scholarly journals Characterizing the Spatial Patterns of Global Fertilizer Application and Manure Production

2010 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Potter ◽  
Navin Ramankutty ◽  
Elena M. Bennett ◽  
Simon D. Donner
Keyword(s):  
Soil Nutrients ◽  
Spatial Patterns ◽  
National Level ◽  
Nutrient Content ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Anthropogenic Activity ◽  
Spatially Explicit ◽  
Nutrient Runoff ◽  
Fertilizer Use ◽  
The Impact

Abstract Agriculture has had a tremendous impact on soil nutrients around the world. In some regions, soil nutrients are depleted because of low initial soil fertility or excessive nutrient removals through intense land use relative to nutrient additions. In other regions, application of chemical fertilizers and manure has led to an accumulation of nutrients and subsequent water quality problems. Understanding the current level and spatial patterns of fertilizer and manure inputs would greatly improve the ability to identify areas that might be sensitive to aquatic eutrophication or to nutrient depletion. The authors calculated spatially explicit fertilizer inputs of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) by fusing national-level statistics on fertilizer use with global maps of harvested area for 175 crops. They also calculated spatially explicit manure inputs of N and P by fusing global maps of animal density and international data on manure production and nutrient content. Significantly higher application rates were found for both fertilizers and manures in the Northern Hemisphere, with maxima centered on areas with intensive cropland and high densities of livestock. Furthermore, nutrient use is confined to a few major hot spots, with approximately 10% of the treated land receiving over 50% of the use of both fertilizers and manures. The authors’ new spatial disaggregation of the rich International Fertilizer Industry Association (IFA) fertilizer-use dataset will provide new and interesting avenues to explore the impact of anthropogenic activity on ecosystems at the global scale and may also have implications for policies designed to improve soil quality or reduce nutrient runoff.

scholarly journals A spatial resolution threshold of land cover in estimating terrestrial carbon sequestration in four counties in Georgia and Alabama, USA

2010 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Q. Zhao ◽  
S. Liu ◽  
Z. Li ◽  
T. L. Sohl
Keyword(s):  
Carbon Sequestration ◽  
Land Cover ◽  
Land Cover Change ◽  
Spatial Resolution ◽  
Spatial Patterns ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Terrestrial Carbon ◽  
Carbon Modeling ◽  
Terrestrial Carbon Sequestration ◽  
The Impact

Abstract. Changes in carbon density (i.e., carbon stock per unit area) and land cover greatly affect carbon sequestration. Previous studies have shown that land cover change detection strongly depends on spatial scale. However, the influence of the spatial resolution of land cover change information on the estimated terrestrial carbon sequestration is not known. Here, we quantified and evaluated the impact of land cover change databases at various spatial resolutions (250 m, 500 m, 1 km, 2 km, and 4 km) on the magnitude and spatial patterns of regional carbon sequestration in four counties in Georgia and Alabama using the General Ensemble biogeochemical Modeling System (GEMS). Results indicated a threshold of 1 km in the land cover change databases and in the estimated regional terrestrial carbon sequestration. Beyond this threshold, significant biases occurred in the estimation of terrestrial carbon sequestration, its interannual variability, and spatial patterns. In addition, the overriding impact of interannual climate variability on the temporal change of regional carbon sequestration was unrealistically overshadowed by the impact of land cover change beyond the threshold. The implications of these findings directly challenge current continental- to global-scale carbon modeling efforts relying on information at coarse spatial resolution without incorporating fine-scale land cover dynamics.

scholarly journals Does Fertilizer Education Program Increase the Technical Efficiency of Chemical Fertilizer Use? Evidence from Wheat Production in China

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 543 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pingping Wang ◽  
Wendong Zhang ◽  
Minghao Li ◽  
Yijun Han
Keyword(s):  
Technical Efficiency ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Chemical Fertilizer ◽  
Systematic Evaluation ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
Nutrient Runoff ◽  
Frontier Analysis ◽  
Fertilizer Use ◽  
Wheat Production ◽  
The Impact

