SOME TRENDS IN GRASSLAND FARMING IN EUROPE

Author(s):  
R.W. Brougham

IN an assessment such as this, one could cover a wide range of topics fairly shallowly or a lesser number in a bit more depth. I have opted for the latter. The topics discussed will embrace some trends in dairying, beef farming, sheep farming, hill country farming, and land use generally, species and variety usage in grassland farming, use of crude protein produced from pasture, and some implications of energy usage.

Author(s):  
H.S. Gibbs ◽  
C.G. Vucetich

Marlborough is a particularly interesting province because it is the meeting ground for the soils and the farming from the North and South Islands of New Zealand. The central Awatere and Wairau districts have a landscape succession of coastal plains, downlands, hills, inland basins, and mountain slopes with similar soils, crops, and grassland usage to Canterbury. East and west of these districts the Kaikoura and Sounds regions have extensive areas resembling those of Wellington and Wairarapa hill country in soils, grassland farming, and forestry. Further contrast to the soil pattern is added by soils formed from basaltic, ultrabasic, and limestone rocks, which outcrop over small areas. After more than 100 years of settlement the land use has become related generally to the soils, but the connection could be much closer and to greater benefit, if the soil differences were better known and applied to the selection of farm practices. With the wide range of soil occurring in Marlborough, landowners need an understanding of their soils to select where best to apply experience from other districts and how to modify their practices to suit changing economic conditions.


Author(s):  
Pavlo Kazmir ◽  
Lyubomyr Kazmir

Interest in land-use changes (LUC) research has been growing rapidly in recent years. This topic has already become the subject of a separate scientific discipline – land use science (or land change science). In order to formulate relevant future policy and develop appropriate land-use management tools, it is crucial to know how the LUC шьзфсе the environment and society condition. For Ukraine, where the structure of land use and the system of land resources management have significantly changed during the years of post-socialist transformation of land relations, the study of the LUC on a modern methodological basis is especially actual. The paper, based on a critical analysis of publications in leading international journals over the last thirty years, identifies key directions of LUC studies and analyzes their methodological features. There is a significant increase of the number of works based on the results of meta-studies and the use of a wide range of methods for modeling the LUC processes, their causes and possible consequences. The great "synergistic potential" of integration of the selected directions is noted, which makes it possible to accelerate the development of the general theory of land use and increase its use efficiency in substantiation of management decisions in the sphere of land use and modernization of the mechanisms of state land, spatial and ecological policies with consideration of existing and potential globalizing challenges. In this context, the key role of the land use integrated planning methodology at regional and local levels is emphasized. This methodology would require close cooperation between government, business and the public in developing a common vision for the implementation of specific land use plans and projects based on the principles of subsidiarity, participativity and shared responsibility.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 87-99
Author(s):  
Shiva Pokhrel ◽  
Chungla Sherpa

Conservation areas are originally well-known for protecting landscape features and wildlife. They are playing key role in conserving and providing a wide range of ecosystem services, social, economic and cultural benefits as well as vital places for climate mitigation and adaptation. We have analyzed decadal changes in land cover and status of vegetation cover in the conservation area using both national level available data on land use land cover (LULC) changes (1990-2010) and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) (2010-2018) in Annapurna conservation area. LULC showed the barren land as the most dominant land cover types in all three different time series 1990, 2000 and 2010 with followed by snow cover, grassland, forest, agriculture and water body. The highest NDVI values were observed at Southern, Southwestern and Southeastern part of conservation area consisting of forest area, shrub land and grassland while toward low to negative in the upper middle to the Northern part of the conservation area.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 117862212110281
Author(s):  
Nieves Fernandez-Anez ◽  
Andrey Krasovskiy ◽  
Mortimer Müller ◽  
Harald Vacik ◽  
Jan Baetens ◽  
...  

