mutualistic as opposed to antagonistic interactions, or accord a larger role to species-level attributes in evolution that are not reducible to the properties of individual organisms. These arguments are either unpersuasive or incorrect. The long-term economics of life may have important lessons for our own use of resources.


2009 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 425-445 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard S.J. Tol ◽  
Stephen W. Pacala ◽  
Robert H. Socolow

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nousheen Fatima ◽  
Yanbin Li ◽  
Munir Ahmad ◽  
Gul Jabeen ◽  
Xiaoyu Li

Abstract Background The current research attempts to systematically investigate the causal interactions between renewable energy generation, aggregated energy use, human capital, and economic performance in Pakistan both in a short-term and long-term test for the period of 1990–2016. Methods As a primary step, a unit root analysis was conducted employing, among others, an augmented Dickey-Fuller-generalized least squares (ADF-GLS) test. Based on the order of integration I(1), the Johansen and Juselius (JJ) co-integration testing was employed to confirm a long-term causality analysis, which was followed by a vector error correction model (VECM) to calculate the short-run Granger causality analysis. Furthermore, the vector autoregressive (VAR)-based Cholesky test allowed the standard deviation impulse response functions to be generated to explain the responses of variables to arbitrary shocks in the data series under analysis. Results The empirical findings unearthed the bilateral causal connection between aggregated energy use and economic performance, renewable energy generation and economic performance, and human capital and economic performance. Thus, it confirmed the existence of feedback effects for aggregated energy use, renewable energy generation, and human capital in their relation to economic performance. Likewise, a unilateral positive causal connection was revealed running from renewable energy generation and human capital to aggregated energy use, and from human capital to renewable energy generation in both a long-term and short-term test. Additionally, the causal association running from aggregated energy use and renewable energy generation to economic performance was exposed in a long-term as well as short-term test, hence supporting the growth hypothesis. Conclusions The findings signified the importance of an enhanced generation of renewable energy along with the promotion of an aggregated energy use for the economic performance in Pakistan.


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