scholarly journals Modelling nitrogen dynamics and distributions in the River Tweed, Scotland: an application of the INCA model

2002 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 433-454 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. P. Jarvie ◽  
A. J. Wade ◽  
D. Butterfield ◽  
P. G. Whitehead ◽  
C. I. Tindall ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Plant Uptake ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Agricultural Practice ◽  
Worst Case ◽  
River Flows ◽  
Good Agricultural Practice ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Nitrate Concentrations

Abstract. The INCA (Integrated Nitrogen in Catchments) model was applied to the River Tweed in the Scottish Borders, a large-scale (4400km2), spatially heterogeneous catchment, draining a wide range of agricultural land-use types, and which contributes approximately 20% of UK river flows to the North Sea. The model was calibrated for the first four years' data record (1994 to 1997) and tested over the following three years (1998 to 2000). The model calibration and testing periods incorporated a high degree of variability in climatic conditions and river flows within the Tweed catchment. The ability of the INCA model to reproduce broad-scale spatial patterns and seasonal dynamics in river flows and nitrate concentrations suggests that the processes controlling first order variability in river water nitrate concentrations have been represented successfully within the model. The tendency of the model to overestimate summer/early autumn baseflow nitrate concentrations during dry years may be linked to the operation of aquatic plant uptake effects. It is, therefore, suggested that consideration be given to incorporating a spatially and temporally variable in-stream plant uptake term for the application of INCA to lowland eutrophic rivers. Scenarios to examine possible impacts of environmental change on nitrate concentrations on the Tweed are examined. These include the effects of (i) implementing different recommendations for fertiliser use and land use change under the Nitrate Sensitive Areas (NSA) Scheme and the Scottish Code of Good Agricultural Practice, (ii) worst case scenario changes linked to a dramatic reduction in livestock numbers as a result of a crisis in UK livestock farming and (iii) changes in atmospheric nitrogen deposition. Keywords: Nitrate, nitrogen, modelling, Tweed, INCA

scholarly journals Current Wildland Fire Patterns and Challenges in Europe: A Synthesis of National Perspectives

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 117862212110281
Author(s):  
Nieves Fernandez-Anez ◽  
Andrey Krasovskiy ◽  
Mortimer Müller ◽  
Harald Vacik ◽  
Jan Baetens ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Wildland Fire ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Local Analysis ◽  
Wildland Fires ◽  
Fire Statistics ◽  
Quantitative Evidence ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Fire Patterns

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.

Agricultural Land Management Options Following Large-Scale Environmental Contamination: Evaluation for Fukushima Affected Agricultural Land

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hildegarde Vandenhove
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Land Management ◽  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Agricultural Practices ◽  
Management Option ◽  
Management Options ◽  
Fukushima Daiichi ◽  
Agricultural Land Management

The accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant has raised questions about the accumulation of radionuclides in soils, the transfer in the foodchain and the possibility of continued restricted future land use. This paper summarizes what is generally understood about the application of agricultural countermeasures as a land management option to reduce the radionuclides transfer in the food chain and to facilitate the return of potentially affected soils to agricultural practices in areas impacted by a nuclear accident.

Assessing Nitrogen Legacies in Western Europe

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Musolff ◽  
Sophie Ehrhardt ◽  
Rémi Dupas ◽  
Rohini Kumar ◽  
Pia Ebeling ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Time Series ◽  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Time Lags ◽  
Water Safety ◽  
Biological Fixation ◽  
Nitrogen Inputs ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
N Input ◽  
Nitrate Concentrations ◽  
Input Time

<p>Intensive agricultural land use have introduced vast quantities of nutrients such as reactive nitrogen (N) to soils and subsequently to groundwater and surface waters. High nitrate concentrations are still a pressing issue for drinking water safety and aquatic ecosystem health e.g. in Europe, although fertilizer inputs have been significantly lowered in the last decades. This is partly due to a slow response of riverine nitrate concentrations to changes in nitrogen inputs attributed to N legacies in catchments. N can be stored organically bound as a biogeochemical legacy in soils or can be slowly transported as nitrate in groundwater forming a hydrologic legacy. Legacy can thus lead to a net retention of N in catchments and to substantial time lags in the response to input changes. Here, we systematically explore legacy effects over a wide range of catchment in the Western European countries France and Germany. We are making use of long observational time series of nitrate concentration in 238 catchments covering 40% of the total area of France and Germany. We apply a Weighted Regression on Time, Discharge, and Season (WRTDS) to derive continuous daily flow-normalized concentrations and loads. The temporal pattern of concentration and loads at the catchment outlet is compared to the N input time series evolving from agricultural N surplus, atmospheric deposition and biological fixation. We found that on long-term catchments retain on average 72% of the N input. Time lags between input and output were successfully explained by a lognormal transport time distribution. The modes of these distributions were found to be rather short with a median mode of 5.4 years across all catchments. Based on this data-driven assessment only the fate of N in the catchments is hard to assess as denitrification in soil and groundwater can lead to similar observations as the storage of N in legacies. Focusing on the mobile part of N that is exported by catchments, we estimate that a substantial amount of N is still stored in the subsurface that will be released in the coming years. We therefore analyzed how catchment nitrate export will evolve under the scenario of a total cut down, reduced or constant future N inputs. We report the expected timescale of reaction to implemented measures to help tackling this pressing water quality problem.</p>

scholarly journals Agricultural land use and cover change in the Cerrado/Amazon ecotone: A case study of the upper Teles Pires River basin