Changes in climate, land use, and land management impact the occurrence and severity of wildland fires in many parts of the world. This is particularly evident in Europe, where ongoing changes in land use have strongly modified fire patterns over the last decades. Although satellite data by the European Forest Fire Information System provide large-scale wildland fire statistics across European countries, there is still a crucial need to collect and summarize in-depth local analysis and understanding of the wildland fire condition and associated challenges across Europe. This article aims to provide a general overview of the current wildland fire patterns and challenges as perceived by national representatives, supplemented by national fire statistics (2009–2018) across Europe. For each of the 31 countries included, we present a perspective authored by scientists or practitioners from each respective country, representing a wide range of disciplines and cultural backgrounds. The authors were selected from members of the COST Action “Fire and the Earth System: Science & Society” funded by the European Commission with the aim to share knowledge and improve communication about wildland fire. Where relevant, a brief overview of key studies, particular wildland fire challenges a country is facing, and an overview of notable recent fire events are also presented. Key perceived challenges included (1) the lack of consistent and detailed records for wildland fire events, within and across countries, (2) an increase in wildland fires that pose a risk to properties and human life due to high population densities and sprawl into forested regions, and (3) the view that, irrespective of changes in management, climate change is likely to increase the frequency and impact of wildland fires in the coming decades. Addressing challenge (1) will not only be valuable in advancing national and pan-European wildland fire management strategies, but also in evaluating perceptions (2) and (3) against more robust quantitative evidence.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 2917
Author(s):  
GwanSeon Kim ◽  
Mehdi Nemati ◽  
Steven Buck ◽  
Nicholas Pates ◽  
Tyler Mark

This paper proposes a novel application of the multinomial logit (MNL) model using Cropland Data Layer and field-level boundaries to estimate crop transition probabilities, which are used to generate forecast distributions of total acreage for five major crops produced in the state of Kentucky. These forecasts distributions have a wide range of applications that, besides providing interim acreage estimates ahead of the June Acreage Survey, can inform the ability of producers to incorporate new crops in the land-use rotation, investments in location-specific capital and input distribution as well informing the likelihood of adverse water quality events from nutrient run-off.


1980 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Dearden

This essay has sought to draw together some of the reasons behind the recent upsurge in interest in the systematic evaluation of scenic beauty. It has covered a wide range of disciplines, because of the multi-faceted nature of feelings about landscape. These feelings have been synthesized into four themes representing landscape as a non-renewable resource, as a recreational resource, as a spiritual resource, and finally as a historical resource. Undoubtedly many other equally valid reasons exist as to why the visual resource of the landscape should be recognized as an important consideration in land-use planning decisions.


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (11) ◽  
pp. 4537-4562 ◽  
Author(s):  
HyeJin Kim ◽  
Isabel M. D. Rosa ◽  
Rob Alkemade ◽  
Paul Leadley ◽  
George Hurtt ◽  
...  

Abstract. To support the assessments of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the IPBES Expert Group on Scenarios and Models is carrying out an intercomparison of biodiversity and ecosystem services models using harmonized scenarios (BES-SIM). The goals of BES-SIM are (1) to project the global impacts of land-use and climate change on biodiversity and ecosystem services (i.e., nature's contributions to people) over the coming decades, compared to the 20th century, using a set of common metrics at multiple scales, and (2) to identify model uncertainties and research gaps through the comparisons of projected biodiversity and ecosystem services across models. BES-SIM uses three scenarios combining specific Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs) and Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) – SSP1xRCP2.6, SSP3xRCP6.0, SSP5xRCP8.6 – to explore a wide range of land-use change and climate change futures. This paper describes the rationale for scenario selection, the process of harmonizing input data for land use, based on the second phase of the Land Use Harmonization Project (LUH2), and climate, the biodiversity and ecosystem services models used, the core simulations carried out, the harmonization of the model output metrics, and the treatment of uncertainty. The results of this collaborative modeling project will support the ongoing global assessment of IPBES, strengthen ties between IPBES and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scenarios and modeling processes, advise the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) on its development of a post-2020 strategic plans and conservation goals, and inform the development of a new generation of nature-centred scenarios.


One Ecosystem ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dirk Vrebos ◽  
Jan Staes ◽  
Steven Broekx ◽  
Leo de Nocker ◽  
Karen Gabriels ◽  
...  

