scholarly journals Agricultural landscape change impact on the quality of land: An African continent-wide assessment in gained and displaced agricultural lands

Author(s):  
Felicia O. Akinyemi ◽  
Chinwe Ifejika Speranza
Land ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 598-616 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eija Pouta ◽  
Ioanna Grammatikopoulou ◽  
Timo Hurme ◽  
Katriina Soini ◽  
Marja Uusitalo

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 1645-1654 ◽  
Author(s):  
This Rutishauser ◽  
François Jeanneret ◽  
Robert Brügger ◽  
Yuri Brugnara ◽  
Christian Röthlisberger ◽  
...  

Abstract. In 1970, the Institute of Geography of the University of Bern initiated the phenological observation network BernClim. Seasonality information from plants, fog and snow was originally available for applications in urban and regional planning and agricultural and touristic suitability and is now a valuable data set for climate change impact studies. Covering the growing season, volunteer observers record the dates of key development stages of hazel (Corylus avellana), dandelion (Taraxacum officinale), apple tree (Pyrus malus) and beech (Fagus sylvatica). All observations consist of detailed site information, including location, altitude, exposition (aspect) and inclination, that makes BernClim unique in its richness in detail on decadal timescales. Quality control (QC) by experts and statistical analyses of the data have been performed to flag impossible dates, dates outside the biologically plausible range, repeated dates in the same year, stretches of consecutive identical dates and statistically inconsistent dates (outliers in time or in space). Here, we report BernClim data of 7414 plant phenological observations from 1970 to 2018 from 1304 sites at 110 stations, the QC procedure and selected applications (Rutishauser et al., 2019: https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.900102). The QC points to very good internal consistency (only 0.2 % were flagged as internally inconsistent) and likely high quality of the data. BernClim data indicate a trend towards an extended growing season. They also track the regime shift in the late 1980s well to pronounced earlier dates like numerous other phenological records across the Northern Hemisphere.


2020 ◽  
pp. 31-67
Author(s):  
V. S. Stolbovoy ◽  
A. M. Grebennikov

The study presents three groups of Soil Quality Indicators (SQI) of arable lands in the Russian Federation, such as agroclimate conditions, soil parameters and negative soil characteristics. The selection of SQI meets the requirements of the crop growth model for calculating the standard crop yield. The application of SQI in the Grain Equivalent Model allows ranking quality of the soils of agricultural lands in the country. The share of the best quality Chernozems with the standard yield of grain crops exceeding 4 t/ha is about 10%. At the same time, arable Chernozems occupy nearly 66% of total area of agricultural lands. More than 74% of the arable lands including podzolized and leached Chernozems in the northern part and Chernozems southern in the southern part of the agricultural zone are characterized by medium quality with the standard yield of grain crops 2-4 t/ha. About 10% of the arable land occupied by Chestnut solonetzic and saline soils are of poorer quality with the standard yield of grain crops less than 1 t/ha. The proposed indicators are included in the government programs for valuating and monitoring the quality of agricultural lands. The universal validity of indicators is a basis for the development of a new generation of standards for the protection and rational use of soils based on modern digital technologies and GIS approaches.


2015 ◽  
Vol 133 ◽  
pp. 67-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xenia Junge ◽  
Beatrice Schüpbach ◽  
Thomas Walter ◽  
Bernhard Schmid ◽  
Petra Lindemann-Matthies

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 875-885 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Vikhamar Schuler ◽  
Torbjørn Ims Østby

Abstract. We present Sval_Imp, a high-resolution gridded dataset designed for forcing models of terrestrial surface processes on Svalbard. The dataset is defined on a 1 km grid covering the archipelago of Svalbard, located in the Norwegian Arctic (74–82∘ N). Using a hybrid methodology, combining multidimensional interpolation with simple dynamical modeling, the atmospheric reanalyses ERA-40 and ERA-Interim by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting have been downscaled to cover the period 1957–2017 at steps of 6 h. The dataset is publicly available from a data repository. In this paper, we describe the methodology used to construct the dataset, present the organization of the data in the repository and discuss the performance of the downscaling procedure. In doing so, the dataset is compared to a wealth of data available from operational and project-based measurements. The quality of the downscaled dataset is found to vary in space and time, but it generally represents an improvement compared to unscaled values, especially for precipitation. Whereas operational records are biased to low elevations around the fringes, we stress the hitherto underused potential of project-based measurements at higher elevation and in the interior of the archipelago for evaluating atmospheric models. For instance, records of snow accumulation on large ice masses may represent measures of seasonally integrated precipitation in regions sensitive to the downscaling procedure and thus providing added value. Sval_Imp (Schuler, 2018) is publicly available from the Norwegian Research Data Archive NIRD, a data repository (https://doi.org/10.11582/2018.00006).


In order to address food security problems in Russia, insufficient attention is paid to the development and implementation of innovative technologies for the enrichment of agricultural lands and plants growing on them. Such technologies make it possible to purposefully bring the necessary micro and macro elements to agricultural plants, while ensuring, in turn, a significant increase in the consumer quality of agricultural products. The article discusses innovative technologies for the enrichment of agricultural land and plants growing on them, the use of which will increase the consumption of agricultural food raw materials from each hectare of arable land, as well as the quality of functional food products produced from it. This will increase the competitiveness of fortified products in the domestic and foreign markets and make an important contribution to improving the food security of the country. The analysis showed that one of the important directions of innovative developments and patents in the field of enrichment of agricultural lands and plants growing on them is the solution to the problem of providing the population of Russia and the world with regulatory requirements for micro and macro elements: iodine, selenium, magnesium, calcium, manganese, zinc, etc., as well as in vitamins by pre-sowing, root, and foliar enrichment of cereal, fruit-bearing and vegetable crops in open and in closed ground. All this, in turn, will help to provide the country's population with high-quality food products derived from enriched agricultural raw materials and increase its competitiveness in the domestic and foreign markets.


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