Farmers in China and many other developing countries suffer from low technical efficiency of chemical fertilizer use, which leads to excessive nutrient runoff and other environmental problems. A major cause of the low efficiency is lack of science-based information and recommendations for nutrient application. In response, the Chinese government launched an ambitious nationwide program called the “Soil Testing and Fertilizer Recommendation Project” (STFRP) in 2005 to increase the efficiency of chemical fertilizer use. However, there has been no systematic evaluation of this program. Using data from a nationally representative household survey, and using wheat as an example, this paper first quantifies the technical efficiency of chemical fertilizer use (TEFU) by conducting stochastic frontier analysis (SFA), then evaluates the impact of STFRP on the TEFU using a generalized difference-in-difference approach. We found that STFRP, on average, increased TEFU in wheat production by about 4%, which was robust across various robustness checks. The lessons learned from STFRP will be valuable for China’s future outreach efforts, as well as for other countries considering similar nutrient management policies.

scholarly journals A phylodynamic workflow to rapidly gain insights into the dispersal history and dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 lineages

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Dellicour ◽  
Keith Durkin ◽  
Samuel L. Hong ◽  
Bert Vanmechelen ◽  
Joan Martí-Carreras ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Virus Transmission ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Spatial Density ◽  
Spatially Explicit ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Intervention Measures ◽  
Dispersal Velocity ◽  
Dispersal Events ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Multiple Transmission

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, an unprecedented number of genomic sequences of the causative virus (SARS-CoV-2) have been generated and shared with the scientific community. The unparalleled volume of available genetic data presents a unique opportunity to gain real-time insights into the virus transmission during the pandemic, but also a daunting computational hurdle if analysed with gold-standard phylogeographic approaches. We here describe and apply an analytical pipeline that is a compromise between fast and rigorous analytical steps. As a proof of concept, we focus on the Belgium epidemic, with one of the highest spatial density of available SARS-CoV-2 genomes. At the global scale, our analyses confirm the importance of external introduction events in establishing multiple transmission chains in the country. At the country scale, our spatially-explicit phylogeographic analyses highlight that the national lockdown had a relatively low impact on both the lineage dispersal velocity and the long-distance dispersal events within Belgium. Our pipeline has the potential to be quickly applied to other countries or regions, with key benefits in complementing epidemiological analyses in assessing the impact of intervention measures or their progressive easement.

scholarly journals A Forecast Visual Observation of the Anthropogenic Impact on the Pilgrimage Places Along the Southeast Coast of Tamil Nadu, India

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rajendran Viji ◽  
Nirmaladevi D Shrinithivihahshini ◽  
John S Armstrong-Altrin ◽  
Ebrahem M Eid
Keyword(s):  
Tamil Nadu ◽  
National Level ◽  
Visual Observation ◽  
Visual Surveillance ◽  
Contaminated Site ◽  
Coastal Pollution ◽  
Anthropogenic Activity ◽  
Gulf Of Mannar ◽  
Open Defecation ◽  
The Impact

The present investigation is focused on the forecasting visual observation of the impact of anthropogenic activity on the pilgrimage places located along the coastal environments in Tamil Nadu, India. Devotees performing the unregulated ritual ceremonies, open defecation, waste materials dumping and local municipality discharging wastewater contamination levels were assessed from direct visual surveillance, and by taking photographs and baseline information collected from five different pilgrimage sites. Results showed that ritual ceremonies, wastewater discharges and debris highly contaminated site-III, and found open defecation at site-I. The lack of coastal regulation, pollution awareness, insufficient sanitation facilities and failure to control the commercial and recreational activities have major deleterious effects on the present and future environments of the coastal areas. This is the first attempt conducted by visual assessment of the coastal pollution in pilgrimage places. The results immensely support the recommendation for proper regulation of ritual activities, arrangement of basic sanitation facilities and prohibition of wastewater discharges to prevent waterborne diseases as well as to strictly follow the regional and national level of coastal regulation policy to protect the biological resources of the Gulf of Mannar marine ecosystems.

scholarly journals Assessing the Impact of Physical and Anthropogenic Environmental Factors in Determining the Habitat Suitability of Seagrass Ecosystems

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (20) ◽  
pp. 8302
Author(s):  
Ryan Hastings ◽  
Valerie Cummins ◽  
Paul Holloway
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Variables ◽  
National Level ◽  
Entropy Method ◽  
Blue Carbon ◽  
Anthropogenic Activity ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Suitable Habitat ◽  
Distribution Models ◽  
Seagrass Meadows ◽  
The Impact