Since the early 2000s, there have been substantial efforts to transform the concept of ecosystem services into practice. Spatial assessment tools are being developed to evaluate the impact of spatial planning on a wide range of ecosystem services. However, the actual implementation in decision-making remains limited. To improve implementation, tools that are tailored to local conditions can provide accurate, meaningful information. Instead of a generic and widely-applicable tool, we developed a regional, spatially-explicit tool (ECOPLAN-SE) to analyse the impact of changes in land use on the delivery of 18 ecosystem services in Flanders (Belgium). The tool incorporates ecosystem services relevant to policy-makers and managers and makes use of detailed local data and knowledge. By providing an easy-to-use tool, including the required spatial geodatasets, time investment and the learning curve remain limited for the user. With this tool, constraints to implement ecosystem service assessments in local decision-making are drastically reduced. We believe that region-specific decision support systems, like ECOPLAN-SE, are indispensable intermediates between the conceptual ecosystem service frameworks and the practical implementation in planning processes.


Land ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guillaume Lestrelin ◽  
Jean-Christophe Castella ◽  
Qiaohong Li ◽  
Thoumthone Vongvisouk ◽  
Nguyen Dinh Tien ◽  
...  

Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) is viewed as an effective way to mitigate climate change by compensating stewards of forested areas for minimizing forestland conversion and protecting forest services. Opportunity costs assess the cost of foregone opportunity when preserving the forest instead of investing in an alternative activity or resource use. This paper questions the calculation method of opportunity costs using averaged economic benefits and co-benefits of different land-use transitions. We propose a nested approach to land-use transitions at the interface between landscapes and livelihoods and assessing a wide range of potential socio-ecological costs and benefits. Combining household surveys and focus groups with participatory mapping, we applied the approach in villages of Laos, Vietnam and China positioned along a broad transition trajectory from subsistence shifting cultivation to intensive commercial agriculture. By looking beyond the economics of land use, we highlight important linkages between land-use changes and livelihood differentiation, vulnerability and inequalities. Our results show the importance of addressing the impacts of land-use transitions on a wide range of potential ecological and socioeconomic costs and benefits at multiple levels.


2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (9) ◽  
pp. 3461-3482 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian C. O'Neill ◽  
Claudia Tebaldi ◽  
Detlef P. van Vuuren ◽  
Veronika Eyring ◽  
Pierre Friedlingstein ◽  
...  

Abstract. Projections of future climate change play a fundamental role in improving understanding of the climate system as well as characterizing societal risks and response options. The Scenario Model Intercomparison Project (ScenarioMIP) is the primary activity within Phase 6 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) that will provide multi-model climate projections based on alternative scenarios of future emissions and land use changes produced with integrated assessment models. In this paper, we describe ScenarioMIP's objectives, experimental design, and its relation to other activities within CMIP6. The ScenarioMIP design is one component of a larger scenario process that aims to facilitate a wide range of integrated studies across the climate science, integrated assessment modeling, and impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability communities, and will form an important part of the evidence base in the forthcoming Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessments. At the same time, it will provide the basis for investigating a number of targeted science and policy questions that are especially relevant to scenario-based analysis, including the role of specific forcings such as land use and aerosols, the effect of a peak and decline in forcing, the consequences of scenarios that limit warming to below 2 °C, the relative contributions to uncertainty from scenarios, climate models, and internal variability, and long-term climate system outcomes beyond the 21st century. To serve this wide range of scientific communities and address these questions, a design has been identified consisting of eight alternative 21st century scenarios plus one large initial condition ensemble and a set of long-term extensions, divided into two tiers defined by relative priority. Some of these scenarios will also provide a basis for variants planned to be run in other CMIP6-Endorsed MIPs to investigate questions related to specific forcings. Harmonized, spatially explicit emissions and land use scenarios generated with integrated assessment models will be provided to participating climate modeling groups by late 2016, with the climate model simulations run within the 2017–2018 time frame, and output from the climate model projections made available and analyses performed over the 2018–2020 period.


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