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 168-177 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Paula Sousa Rodrigues ZAIATZ ◽  
Cornélio Alberto ZOLIN ◽  
Laurimar Goncalves VENDRUSCULO ◽  
Tarcio Rocha LOPES ◽  
Janaina PAULINO
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
River Basin ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Temporal Dynamics ◽  
Direct Conversion ◽  
Landsat 8 ◽  
Error Matrix ◽  
Mato Grosso ◽  
Land Use And Cover

ABSTRACT The upper Teles Pires River basin is a key hydrological resource for the state of Mato Grosso, but has suffered rapid land use and cover change. The basin includes areas of Cerrado biome, as well as transitional areas between the Amazon and Cerrado vegetation types, with intensive large-scale agriculture widely-spread throughout the region. The objective of this study was to explore the spatial and temporal dynamics of land use and cover change from 1986 to 2014 in the upper Teles Pires basin using remote sensing and GIS techniques. TM (Thematic Mapper) and TIRS (Thermal Infrared Sensor) sensor images aboard the Landsat 5 and Landsat 8, respectively, were employed for supervised classification using the “Classification Workflow” in ENVI 5.0. To evaluate classification accuracy, an error matrix was generated, and the Kappa, overall accuracy, errors of omission and commission, user accuracy and producer accuracy indexes calculated. The classes showing greatest variation across the study period were “Agriculture” and “Rainforest”. Results indicated that deforested areas are often replaced by pasture and then by agriculture, while direct conversion of forest to agriculture occured less frequently. The indices with satisfactory accuracy levels included the Kappa and Global indices, which showed accuracy levels above 80% for all study years. In addition, the producer and user accuracy indices ranged from 59-100% and 68-100%, while the errors of omission and commission ranged from 0-32% and 0-40.6%, respectively.

A Brief Political History of South Australian Agriculture

Rural History ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
SIMON J. FIELKE ◽  
DOUGLAS K. BARDSLEY
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Agricultural Development ◽  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
South Australia ◽  
Agricultural Land Use ◽  
Agricultural Practice ◽  
Key Stakeholders ◽  
History Of ◽  
Social Environmental

Abstract:This paper aims to explain why South Australian agricultural land use is focused on continually increasing productivity, when the majority of produce is exported, at the long-term expense of agriculturally-based communities and the environment. A historical analysis of literature relevant to the agricultural development of South Australia is used chronologically to report aspects of the industry that continue to cause concerns in the present day. The historically dominant capitalist socio-economic system and ‘anthropocentric’ world views of farmers, politicians, and key stakeholders have resulted in detrimental social, environmental and political outcomes. Although recognition of the environmental impacts of agricultural land use has increased dramatically since the 1980s, conventional productivist, export oriented farming still dominates the South Australian landscape. A combination of market oriented initiatives and concerned producers are, however, contributing to increasing the recognition of the environmental and social outcomes of agricultural practice and it is argued here that South Australia has the opportunity to value multifunctional land use more explicitly via innovative policy.

scholarly journals Big Science, Ethics, and the Scalar Effects of Urban Planning

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 217-226
Author(s):  
Sandra Kopljar
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Urban Development ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Materials Science ◽  
Urban Expansion ◽  
Sustainable Urban Development ◽  
Planning Strategy ◽  
Urban Level ◽  
Research Facilities

The urban expansion currently under development around the two materials science facilities MAX IV and European Spallation Source in Lund, Sweden, surrounds two meticulously designed research facilities steered by global demands. The new urban area, together with the research facilities dedicated to science and the development of knowledge, expands the city of Lund onto high-quality agricultural land. In doing so, the municipal planning is attempting to align contemporary ideas of sustainable urban development with large-scale scientific infrastructure. This actualizes an ethical dilemma as the urban expansion onto productive agricultural land overrides previous decisions taken by the municipality regarding land use. It can also be understood as going against national land use policy which states that development on productive agricultural land should be avoided. As the planning stands today, the research facilities heavily push local urban development into the area while the intended research outcomes primarily relate to a global research community tied to international scientific demands for materials science. Although the Brunnshög area is realized through a neutralizing planning strategy, thought to balance and compensate for the development on farmland, the effects of the counterbalancing acts are primarily played out at a local urban level in terms of diverse, exciting, and locally sustainable neighbourhoods. The land use protection policies meant to secure national food production rather operates on a national scale. The argument made in this text is that sustainable development, and the intended balancing acts it involves, ought to be carefully considered in terms of scalar effects. Sustainable planning<em> </em>effects’ <em>scalar extent</em> should be taken into account through careful assessment of the step between good intentions and expected outcomes.