Blue Carbon ecosystems such as mangroves, saltmarshes and seagrasses have been shown to sequester large amounts of carbon, and subsequently are receiving renewed interest from policy experts in light of climate change. Globally, seagrasses remain the most understudied of these ecosystems, with their total geographic extent largely unknown due to challenges in mapping dynamic coastal environments. As such, species distribution models (SDMs) have been used to identify areas of high suitability, in order to inform our understanding of where unmapped meadows may be located or to identify suitable sites for restoration and/or enhancement efforts. However, many SDMs parameterized to project seagrass distributions focus on physical and not anthropogenic variables (i.e., dredging, aquaculture), which can have negative impacts on seagrass meadows. Here we used verified datasets to identify the potential distribution of Zostera marina and Zostera noltei at a national level for the Republic of Ireland, using 19 environmental variables including both physical and anthropogenic. Using the Maximum Entropy method for developing the SDM, we estimated approximately 95 km2 of suitable habitat for Z. marina and 70 km2 for Z. noltei nationally with high accuracy metrics, including Area Under the Curve (AUC) values of 0.939 and 0.931, respectively for the two species. We found that bathymetry, maximum sea-surface temperature (SST) and minimum salinity were the most important environmental variables that explained the distribution of Z. marina and that high standard deviation of SST, mean SST and maximum salinity were the most important variables in explaining the distribution of Z. noltei. At a national level, we noted that it was primarily physical variables that determined the geographic distribution of seagrass, not anthropogenic variables. We unexpectedly modelled areas of high suitability in locations of anthropogenic disturbance (i.e., dredging, high pollution risk), although this may be due to the binary nature of SDMs capturing presence-absence and not the size and condition of the meadows, suggesting a need for future research to explore the finer scale impacts of anthropogenic activity. Subsequently, this research should foster discussion for researchers and practitioners working on sustainability projects related to Blue Carbon.

scholarly journals climateStability: An R package to estimate climate stability from time-slice climatologies

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 8-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah Lois Owens ◽  
Robert Guralnick
Keyword(s):  
Phylogenetic Diversity ◽  
R Package ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Spatially Explicit ◽  
Stability Estimates ◽  
Climate Variable ◽  
Climate Stability ◽  
The Mean ◽  
Past Climate Change ◽  
The Impact

As continental and global-scale paleoclimate model data become more readily available, biologists can now ask spatially explicit questions about the tempo and mode of past climate change and the impact of those changes on biodiversity patterns. In particular, researchers have focused on climate stability as a key variable that can drive expected patterns of richness, phylogenetic diversity and functional diversity. Yet, climate stability measures are not formalized in the literature and tools for generating stability metrics from existing data are nascent. Here we define “deviation” of a climate variable as the mean standard deviation between time slices over time elapsed; “stability” is defined as the inverse of this deviation. Finally, climate stability is the product of individual climate variable stability estimates. We also present an R package, climateStability, which contains tools for researchers to generate climate stability estimates from their own data.

scholarly journals A spatial resolution threshold of land cover in estimating regional terrestrial carbon sequestration

2009 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 7983-8006
Author(s):  
S. Zhao ◽  
S. Liu ◽  
Z. Li ◽  
T. L. Sohl
Keyword(s):  
Carbon Sequestration ◽  
Land Cover ◽  
Land Cover Change ◽  
Spatial Resolution ◽  
Spatial Patterns ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Terrestrial Carbon ◽  
Carbon Modeling ◽  
Terrestrial Carbon Sequestration ◽  
The Impact

Abstract. Changes in carbon density (i.e., carbon stock per unit area) and land cover greatly affect carbon sequestration. Previous studies have shown that land cover change detection strongly depends on spatial scale. However, the influence of the spatial resolution of land cover change information on the estimated terrestrial carbon sequestration is not known. Here, we quantified and evaluated the impact of land cover change databases at various spatial resolutions (250 m, 500 m, 1 km, 2 km, and 4 km) on the magnitude and spatial patterns of regional carbon sequestration in the southeastern United States using the General Ensemble biogeochemical Modeling System (GEMS). Results indicated a threshold of 1 km in the land cover change databases and in the estimated regional terrestrial carbon sequestration. Beyond this threshold, significant biases occurred in the estimation of terrestrial carbon sequestration, its interannual variability, and spatial patterns. In addition, the overriding impact of interannual climate variability on the temporal change of regional carbon sequestration was unrealistically overshadowed by the impact of land cover change beyond the threshold. The implications of these findings directly challenge current continental- to global-scale carbon modeling efforts relying on information at coarse spatial resolution without incorporating fine-scale land cover dynamics.