Modelling phosphorus pollution risk in agricultural catchments using a spatially distributed Bayesian Belief Network

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Camilla Negri ◽  
Miriam Glendell ◽  
Nick Schurch ◽  
Andrew J. Wade ◽  
Per-Erik Mellander
Keyword(s):  
Water Quality ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Land Management ◽  
Nutrient Loss ◽  
Mitigation Measures ◽  
Agricultural Practice ◽  
Pollution Risk ◽  
Agricultural Catchments ◽  
Good Agricultural Practice

&lt;p&gt;Diffuse pollution of phosphorus (P) from agriculture is a major pressure on water quality in Ireland. The Agricultural Catchments Programme (ACP) was initiated to evaluate the Good Agricultural Practice measures implemented under the EU Nitrates Directive. Within the ACP, extensive monitoring and research has been made to understand the drivers and controls on nutrient loss in the agricultural landscape. However, tapering P pollution in agricultural catchments also requires informed decisions about the likely effectiveness of measures as well as their spatial targeting.&amp;#160; There is a need to develop Decision Support Tools (DST) that can account for the uncertainty inherently present in both data and water quality models.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Bayesian Belief Networks (BBNs) are probabilistic graphical models that allow the integration of both quantitative and qualitative information from different sources (experimental data, model outputs and expert opinion) all in one model. Moreover, these models can be easily updated with new knowledge and can be applied with scarce datasets. BBNs have previously been used in multiple decision-making settings to understand causal relationships in different contexts. Recently, BBNs were used to support ecological risk-based decision making.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In this study, a prototype BBN was implemented with the Genie software to develop a DST for understanding the influence of land management and P pollution risk in four ACP catchments dominated by intensively farmed land with contrasting hydrology and land use. In the fist stage of the study, the spatial BBN was constructed visualising the &amp;#8216;source-mobilisation-transport-continuum&amp;#8217;, identifying the main drivers of P pollution based on previous findings from the ACP catchments. A second step involved the consultation of experts and stakeholders through a series of workshops aimed at eliciting their input. These stakeholders have expertise ranging from hydrology and hydrochemistry, land management and farm consulting, to policy and environmental modelling.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;At present, the BBN is being parameterized for a 12km&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; catchment with mostly grassland on poorly drained soils, using a high temporal and spatial resolution dataset that includes hydro-chemo-metrics, mapped soil properties (drainage class and Soil Morgan P), landscape characteristics (i.e. land use and management, presence of mitigation measures and presence of point pollution sources). Preliminary results show that the model captures the difference in P loss risk between catchments, probably caused by contrasting hydrological characteristics and soil P sources.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Future research will be focussed on parameterizing and testing the BBN in three other ACP catchments. Such parametrization will be pivotal to testing the model in data sparse catchments and possibly upscaling the tool to regional and national scale. Moreover, climate change and land use change modelled scenarios will be crucial to inform targeting of mitigation measures. &amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;

scholarly journals “The good guys are doing it anyway”: The accommodation of environmental concern among English and Welsh farmers

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 664-687 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Wheeler ◽  
Matt Lobley ◽  
Michael Winter ◽  
Carol Morris
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Management ◽  
Environmental Concern ◽  
Local Environment ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Agricultural Practice ◽  
Negative Externalities ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Business Goals ◽  
Good Agricultural Practice ◽  
Wide Range

Farmers today are increasingly facing pressure from policy and market forces to improve their environmental performance. Yet – despite widespread recognition of the negative externalities of agriculture on a national and global scale – many farmers would argue that, as “custodians of the countryside” they have always respected and cared for the local environment, and play a central role in creating and maintaining the countryside as we know it today. In this paper, we use evidence emerging from research with farmers across England and Wales to explore farmer accounts of environmental concern and action in the context of both traditional farming values and contemporary imperatives. We draw particularly on scholarly work around constructs of “good farming” to consider the extent to which environmental concern has been accommodated within a wide range of farming contexts across England and Wales. Our findings highlight an intrinsic sense of care towards the environment among farmers and reveal how environmental management has in many ways become an integral part of farming discourse; recognised as synergistic with personal and business goals concerning (i) personal respect for the environment and conservation; (ii) countryside custodianship; (iii) farm legacy and succession; (iv) “good” agricultural practice and compliance with regulation; and/or (v) financial profitability. We discuss some of the issues arising from our findings and offer our thoughts on implications for efforts to encourage farmers to carry out environmentally beneficial activities. Whilst expressions of environmental concern do not necessarily equate to effective action on the ground, recognising that many farmers believe environmental management to be part of good farming practice provides a more positive foundation for engaging with them on this topic than assuming they need to be cajoled into action.

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