scholarly journals THE IMPACT OF CLUSTERIZATION ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF SMALL AND MEDIUM‐SIZED ENTERPRISE (SME) SECTOR

2009 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 255-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentinas Navickas ◽  
Asta Malakauskaitė
Keyword(s):  
Small Businesses ◽  
Economies Of Scale ◽  
National Level ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Limited Resources ◽  
Technological Advancement ◽  
Know How ◽  
Innovative Solutions ◽  
The Impact

The impact of clusterization on the development of SME sector has been analysed in this study. The cooperation of companies at national level and on a global scale is becoming more and more important as a tool of economic development. Companies tend to work together in order to share their competencies, reduce various costs, consolidate limited resources, and hereby increase their productivity, innovativeness, and profitability. It must be emphasized that the role of clusterization is crucial in the development of SME sector, as small and medium‐sized enterprises may benefit from economies of scale and extend the operation limits (size‐related limitations of operation are characteristic of most small businesses). Clusters (and similar forms of interorganizational structures) create the environment for innovation and technological advancement. Therefore, small and medium‐sized enterprises may gain additional benefits that include know‐how, cost‐saving options, innovative solutions, etc. The authors of this scientific study have concluded that the competitiveness of SME sector is closely related to the spread and extent of clusterization processes.

scholarly journals Evaluating the impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions for SARS-CoV-2 on a global scale

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel T Esra ◽  
Lise Jamesion ◽  
Matthew P Fox ◽  
Daniel Letswalo ◽  
Nkosinathi Ngcobo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
National Level ◽  
Early Time ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Model Framework ◽  
School Closures ◽  
Country Level ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Context Specific ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Pharmaceutical Interventions

In the absence of a viable pharmaceutical intervention for SARS-CoV-2, governments have implemented a range of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to curb the spread of infection of the virus and the disease caused by the virus, now known as COVID-19. Given the associated social and economic costs, it is critical to enumerate the individual impacts of NPIs to aid in decision-making moving forward. We used globally reported SARS-CoV-2 cases to fit a Bayesian model framework to estimate transmission associated with NPIs in 26 countries and 34 US states. Using a mixed effects model with country level random effects, we compared the relative impact of other NPIs to national-level household confinement measures and evaluated the impact of NPIs on the global trajectory of the COVID-19 pandemic over time. We observed heterogeneous impacts of the easing of restrictions and estimated an overall reduction in infection of 23% (95% CI: 18-27%) associated with household confinement, 10% (95% CI: 1-18%) with limits on gatherings, 12% (95% CI: 5-19%) with school closures and 17% (95% CI: 6-28%) with mask policies. We estimated a 12% (95% CI: 9-15%) reduction in transmission associated with NPIs overall. The implementation of NPIs have substantially reduced acceleration of COVID-19. At this early time point, we cannot determine the impact of the easing of restrictions and there is a need for continual assessment of context specific effectiveness of NPIs as more data become available.

Pengaruh Budaya Terhadap Akuntansi, Auditing Dan Praktik Akuntansi Internasional

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-95
Author(s):  
Priyastiwi Priyastiwi
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Values ◽  
Leadership Style ◽  
Financial Reporting ◽  
National Level ◽  
Deep Understanding ◽  
Cultural Dimensions ◽  
Financial Disclosure ◽  
Cross Cultural Differences ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Impact

The purpose of this article is to provide the basic model of Hofstede and Grays’ cultural values that relates the Hofstede’s cultural dimensions and Gray‘s accounting value. This article reviews some studies that prove the model and develop the research in the future. There are some evidences that link the Hofstede’s cultural values studies with the auditor’s judgment and decisions by developing a framework that categorizes the auditor’s judgments and decisions are most likely influenced by cross-cultural differences. The categories include risk assessment, risk decisions and ethical judgments. Understanding the impact of cultural factors on the practice of accounting and financial disclosure is important to achieve the harmonization of international accounting. Deep understanding about how the local values may affect the accounting practices and their impacts on the financial disclosure are important to ensure the international comparability of financial reporting. Gray’s framework (1988) expects how the culture may affect accounting practices at the national level. One area of the future studies will examine the impact of cultural dimensions to the values of accounting, auditing and decision making. Key word : Motivation, leadership style, job satisfaction, performance

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